How To Choose The Best Flight
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How To Choose The Best Flight:
Believe it or not, I have a game plan for how to choose the best flight and in this post, I’m going to share it with you. When I fly my goal is to get the best price of course, but also to get where I need to be with mimimum hassle. So here’s my post on how to choose the best flight.
Best Sites For Searching Cheap Flights
Kayak and Skyscanner are my top two sites for finding cheap flights because they make it so easy to compare, especially when your dates are flexible. They also quote you prices from the airline and allow you to book directly with them.
Booking your flight directly with the airline, over a third party site, is highly recommended because if you ever have an issue the airline can handle it for you. A friend of mine booked with a third party site who messed up her name and when she got to the airport she was told she couldn’t board the flight, and because she booked third party there was nothing the airline could do about it.
Don’t let that be you. Use the above sites to filter out flights not in your prices range and then book directly with the airline.
Best Way to Search For Cheap Flights
It’s very sneaky but flight search engines will register that you are searching for a flight by tracking cookies and they sometimes up the prices everytime you do. To avoid this, do your flight shopping in incognito mode or with private browsing.
Best Time to Search for Cheap Flights
I start searching for flights at least three to six months in advance. In my experience, last minute great deals are as rare as unicorns. The price just trends upward the closer you get to your dates so start looking as soon as you can.
Best Days to Fly
We don’t always have a choice on which days to fly but if you do, you should know that some are better than others. In general, it is much more expensive to fly on the weekends because that is a popular time to fly and airlines adjust the prices accordingly.
If you have the choice, I would suggest flying on a Tuesday or Thursday. Prices tend to be much lower and I have saved myself hundreds of dollars just by moving my date to a weekday.
Best Seat to Choose
This isn’t about window or aisle, you can just pick whichever you prefer if you get the option. This is more about those who suffer from motion sickness like I do. If you don’t, you can just skip this part but if you do the seat you choose can make all the difference.
I go more into this in my post on preventing motion sickness but the highlights in regards to flying are these:
- Try to get a seat in the middle and over the wing because that is the most stable part of the plane.
- Get a window seat so that you can look outside and your mind can connect to the fact that you’re not just rattling around in a windowless tin can.
Best Time to Arrive
This is my safe solo female travel tip: try to get a flight that arrives at your destination during the day.
Who wants to navigate in a new city in the middle of the night while running on jetlag and bad food? If you can, get a flight that arrives during the day and, if you can swing it, have an airport shuttle ready to take you where you need to go. At the very least, have the public transport details and directions to your accommodations handy so that whenever you land, you’re not worried about getting to the next stop.
Good Luck
I wish you all safe flights at great prices and I hope these tips help you get them. Have fun on your travels and if you have anymore more questions throw them in the comments.
Happy Travels!