Discounted travel tickets
One of the questions my friends keep asking me the most relates to ticket prices and a way to find discounted flight deals. It usually starts with something like 'I wish I had money to fly around the world like that' when I promptly explain how little those flights can cost.
Few examples of good deals I've found on the Internet:
- 15£ for London to Split(Croatia)
- 25£ for Sofia(Bulgaria) to London
- 40£ for London to Istanbul
- 230£ for return flight from London to Varadero(Cuba) in high season!
- 250£ for return flight from London to New York(JFK)
- multiple flights around SE Asia for less than 10£
and many others...
So, without further ado, here's the simple routine I use when I want to go somewhere:
1. I usually start with SkyScanner, especially when I don't have a specific date or place in mind.
Despite few shortcomings(slightly outdated prices, but I guess the very best deals simply change very frequently),
They've got the best broad search functionality I've found on the Internet. You can search for flights like 'London to Everywhere in 2010' or 'Germany to Poland in October' which means you can easily find discounted flight tickets to locations that you haven't even considered.
SkyScanner is also a good research tool to find which airlines fly between your choosen locations and then use the information to lower the price even further.
2. The second flights comparison site I use is Kayak. They offer slightly less flexibility than SkyScanner but are still very useful for few connections that don't show up there.
Oh, don't forget to check out the 'Explore' link. It's basically a world map showing cheapest flights from your location, anywhere in the world. You can refine the results by date, price, flight duration, temperature and even languages spoken at the destination. Pretty cool!
3. Kayak and SkyScanner work for me 90% of the time. If I'm still not satisfied with what I found, I'm going directly to airline web sites. Prices there are most up to date and few of them offer flexible searching options similar to the above.
Here are few airlines I search for specific region:
- around Europe - RyanAir, WizzAir, EasyJet
- UK to Carrabean, Greece, Spain, Turkey - Thomson
- UK to SE Asia - Etihad, Emirates, Singapore Airlines
- around SE Asia - AirAsia
- China to UK, Japan and Hong Kong - China Eastern(good to call them directly for better deals)
- UK to US - Virgin Atlantic(good but expensive)
- Australia, New Zealand and SE Asia - JetStar, Tiger Airways
Hope it helps. Feel free to let me know if you have any tips and sources of your own.
