How to Find Cheap Flights

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How to Find Cheap Flights:

This is a big question that, oddly enough, I can only answer very simply.

Around seven or eight years ago I had a very complex scheme for trying to find cheap air tickets. I would seriously find good travel agents (online and in person) and try to keep in contact with them, as I found that it is the travel agent, and not the agency in general, that is able to really do some leg work for you to get you a good deal on a flight. But lately my faith in travel agents has began to falter: they simply seem unable to compete with the large internet sites like              and kayak.com. Once upon a time, I would dig, search, and scrounge up great deals on airfares, but now my methods have gotten vastly simpler.

1. For long international flights:

I found that internet airline consolidators are usually the best way to get a cheap ticket for long international jumps. I usually begin looking for a ballpark figure on how much this ticket will cost by searching the big consolidators through Kayak.com. I then take this amount as an indication of a median price that I will have to pay: anything more than what is shown on Kayak is too expensive, anything under it is a good price to pay. So from here I simply search the internet, make phone calls, write emails, and do everything that I have to do to find a plane ticket that is a little cheaper than the Kayak results, and then I buy it.

Or sometimes the Kayak flights are actually acceptably priced, and I save myself some hassles and just buy it right off.

2. For regional flights:

For shorter, regional flights I generally go with budget airlines like Jet Blue, Aerlingus, RyanAir, EasyJet, Spirit Air, etc . . . There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of these little low costs, no frills airlines. I just do a google search for "budget airlines" for what ever region of the world that I am in. Usually these no frills airlines just have flights within their home region and then have a few routes that go a little farther away. Linking budget airline routes is a good way to cheaply travel the world. For example, I just recently took a Jet Blue flight from Rochester, New York to JFK and then flew on Aerlingus to Dublin and then took another Aerlingus flight to Prague. These three flights costs me less than a single ticket straight from Rochester to Prague on a major airline.

So I say, just fiddle about, use Kayak.com as a way to get a heading on what kind of price you should pay, and then go from there. Also remember that linking the budget airlines takes a little more work but is a little cheaper in the end.

So if you want to go to Germany, you can first take a no frills airline across the Atlantic to a good hub like Dublin or London and then get a dirt cheap flight on to Frankfurt (a good hub on mainland Europe).

Here are some links that may be able to help you out a little: 

Vagabond Journey Cheap Airfare

What is an Air Consolidator -from Hobotraveler.com

Jet Blue- My favorite airline. Good for flights around the USA and Caribbean. Now has partnered with Aerlingus to fly across the Atlantic.

Aerlingus

Index of Asian Budget Airlines

P.S. If this information helps you out at all (or if you just appreciate my effort in trying haha) I would love it if you could tell or email a friend or two about Vagabond Journey.com and/ or the Song of the Open Road Travel Blog. Thank you!

Hello again,
So I am planning on going to Peinne, Germany next summer with a friend and it got me thinking about flights. How do YOU find cheap flights? Are there any airports that are generally cheaper to fly in to? What about open-jaw flights?
 
Also, just curious..how do you charge your laptop? What with different plug-ins and all everywhere, how on earth do you account for all those??
 
:] I've been wondering that one for awhile. I'm super excited to go to Germany, we're going to visit an exchange student we had at our high school and we might try to go to another exchange student's house in Budapest. Woohoo!
--Janell