How to find the cheapest flight

When it comes to finding the cheapest flight the internet really is essential as it enables you to quickly compare many different airlines along with the many flight-broker website’s to find the best prices. Assuming you know where you want to go and have a rough idea when you want to go then you could do a lot worse than by starting with the easy to use Kayak website which searches all the main airlines. It’s real advantage over other similar sites is once you get the results back it allows you to filter them by number of stops, airline, flight times, stop over time and price to find the best flight for you. It also enables you to filter by a particular flight for part of your journey, so if for example you have found the perfect return flight time then it will only show you outbound flights with that particular return flight. I am not aware of any other comparison site that allows you to do this (although I am sure many others will copy this feature in the near future).

I am yet to find a more powerful comparison site than Kayak but it’s one downside is that it only searches the main airlines and therefore does not cover the budget airlines. So alongside your Kayak search I suggest you use Travelsupermarket which includes most budget airlines along with many flight brokers. It’s not quite as user friendly as Kayak but will search deeper for the best bargains. There are loads of other flight comparison sites you can use such as Skyscanner, Kelkoo, Cheapflights etc but searching just Kayak and Travelsupermarket should be enough to cover most of the market.

If you really want to be sure you have found the best deal then you need to check prices with Flightbrokers as these may sometimes have special offers with certain airlines. I would suggest you try Expedia, Ebookers, Travelocity, Lastminute and Opodo (which tends to undercut a lot of other sites as it’s owned by nine of the major airlines!). Also don’t forget to check the airlines website’s as they sometimes advertise special deals which the comparison sites fail to pickup, this is particularly true if you are booking a multi-destination flight.

Having exhausted the internet and still wanting to find a cheaper deal than call your local travel agent and see if they can beat your best price. Many of them wont even try but some will be able to get you the same price you have seen online and share their commission with you to reduce the price you pay them for the flight. It can also be worth calling the airlines as sometimes their staff know about special offers that are coming up in the future so it may be worth delaying your booking for a couple of weeks (although be careful as if flights get booked up then prices tend to go up).