Three tips for saving big on summer flights
Summer 2016 is upon us, and if you can look away from your Pok茅mon GO app for a few days, there are lots of opportunities for travel out there. Here are my best tips for flying on the cheap in summer 2016.
Utilize budget airlines
We wrote about them extensively in our聽, but budget airlines are a good tool for the flexible traveler.
Budget airlines like聽聽and Allegiant have continued to grow their competitive business models throughout the domestic and international travel spheres. As a result of this, a number of full-service airlines like American,聽United, and Delta have been forced to offer competitive pricing.
In recent months I've flown for $32 round trip on Spirit between Chicago and Phoenix, and while I haven鈥檛 seen prices聽that聽cheap from聽, hub-to-hub travel (meaning flights between places like Dallas and Los Angeles, Dallas and Miami, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and more) often hovers under $100 round trip.
Internationally, Norwegian Air and聽聽continue to offer headline-grabbing low fares from the mainland U.S. to Europe. While $99 one-way to Iceland from Boston sounds appealing, those prices aren鈥檛 available all the time. However, prices are typically between $500 and $700, and both airlines are expanding service to more and more cities (like Las Vegas). These are no-frills airlines, so expect to pay for larger carry-ons, checked bags, and meals.
As an aside, although their advertising may fool you, I don't consider聽聽a budget airline. While there are times that Southwest is significantly cheaper than the competition, that's聽the exception rather than the rule, I mean they've got to pay to ship those two free bags of yours somehow!
Use Google Flights
My favorite tool out there is聽. Use it to search for you desired destination and you can see flights on an easy-to-read calendar that populates automatically, allowing you to choose the cheapest flight by day and date. Also, you can search for generic destinations like "Europe" or "the Caribbean," which allows聽you to see on a map the cheapest destination for your travel dates. Keep in mind, some airlines like Southwest and international budget airlines do not show up on Google Flights, so be sure to search on their sites as well to make sure you're getting the best possible price.
Read a聽blog/sign up for a newsletter
One of my favorite blogs (besides this one, of course) is聽, which aggregates fare sales on a daily basis. Many flights are for one or two months out, and others are for farther in advance, but all聽are great deals.
Another way for you to make sure you never miss a sale is signing up for some travel newsletters.聽聽has a bi-weekly Travel Tuesday newsletter, which details all the best travel deals at that time, curated by me. Additionally, I have a personal email newsletter that I send out to friends and family every workday that has the best travel deals of that day, which you can sign up for聽.
This article first appeared at .
