Any travel tips about airplanes? I want to buy ticket cheap.

>>1236105
When United ended their buddy pass program for international flights, that made the flights almost free, I wasn't upset because I could justify never having to fly United again.

>>1236122
what

>>1236105
error fares, fly from hubs, buy in advance, budget airlines, skyscanner, skiplagged

>>1236195
Pretty much this, I shaved off 400ish dollars from my flight by simply getting a 40 dollar bus ticket from one city to a larger city a few hours over.

Use Kayak and check often

>>1236195
any websites that track error fares?

>>1236207
TravelPirates

>>1236122
That was temp suspended while they figured out how to fix the system that was being abused for fucking YEARS. Intl flights on united have been a thing again since June 2016.
Source: very recent ex-United manager

buy 3+ months in advance and always search between tuesday to thursday

>>1236304
Were you beaten and thrown out because they had too many managers?

TFW you were looking for flights and prices just halved today but youre not flying there anymore

Use places like skyscanner and kayak often enough, I wouldnt really book on their site tho, just find the cheap flights the book with the airline.
Other than that I think most has been said.

Btw, while I'm here, if I book 2 bags checked x 20kgs, is 1 x 40kgs covered under that. Wouldnt be the full weight but probably 20kg+

>>1236105

I literally check Skyscanner every twice a day, right when I wake up and right before bed. I've bought a $200 RT ticket from LAX to New Zealand, $300 RT from LAX to Cebu, PI, and I just bought a $350 RT flight to Singapore and paid $100 extra for a 3 day stopover in Tokyo. I never pay over $400 to fly to Europe or $500 to Asia. If your rely on sites to email you once a week or even once a day, chances are you'll miss deals for the time you want to take off. Good luck OP.

>>1236383
Do you book on Skyscanner or go to the airlines directly?

>>1236384

I use CheapOair to book but since getting my travel credit card I've been trying to book through the airlines as much as possible. 1 in 5 times I book through cheapoair or another 3rd party because the fare isn't available on the airline website. Happens a lot with China Eastern.

>>1236381
>Btw, while I'm here, if I book 2 bags checked x 20kgs, is 1 x 40kgs covered under that. Wouldnt be the full weight but probably 20kg+

I have had airlines shift weight. like if it was 2x 15 and I had a bag that was 11kg and one that was 17, they still allowed it.

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>>1236195
^^^ This was me but I forgot to add the following, which I recently posted in another thread.

Book vacation packages/flights and hotels direct through airlines. A lot of Airlines do this, and you don't have to pay at once.

I am by a Delta hub, the vacation packages are often cheaper than if u just bought the plane ticket.

This pic is a trip I am planning over the Labor Holiday for me and the wife in Paris. The price is per person for flight and hotel. With this you can make a down payment and have until a month before the flight to pay in full.

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>>1236453
This is per passenger flight alone. Same flights. And all has to be paid up front.

>>1236454

Wow, I've never even considered booking hotels through airline websites! Thanks anon.

>>1236518
you're welcome!

>>1236381
>>1236383

So are you guys saying that flight prices will fluctuate greatly on a day-to-day basis? Like will new deals suddenly emerge?

Also, have you heard of Adioso? It seems a bit better than Skyscanner to me. And any tips about optimising your searches? Like if I can get from A to B cheaper by going to C instead first?

Thanks in advance.

Chinese Airlines are changing the world of cheap travel. Now it's even cheaper to fly than when stuff like air couriers existed.

>>1237836
Yes of course they do, most of the sites even chart price fluctuations over time with advice on whether to wait or buy

>>1237944
most of what sites?

>>1236383
I thought skyscanner doesn't update that often to give you crazy one-time fares / error fares? A lot of their estimates aren't even real when you go to the actual dates

Are you putting in countries and checking around manually?

I check travelpirates etc every day but I use skyscanner as a general idea, unless I'm doing it wrong

Skyscanner is useful for finding which airports offer the cheapest fares to specific places and then you hop on different ticket sites to see who has the best price.

>>1237944
>>1239285
?

Use matrix.itasoftware.com

So do you guys usually get a roundtrip ticket or One Way?
One ways are usually cheaper. For example, I live in DFW and one way tickets to CDG are about $350. I can never find a round trip ticket that isn't $1,000+.

>>1240710
Some roundtrips are cheaper when the entire trip is considered. I've got a trip to Germany via a flight to Cologne that cost me about 280 euros. I want to go to Berlin, but the flights there cost at least 3 times more, and a one-way ended up costing about 1k euros, so the cost of flying to Cologne and then a short round trip to Berlin ended up being MUCH cheaper

>Chicago to Tokyo
>13 hours
>middle seat
>have to shit 5 hours in
>too autistic to ask guy to move hold it in
>fucks up my bowels
>couldn't shit for another 24 hours after landing
don't be autistic

>>1236105
When pricing flights, using Kayak/Google Flights ect, always delete all history/cookies (esp flash cookies) between sites because if one site sees you coming from Travelocity or whatever they will hide all the cheap flights on you. I used to work as a matching algorithm designer for one of these sites and that's what we were told to do because they are all colluding with each other to rise up the fares as much as possible. Out of all the sites Google Flights is probably the least scammy in this regard.

Another thing you should try is getting a local IP to price flights. If you use your western IP and look up say Thai airlines you're going to get expensive quotes because you can afford it. If you get local Thai IP you're going to get local quotes which are much cheaper. This especially works well for one way travel, on a direct flight. For example LGW->BKK. Sign into local london IP, and you get the specials "Go to Thailand for only X dollars!" but notice they collect on the return flight, usually overcharging. So take the one way flight special to BKK then sign into Bangkok local IP and go on same site (clear cookies/history) "Go to London for X baht!". Now you can book a flight special back as your return flight, and you can pay for your ticket in Baht which will always be cheaper.

To pay for these things I use those "no fee" online currency wire outfits like xe.com where you do a local bank transfer (so no $50 wire fee) and they convert to Baht and pay out locally to the airline with their remote banks. They make money in the currency spread no other fees.

>>1240791
Note, if you have a credit card with cheap currency conversion rates (often they charge like 2-5%) then use that instead since you get all kinds of buyer protections and insurance if your flights get canceled. I have shit credit but a friend of mine has a credit card that throws in all kinds of shit like free travel medical insurance and other bonuses.

>>1240795
My AMEX has zero foreign transaction fees

>>1240791
So use a vpn for max savings?

>>1241030
Yes, I first use Optifly for airline route discovery
http://www.optifly.com/

Then I get cheap VPNs that exit said country(s) and book flights usually for several hundreds of dollars cheaper. I typically save $200-300 but sometimes much more if there's a flight special on a direct route then each country will have specials for locals one-way.

There's also https://www.jacksflightclub.co.uk/ he will email you "Mistakes" that are scraped from google flights and kayak so like $10 airfare mistakes the airlines still honor.

>>1241082
Isn't using a VPN illegal though? I've read that you can use VPNs but wasnt sure myself.

>>1241083
No.

Often you can get the savings too by merely changing your location to the airline's home country. For example Norweigan airlines and choosing country of origin as Norway instead of US, you save $100 in the Kroner exchanger. https://www.norwegian.com/

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>>1240694
This.

Also, depending on the airline, it's sometimes ~$100-$300 cheaper to buy your ticket for a departure date that's 1-2 weeks from the current date than it is to buy a ticket a few months in advance.

>>1241086
It's the same thing as Google Flights they bought them out a few years ago
https://www.google.com/flights/

The guy who maintains GF posts on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ThatAdamGuy

The only problem with GF you have to watch out for is ridiculous connecting windows. Sometimes they are way to narrow to make if there's any kind of flight delay.

Anyone here good at f.ue.l dumping? Seems like you could save hundreds doing this, just based on the fuel surcharges I see using matrix, but I can never actually get it to work. I've tried SFO-LAX, intra-Hawaiian Islands, Caribbean, etc. for a 3rd strike but it's just not working out for me. Any tips from you pros?

>>1241084
Fuck yea, thanks for the information man!

>>1241082
The site is taking forever to find flights? ever had that problem?

>>1241099
No, it appears fucked. Lot's of other route map sites http://www.flightconnections.com/ but that one was good for visualizing all flights

>>1241107
>http://www.flightconnections.com/
it takes you to cheapair right?