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Booking a flight can be one of the most stressful parts of travel. Airfare is expensive and, with an ever-changing variation in prices, we often worry that if we buy right now, prices could drop and we\u2019d be the person who paid the most money for the flight. <\/p>\n
“Maybe if I wait just a little longer, it’ll be cheaper,” we say to ourselves.<\/p>\n
I used to be that person. I’d spend hours upon hours searching for the right price on multiple websites, second-guessing myself, and worrying about what happens when the prices drop. I would hold off on buying, waiting for that perfect moment. It was like trying to time the market \u2014 and it simply doesn’t work. 99 times out of 100, you lose. <\/p>\n
Because you can’t predict prices<\/a>. The best day to book is usually today.<\/p>\n A while back, I went to visit the folks at Google Flights. Over lunch, they told me about a study they did on thousands of flights. They\u00a0found that the average drop price is about $50 USD. That means if you wait, you could save about $50 USD. Just as likely (if not more so) is getting stuck with a price that is hundreds higher. (This excludes sales and mistake fares.)<\/p>\n As someone who doesn\u2019t go a day without searching for airfare to regions all over the world, I can tell you that you can\u2019t second-guess yourself. If you\u2019re comfortable with the price you paid, you need to accept it and move on \u2014 even if airfare drops.<\/p>\n Today, I want to show you how to put that into practice and walk you through how I book my tickets.<\/p>\n First, I\u2019ll look at deal websites like Going<\/a>, Holiday Pirates<\/a>, or The Flight Deal<\/a> to see if there are any fare sales going on. Sometimes there are, most of the time there aren’t. (You can read my review of Going here<\/a> to see how they work.)<\/p>\n If I find an awesome deal, great! The search is over and I can go on with my day. If not, I continue to the next step. Next, I start with the ITA Matrix<\/a>, an amazing tool that allows for complex searching and that every flight junkie I know uses. While it\u00a0only searches major airlines (no budget carriers here), it has\u00a0a calendar option so you can see prices over the course of the month, providing you with a solid baseline on prices. <\/p>\n Being flexible with your dates is key to booking cheap airfare, so getting an overview of an entire month is important. In fact, being flexible with your destination can yield even cheaper fares. If you aren’t set on somewhere in particular, use the “everywhere” option in flight search engines like Skyscanner<\/a> or Google Flights and see what you can find. <\/p>\n But for the purposes of this article, I’m going to use concrete destinations. Let’s look at an example route from New York to Barcelona:<\/p>\n You can see at a glance that the cheapest flight for this route is $404 USD. But click through to choose your dates and booking options, and you’ll get the full picture: <\/p>\n As you can see, the cheapest round-trip flight is indeed $404 USD. It’s a TAP Portugal flight from Newark with a layover in Lisbon. But, for just $457 USD round-trip, you can fly direct with United, a much better flight overall (see the flight circled in red in the screenshot above). <\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\nStep 1: Search for Deals <\/h3>\n
\n <\/p>\nStep 2: Search Main Routes<\/h3>\n
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