How to fly cheaper in 2013

You can score plane tickets much cheaper than the person sitting next to you if you are prepared to put in the effort to search. Picture: United Airlines   Source: Supplied

SAVING on airfares is easy if you follow some simple tips and have a little patience.

International airfares have fallen, but many are charging extra for items that were previously included in the fare. Extra baggage, more legroom, food and even priority boarding will cost you. 

Here's how you can keep the basic cost of a flight down. All it takes is a little time. 

Take the time to compare

Use every available website you can think of such as Skyscanner, Kayak, Momondo, DirectFlights, even Flight Centre. Search and search and search.  Sometimes the same flight will come up cheaper on one website than another. 

Decide the number of days you want to be away and then build your flights around that rather than booking on a particular day. Leaving on a Tuesday is more cost effective than a Friday afternoon. The website ITA has a search facility that allows you to put in the number of days you want to be away and then it checks departure dates every day for an entire month to find the best fares. Kayak too will allow you to look at fares graphed by departure date. 

A flight search from Sydney to Bangkok on kayak.com Source: No Source

Keep an eye out for sales

Subscribe to newsletters like Escape, TravelZoo and Airfare Watchdog.  But don't think you have to grab the sale fare immediately, in many cases other airlines will follow suit – they're very competitive. 

Follow airlines on Twitter and Facebook

There are times when airlines will announce a special deal just on Twitter and Facebook. It's faster and easier to offload seats here rather than to make an email, newsletter or PR announcement. These ones you do have to jump onto fast. They could be gone in minutes. 

Can't be bothered to flight search? You can outsource it

Flightfox allows travellers to fill in their ideal costs and limits. The website then creates a contest to find the cheapest itinerary. The “experts” (real humans) will dig through dozens of search engines for you to find the best price. If someone finds something you award them a fee from $24. It could save you hundreds of dollars - so it's worth it. 

So now you're prepared with all the tools. It's time to get searching for your next holiday. 

View the original article here