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  Airfare Booking Strategies

Using our basic strategies, you should be able to quickly find good deals on airplane tickets. But if you are ready to invest extra time and effort, you can take advantage of our more advanced strategies and possibly uncover even lower fares.

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• Save money by buying separate tickets for different parts of your trip
• Booking flights that travel through, instead of to, your destination (aka “hidden city ticketing”)
• Using non-standard fares
• Getting cheaper business class tickets
• Letting low fares determine where you go
• Other tips

Save money by buying separate tickets for different parts of your trip

Traditional airfare searching tools will check most of your routing options, especially if you search for each direction as a separate one-way flight. But even the best tools don't search every option.

• Make your own way to a gateway city. For international flights, fares from some cities can be much less expensive than fares from other cities. Since the cheapest international flights are often with airlines that don't have any domestic partnerships, you won't find these fares when you do a normal search. To get a less expensive overall fare, you’ll need to book two separate flights—a domestic flight to the "gateway" city and an inexpensive international flight from there to your destination.

For example, rather than trying to book directly from Salt Lake City to Europe, you’d book a "positioning flight" from Salt Lake City to San Francisco, New York, Chicago, or Dallas; and then book a cheap flight to Europe from there. If you tried booking the full trip, the booking engine probably wouldn't check the potentially low-cost combination of flights on Delta and Norwegian Airlines.

For more information see our article on . This same strategy can also be used when you are traveling to Asia, South America, or other international destinations, although the gateway cities will often differ.


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• Make your own way from a foreign hub to your destination. Even if you are leaving from a low-cost gateway city, you won’t always be able to find a cheap flight that goes directly to your eventual destination. Sometimes, the airline that offers the best international flights doesn’t have partners that connect to the city where you want to go. Fortunately, most of the world is now served by low-cost regional airlines. If you can find an affordable flight to the region you are traveling to, you can combine it with a separate flight to your final destination.

For example, instead of buying expensive tickets to Vietnam, you can buy a more affordable flight to Hong Kong and then book separate low-cost tickets to Vietnam from there. Or instead of buying expensive tickets to Prague, you can buy more affordable tickets to Oslo or Barcelona and then book separate tickets for the final part of the journey. 


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• For an international trip, you might wind up buying as many as three separate round trip tickets. In the worst case scenario, you won’t be able to find well-priced tickets from your home airport to the region of the world you are travelling to and you won’t be able to find well-priced tickets from any convenient US gateway city all the way to your eventual destination. In that case, you’ll need to piece together three separate tickets—a “positioning flight” to a good international gateway, the “long haul” flight to the general proximity of where you want to fly and a “final leg” to your desired destination.

Maps generated by the Great Circle Mapper - copyright © Karl L. Swartz.
• Sometimes, you can save money by making your own connection, even on domestic flights. For example, rather than booking a more expensive flight from Seattle to Nashville, you may be able to save money by booking a ticket between Seattle and Denver and then a separate trip between Denver and Nashville. Because flights are priced as one-ways, you might do this in one direction and book a regular reservation in the other direction. This strategy mostly works when prices to your final destination are more expensive than normal.
• Making a stopover, rather than a quick connection, can sometimes help. Rather than making a regular connection at an airport in the middle of your route, you might be able to find a lower fare by connecting to a flight that leaves the next day or the day after. And you get the potential side-benefit of visiting an added destination.

For example, you might not be able to find a well-priced ticket that goes all the way to your destination on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. But, you might be able to find a cheap ticket to the connecting city on Friday and another cheap ticket between the connecting city and your final destination on Sunday, lowering the cost of your overall trip.

Having some extra time in the connecting city, reduces the chances that you'll have any problems caused by making making an "unofficial" connection (discussed immediately below).

• Make-your-own connection trips can be problematic.  There are several significant drawbacks to piecing together your own trip using separate flights:
• You often can't check your luggage all the way through. If you need to check your bags, you’ll need to pick them up at baggage claim at the connecting airport, re-check them and go back through security. This means a lot of extra time at the connecting airport. Carrying-on your luggage makes these combined ticket strategies much more efficient.

• It can be a big problem if you get delayed and miss your flight. When you combine flights on a single reservation and you can’t make your connection, the airline will make every effort to rebook you. If you book a separate reservation, they aren’t obligated to help. Neither airline might take responsibility for the missed connection. Many times, the airline whose flight you missed will try to accommodate you. However, if they don’t, you might be on the hook for a new, very expensive flight to your destination
• If you need to change or cancel your flight, you’ll need to pay separate fees. With a single reservation, you’ll be charged a single change or cancellation fee. With separately booked tickets, you’ll need to pay each airline separately.

Booking flights that travel through, instead of to, your destination (aka “hidden city ticketing”)

You can often save remarkable amounts of money by booking a flight that makes a connection in the city that you really want to visit, rather than ends there. You then simply skip the final flight from your desired city to the official destination.

For example, rather than booking an expensive ticket from Cleveland to Washington D.C., you can book a cheap ticket from Cleveland to Tampa, that just happens to connect in D.C. When you finish the first flight, you just leave the airport (skipping the final leg between Washington and Tampa). For this example, based on a recent post from Points with a Crew, the price of the one-way ticket dropped from $420 to $114. We’ve also found many opportunities to save impressive amounts of money using this technique.

This is called “hidden city” ticketing and is frowned upon by the airlines. But it can frequently save you a ton of money on your flights.

Pay Less Money by Booking an Extra Flight You Don’t Need (AKA 'Hidden City Ticketing')

Getting cheaper business class tickets

If you are willing to pay the money it costs to buy business and first-class international airplane tickets, you can expect to pay far more than for economy fares. However, if you take advantage of the right strategies, you can pay far less than the “regular” price for your tickets. For example, rather than paying $4,000 for a business class ticket to Europe, you are likely to be able to find tickets for closer to $2,000.

For many people, that is still too much money to pay for an airplane ticket and it is always better to use an award ticket for these flights (if you can). But for anyone who would otherwise need to pay the regular price, it is a bargain.

There are several different approaches, such as buying tickets as part of a package, using a business class consolidator, or buying miles to take advantage of business class award availability.

Save Money on Business and First-Class Seats

Letting low fares determine where you go

Airfare pricing is very dynamic. As airlines fight each other for customers, ticket prices can go up and down dramatically. Destinations get enormously less expensive in the off-season and much more expensive during peak travel periods.

The ultimate way to save money on your airplane ticket is to let bargain airfares determine where you go; rather than choosing where to go, and then looking for the best fares.

• Rather than locking yourself into a single destination, and looking for the best fares, you can take advantage of whatever bargains exist for your travel dates. Several tools can help you find lower-than normal fares. Find a Cheap Fare to SOMEWHERE.
• In the most extreme cases, airlines and travel sites occasionally make errors that result in extremely inexpensive “mistake fares”. If you can jump on these fares before they correct them, you can travel for pennies on the dollar. .

Other tips

• If you live near the Canadian border, taking a flight from a nearby Canadian airport can save a bundle of money. Because of the current exchange rates and the different competitive pressures from low-priced airlines, flights from Canada can be significantly cheaper than flights from the United States. Canada also has different holidays. So, flights to popular vacation spots, over US-only holidays like President’s Day, stay relatively affordable.

For example, nonstop tickets between Vancouver and Honolulu, during President’s week, were $513, while leaving from Seattle would have cost $846 nonstop or $775 for the cheapest tickets. Tickets between Toronto and Cancun were $380, while a comparable trip from Buffalo was $880.

• If you think you might need to take advantage of their extended cancellation benefits, you can book through Priceline. Priceline doesn't just offer "opaque" airfares and hotels, you can also use them like any other regular booking site. With any domestic airline, you normally get 24 hours to cancel your ticket (or a free 24-hour holding period), as long as it is at least 7 days until your flight. With Priceline, you can cancel until 11:29pm EST on the next business day after purchasing your ticket, regardless of the 7-day limit. This gives you valuable extra time to make changes.
• You can occasionally save some money on your airline tickets by buying a travel package. Travel sites often like to tout the benefits of booking “air and hotel” packages. However, in our experience, under normal circumstances, there aren’t significant savings to be found. Often, you’ll get a better deal by booking your hotel separately. However, when hotel prices are high or you are travelling to a major beach vacation spot, packages can save you money. They are also often a great way to save on the price of business and first-class tickets. Lower the Cost of an Expensive Airline Ticket by Buying a Travel Package.
• Optimize extra rewards you receive when you buy a ticket. Even novice travelers should be earning frequent flyer miles from their tickets plus credit card points for making the airfare purchase. However, it is possible to receive even more rewards when you purchase a ticket. You can take advantage of a travel site’s loyalty program (along with the airline’s), sometimes earn cash-back by buying your tickets through a travel portal, and/or sometimes save money by using discounted gift cards. Each of these options takes extra effort but lower the effective cost of purchasing a ticket.

Maximize Your Rewards When Purchasing Airline Tickets

Expert strategies

Some additional expert strategies provide other opportunities to get fly for less money.

Using ITA Matrix--The Most Sophisticated Airfare Search Tool

Airfare 101: Find the Lowest Fares

Pay Less Money by Booking an Extra Flight You Don’t Need (AKA 'Hidden City Ticketing')

Save Money on Business and First-Class Seats

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