Most of you probably know how to get cheap flight tickets. Either you have your own way or you just think that it’s clear enough. In these days, we think so as well, however, when we started travelling, we had no idea how to get flight tickets without any travel agency, let alone CHEAP flight tickets. During several recent years, we’ve flown 15 times and in many cases, we’ve paid less than 40 euros per flight. We’ve gained some experience and therefore we’ve prepared this article for you.
Where should you look for cheap flight tickets?
Basically, we have two ways to look for cheap flight tickets.
1) Watching websites listing the best offers of flight tickets
Presumably, this is the simplest way. You just look at the offers and choose one. We watch two websites focusing on flight tickets from our country (Czechia) in our mother language. And we also check one in English, where you can choose which country you want to travel from. It’s a website called Fly4free (they have a Facebook page too).
Surely, there is plenty of other websites like this and you can follow more of them, to see more offers.
2) Watching flight companies’ websites and their offers
You can also look at the website of a company you would like to travel with. Find their special offers and maybe there will be something interesting for you. Or, if you know the date of the flight and the destination, you can check the prices from time to time and you may notice if the price is lower and buy the flight tickets. We sometimes look at the websites of these two companies:
• Ryanair
We travel with Ryanair most often. They have very cheap flights, usually, even without any sales, the normal prices can be pretty low. They fly mainly across Europe, not very far away, but the prices are great. You can find their offer of flight tickets on sale on their websites.
• Wizz Air
We have flown with Wizz Air just a few times, they don’t fly to any vast number of destinations from our country, but they have good offers as well. Often, you can have a huge discount if you are a member of their club. The membership is not for free, however, it can reduce the price of your ticket a lot, so it can definitely be beneficient for you to pay for it and it can save you some money.
These two companies belong to the cheapest which fly from our country (Czechia) and it’s very likely that in your country, the companies won’t be the same.
And how exactly can you buy the flight tickets?
Each flight company has slightly different websites, so there is no point putting there any kind of step-by-step tutorial on how to do it. Nevertheless, it’s a piece of cake, you just choose a specific date and place and click on “buy” :).
Pay for it immediately on the internet and before the flight, don’t forget to print the tickets or to download them to your cell phone (that’s usually enough and some companies even have an app for this purpose).
Several days before the flight, do so-called “check-in”. Again, different company, different procedure, but you will find how to do it on their websites for sure.
Other money-saving tips
Don’t choose seats for your flight
When you are buying a flight ticket, you can choose, whether you want to buy certain seats or not. In case you don’t buy them, you will receive some places to seat randomly. Of course, if you want to choose the seats, you have to pay for that service (usually), so the price of your ticket will be higher.
We never buy the seats and if we want to sit next to each other, we just ask our neighbour if we could switch the seats. Often there is no problem with that and we can sit together anyway. Sometimes, the plane is not full of passengers and there are some free seats which we can use.
Travel only with small cabin bags
You can save quite a lot of money if you buy the cheapest flight ticket without a big check-in bag. Then you can fly only with a little cabin bag. I know that it wouldn’t be sufficient for everyone to carry such a small amount of things. However, it’s totally ok for us and we don’t need more. We flew with 15 kg check-in bag only once, when we were about to spend two weeks abroad. And once, when we were flying on holiday for one week, one of us bought the big luggage and it was enough for both of us. Otherwise, we always fly with small backpacks, it’s usually enough even for a week.
Firstly, we were measuring our bags, so as they meet the flight company’s baggage requirements. Later, we found out that no one is ever checking it and we don’t measure it anymore. Sometimes, our backpacks are a little bit bigger than they should be, but whatever. We flew 15 times and nobody ever checked it.
And, moreover, when you fly only with a cabin bag, you don’t have to lose your time waiting at the airport for your big check-in bag, which is great.
Fly wherever and whenever
Don’t be restricted by the destination and the date of your flight. Generally, it could be said that if you don’t strictly say WHEN and WHERE and you just want to travel somewhere, it will be much easier for you to find cheap flight tickets. You just look at good offers and choose something. It’s awesome to be anywhere, no matter the destination.
In case you have the exact date and place to travel, it will probably last a bit longer to find a bargain of the specific flight you need. Nonetheless, you can be lucky and find something convenient pretty quickly.
Consider the flights from close airports abroad as well
You don’t have to fly only from your country, sometimes it can be cheaper to fly from elsewhere. About half of our flights were from our neighbouring countries. It has its advantages. Firstly, you can save a lot of money. Secondly, you can visit the country you fly from (if you go there several hours before your flight departures, you can use the time to explore the city). And thirdly, it’s just a better adventure than simply flying from your country.
Obviously, it has disadvantages as well. You have to get to the airport somehow. We usually go by bus (Flixbus or RegioJet) and it can be quite expensive (even so, it can worth it anyway). You spend some time travelling to the airport and if the airport is far away, it can be a lot of time. Never forget to look where exactly the airport is and how you can get there before you buy the tickets. Last year, it happened to me that I bought extremely cheap flight tickets and I was very happy about that. The plane was departing early in the morning from our neighbouring country. I was thinking like “great, this country is next to ours, it will be perfect”. Well, it wasn’t perfect at all since we had to go by bus across the whole country and we were about 13 hours sitting in the bus. So, you have to think about it a little before you make a purchase, which is something I often forget to do 🙂
If your flight is delayed, request a refund
Some companies offer financial compensation if their flight is delayed. It is certainly worth trying to apply for it. In 2018, when we flew with Ryanair from Corfu to Prague and had a delay of 3 hours and about 3 minutes, we managed to get a refund of 400 euros. We filed a complaint and they gave this amount to each of us, even though the ticket cost only about 50 euros. We were filling out the forms online from home, it was a bit annoying to do so, but it was worth it. Here‘s how to do it with Ryanair (+ more conditions in EU 261/2004).
We hope that you will find our article useful. If you had any questions on the topic of cheap flight tickets, we will be glad if you ask in the comments below, or you can write us an email 🙂
