Today, more and more plane tickets are sold on the Internet. But the price of the same trip can vary greatly. Here are our tips for not spending too much.
That’s it, you’ve made up your mind. Next summer you will be leaving for Canada. If you have already imagined the cities you are going to visit, how you will move from one to the other and choose your accommodation, you just have to take the plane ticket… which you want as cheaply as possible. How to do ? Follow these few tips.
Visit different sites
Today, there are many flight comparators on which you can find the plane ticket of your dreams: Opodo, Kayak, Edreams, Go voyages, Liligo, Momondo and even Google. Most of them are also available as an app. But we should not be satisfied with it. You should also consult the websites of travel agencies, such as Selectour and Havas Voyage for example, as well as airlines. It is indeed often on their own site that the latter publish their promotions.
You can also look for low cost companies that are not always listed on comparators. Do you know Level, Wow Air and Swoop Airlines? The first two take you to Montreal nonstop for less than 300 euros in early July and the third offers domestic flights for a few tens of Canadian dollars.
The app AppnFly thus compares in real time the offers of 650 traditional airlines and 50 low-cost airlines.
Leave at the right time
If you have no constraints, it is better to travel outside of school holidays and public holidays (in your country of departure and arrival), because at these peak periods, tickets are always more expensive. It is also better to favor departures – and returns – during the week.
Certain symbolic dates can scare travelers, such as Friday the 13th or even September 11th. If you are not superstitious, these are the dates when you can definitely find more attractive rates.
Some sites also offer you to indicate a date range for your trip or simply a length of stay. Do not hesitate to use it. If Kayak offers these two options, Skyscanner (which also exists in the form of an app) proposes, for its part, to do a search over an entire month.
And if you are not in a hurry, also consider flights with stopovers. They are generally less expensive than direct flights.
Book at the right time
It’s hard to know exactly when to book a plane ticket, but overall it’s better to anticipate. For the American flight comparator CheapAir, it depends on the intended destination.
According to data relating to journeys made in 2017, it would be better to book a flight 207 days (29.5 weeks) before departure to go to the Caribbean, 200 days (28.5 weeks) for a flight to Africa and 160 days (almost 23 weeks) before to travel to Europe.
These numbers are obviously American-centric, nonetheless, they all support the idea that we shouldn’t hang around too much.
For the comparator Skyscanner, which published a study on this subject in 2015, it is also better to book early: 24 weeks before departure for a long haul and 22 weeks for a medium haul leaving from Paris.
But the study also noticed that leaving a provincial airport shortens this period. To get the best price on a Lyon-London flight, just book 20 weeks in advance.
Another frequently heard advice is to buy very early in the morning (around two or three o’clock) and if possible from Tuesday to Thursday. The reason ? This would be the time when other Internet users are sleeping, so demand is less, and these are the days (finally the nights) when companies update their reservation databases, a professional in the sector told us. They would then put back on sale inexpensive tickets that have been canceled or unsold weekend tickets.
What is certain, however, is that the price of the plane ticket that interests you will vary according to several criteria: the number of simultaneous searches on the search engines, the number of seats already sold, the competition on the destination… If you want to go to the latest trendy destination in the middle of July, you will have a harder time finding a low price than if you plan to go to the Lotofen Islands in March.
To make your purchase at the best time, you can also subscribe to alerts from apps (like Hopper) or specialized sites. Skyscanner, Kayak or even Liligo offer this option as do many companies and travel sites. For its part, Algofly provides a particularly precise tool. You can configure your alert very precisely by indicating the maximum number of stopovers, the duration of the trip, the maximum price and the schedules of the outward and return flights.
If you weren’t able to book well in advance, you can also try the last minute purchase, but in this case, you won’t necessarily have a choice of destination. There are sites specializing in these tickets, such as the Flight Exchange, for example. Comparators and travel sites also sometimes offer this type of ticket. And if you’re a gamer, sometimes you can find knock-out tickets right at the airport.
Check everything
When you’ve set your sights on an offer, there are several things to watch out for:
- Are the dates of the ticket the ones you indicated on departure?
- Does the displayed price include the administration fees?
- Do you have to pay additional fees?
- Is the price the same on the comparator and on the booking site?
- Don’t the insurance policies we offer you duplicate those you already have?
In other words, be vigilant and remember that a very / too low price is not necessarily the best deal and that it can hide many pitfalls. If you have survived all these hardships, have a good vacation and have a good flight!