How to Get Cheap Flights: 8 Tricks That Actually Work (None Involve Selling a Kidney)

Proven methods to save between 20% and 50% on your flights — without spending hours watching the same fare inch upwards

Always use incognito mode

Airlines and search engines track your searches using cookies and will cheerfully raise prices if they detect you've been staring at the same Tokyo flight for four days. Always activate incognito or private mode before any flight search, and clear cookies regularly. It's the least you can do for your bank account.

Search across full date ranges

Skyscanner's 'whole month' view and Google Flights' 'Explore destinations' show the cheapest price for each day. Being flexible by even 1–2 days can mean differences of €50–150 — enough to cover a very decent dinner at your destination. For long-haul flights, expand your window to ±7 days.

Fly on Tuesdays or Wednesdays

Mid-week flights are on average 10–20% cheaper. Avoid Fridays, Sundays, and public holidays where demand from business travellers and families pushes prices to genuinely painful levels. Early Monday morning flights also tend to be expensive — much like Mondays in general.

Set up price alerts

Skyscanner, Google Flights, and Kiwi.com all let you set up alerts to notify you when a specific route drops in price. Set them up 3–6 months in advance for international flights, and 6–8 weeks ahead for European routes. You get on with your life; the app does the watching. That's what intelligent delegation looks like.

Consider alternative airports

Barcelona has El Prat and Girona (1 hour by bus). Madrid has Barajas, but sometimes flying from alternative nearby airports makes financial sense. Ryanair operates most flights from secondary airports at much lower fares. Expand your search radius to 100–150 km — and remember to add the transfer cost before getting too excited.

Use Virtual Interlining (Kiwi.com)

Kiwi.com specializes in combining flights from different airlines that normally can't be linked. It's often significantly cheaper to fly MAD–LIS + LIS–NRT than a direct MAD–NRT. Kiwi also covers costs if you miss a connection due to a delay — the kind of safety net that lets you nap at airports with relative peace of mind.

Book at the optimal time

For European flights, the lowest price is typically found 6–8 weeks before departure. For intercontinental flights, 3–5 months ahead. Booking too far in advance (more than 6 months) doesn't guarantee the best price either — the first seats released are always the cheapest, but the last ones can be too if the airline needs to fill the plane. Uncertainty is part of the game.

Subscribe to fare mistake alerts

Airlines occasionally publish pricing mistakes — sometimes €0 fares or 80–90% discounts. Subscribe to Scott's Cheap Flights, Going.com, or specialized Telegram channels to catch them instantly when they appear. Act fast — these fares last hours, not days, and the purchase window has the lifespan of an airport sandwich.