Step-by-Step Guide to Buying Airplane Tickets
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1: Get ready
- If you are flying internationally, double-check that round trips aren’t significantly cheaper than separate one-way flights. On many routes, the cost of a round trip is simply the sum of the cost of the individual flight segments (and sometimes even less). However, many international routes are still priced the old-fashioned way, where a round trip is much less expensive than two separate one-way tickets. Quickly check the price for a round trip flight and compare against the cost of one-ways, so you'll know whether you can focus on each flight individually (as we prefer), or you need to search for round trip flights instead.
- Prepare to take notes. In most cases, you are going to want to compare several different route options and you’ll need to write the information down.
2: Search for your flight options with Google Flights
Google Flights is the best option for most of your airfare searching.
- Switch to one-way searches. This makes it far easier to understand your different flight options, and can help you save money as well.
- If multiple people are traveling, search using fewer people. If you search for the full number of people in your party, you may see prices that are higher than the rate you could get for at least some of the passengers, and miss out on your best options. On the other hand, it isn't useful to find a cheaper flight for a group of 4 or 5 people, if there is only one seat left at that price. We initially set the number of passengers to half the number of people who are flying. For example, if we are booking a family of four, we do most of our searching for 2 passengers.
- Start with the “ideal” date for your trip. For now, ignore the prices that show up in the calendar. The lowest prices for each day probably aren't for flights you’d be willing to take, and might not even be available. Just get started seeing what is available on the best possible day for your trip.
- Add alternative airports (if any). Sometimes there is an additional airport located nearby that is just about as convenient as your initial destination. To see a list of nearby airports, press the "Nearby Airports" Button.
- Adjust the filters to show just the flights you’d be willing to take. If you wouldn’t consider a red-eye, don’t want to fly on a particular airline, only want to fly on your favorite airline, are only interested in non-stops, or have other dominant flight preferences, you can adjust the “filters” to show only the flights you want. One nice thing in Google Flights, is that the price projections on the calendar view will reflect those choices.
- Write down the best flights options for each day. Often there is a trade-off between price, timing, and your normal airline preference. You need to decide which flight works best for you. If there are options that are close, you can click on each of the flights, to see details about the legroom and inflight amenities.
- Even if a single flight looks like the best option, write down any other flights that are about as good. There is a small advantage to booking all your flights with the same airline, and depending on your return trip, you might decide to take your second-choice flight there instead. Also, if you are booking for multiple people, you might find that the cheapest option becomes more expensive for some of the people in your party, and the next best option might be a better deal.
- Check other days that can work. The easiest way to check another day is to press the small arrows in the date box. Click multiple times to check all the dates that can work, and write down any good flight options you can find.
- Check other weeks that can work. Sometimes you have more flexibility for when you might travel. If so, you can repeat the process for other weeks. While you can't depend on the calendar to show the price you'd wind up paying, it can be helpful to focus your efforts on days where you are likely to find lower prices. In this example, it looks like shifting the travel dates out by a few weeks is unlikely to help, but shifting backwards by a week might save a considerable amount of money.
- Add additional airports. Before moving on, it can be worthwhile to check if it might be worthwhile to take advantage of a more far-flung airport. Go back to your original starting date. Open the nearby airport list again, and use the indicators to look for any airports that might have significantly lower prices.
- Especially for domestic flights, make sure to check for premium cabin seats. Sometimes, the prices are surprisingly close to the price for economy seats. It can also be worthwhile to also see what you can find for “Premium Economy”.
- Do the same thing for the return trip. Or, if you are flying on a multi-city itinerary, for each flight leg.
In this case, Tijuana is not likely to save you money, and the next closest airport is way up by Los Angeles. You can come back and check prices for some of the more far flung airports later, but it is better to initially focus on the airports close to where you really want to go.
If you want to make sure you are checking "regular" fares that allow you to bring a carry-on bag, rather than looking at some low-cost carriers (or United Basic Economy fares) which do not, you can adjust the bag filter.
In this example, we aren’t interested in taking the connection through Salt Lake City to save $12, so we can rule out the 6:25pm Delta flight. We’d prefer flying in the evening, so we aren't interested in taking the early morning flights either, even though they are our cheapest options.
In our example, if we switch to Saturday morning, the price drops significantly. If we can force ourselves to get up early, and don't mind a slightly later start to our trip, we can save $64 with the Delta flight, and also save ourselves the cost of the hotel room on Friday night.
But if we set the filters for non-stop flights that leave at more acceptable hours...
...we see that better flights on Saturday will actually be more expensive.
When we add LAX, we find much lower prices for Friday night. Each person might make their own trade-off, of whether it is worth the extra drive to save the extra money.
If you know you want to check fares to or from multiple cities, you can enter them directly into the search boxes.
When you select one of the boxes, you can manually enter the city name or airport code.
With any given search, Google Flights can search up to five starting cities and five ending cities, and flights to or from multiple cities can even be saved for flight alerts.
Google will sometimes even provide a "tip" letting you known that premium seats aren't much more expensive for your travel dates.
And/or you can check prices directly by changing your flight class towards the top of the page.
In our example, the cheapest first-class ticket was “only” about $100 more than the cheapest nonstop coach flight.
3: Make sure you aren’t ignoring “discount” airlines
Once you are done figuring out your best options with Google Flights, you might need to check one or more other sites, to make sure that you don’t miss out on lower fares from some discount airlines that might not be included in Google's listings.
- For trips in North America, it is often worthwhile to check Southwest Airlines. Clicking on the top of the column of prices on Southwest Airlines website can help you scan through what can be a sizeable number of options.
- If you are flying outside of North America, we find that it is worthwhile to search Momondo. Momondo includes some smaller discount airlines that Google does not. They also sometimes find slightly better prices on the flights you found on Google Flights, usually via smaller “online travel agents” that are competing aggressively on price.
You can quickly search other dates using the date control at the top of the results. Unfortunately, you need to reset the sort order each time.
For our example, Southwest doesn’t offer any better options for this trip.
However, Momondo works so much slower, that you are better off starting your searches with Google. If you search for a few different travel dates on Momondo, and you aren’t seeing some new interesting flights, you don’t need to bother doing an exhaustive search.
If you want to be even more exhaustive, check Skyscanner as well. Momondo is the more likely of the two sites to find the best fares, but each one site comes up on top, some of the time.
4: Make any adjustments
- If you are traveling as a group, make sure that you can all fly for the same fare. There may be fewer tickets available at the lowest fare than the number of passengers you are flying with. If so, you usually want to break your reservation into two separate reservations—one to take advantage of the number of available tickets at the cheaper fare, and the other to pay a higher fare for the remaining passengers. If you book as a single reservation, the airline will charge the higher price for all the passengers. If the higher fare isn’t much higher, and you can extend some useful extra benefits (like a checked bag) to other people on the same reservation, you might want to keep everyone on a single reservation, even if it means paying a higher price.
- Consider flying both directions on the same airline. Depending on the difference in fare and/or convenience, it may make sense to choose a second-choice flight for one of the directions, so that you can book both directions on the same airline (or its partner). If you book a round trip and you wind up having to change your ticket, you will pay only one change fee, rather than separate fees for each direction. Be aware that sometimes when you combine both one-ways with the same airline, they will raise the price of one of the flights to match the fare class of the other flight, and your ticket price will go up even more. If so, you may want to switch back to booking separate one-way flights.
- You can check to see if ticket prices are likely to change. Before committing to your purchase, you might want to check a few tools that provide advice about whether you are better off booking now, or holding off in the hopes of getting a better price Use Airfare Prediction Tools to Determine the Right Time to Buy Airline Tickets.
5: Purchase the tickets
- When it is time to book, you can earn some additional rewards by booking the flight on Orbitz. You’ll need to reenter your travel information and use the controls on the left-hand side, to try to quickly find your desired flights. First try to book the entire trip as a single reservation. If that doesn’t work, try booking each direction separately. Sometimes, you won’t be able to find the flights you wanted and you’ll have to go back to Google Flights, Momondo, or wherever else you found the fare, and click through to purchase them. Get Cash Back by Booking Your Airfare Through Orbitz.
- If you have elite status with the airline, book directly. This is usually the best pathway to make sure to get the preferred seating you are entitled to.
- Sometimes, you’ll need to book through a different website. For example, you are required to buy Southwest tickets directly and it is more convenient to handle Spirit trips on their own website.
- Don’t forget to enter your frequent flyer number. You should be earning miles for every ticket. If the airline belongs to one of the big three airline alliances, you can credit the miles to any of the alliance’s mileage programs. If they are one of Alaska Airline’s partners, you can credit your miles to Alaska Airlines. Otherwise, you should usually credit them to the airline's own program. If you don’t already belong, sign up now. Make Sure to Earn Miles for Your Flight.
- If multiple people are flying in coach, we like to choose seats closer to the back of the plane and leave an empty seat between passengers. If the flight winds up not being full, the empty seats will often remain empty and we get “poor man’s business class”. If the plane is full, you can always ask the person assigned to the middle seat to switch to a window or aisle, so that you can sit with your travelling companion.
- Make sure to use a credit card that gives you good rewards on airfare purchases. Even if you have the airline’s co-branded credit card, you are usually better off using a credit card that earns great rewards on all your airfare or travel spending. Best Credit Cards for Travel Spending.
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