Cheap Flights: Where To Find Them Online
Find The Cheapest Flights to Thailand
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Hunting down the best price for your flight is vital if you’re on a backpacking budget. Here’s a few tips for finding the lowest prices online
Despite the internet becoming extremely popular for people booking their travel needs, booking flights and knowing you got the best price is still fraught with problems. No single website seems to have managed to bring together every possible airline and airfare to make life easy for customers - I always feel like I can never be sure I’m getting the best price.
As such, when I want to book international flights, I always check several different sites which cover much of the field.
1) Skyscanner.net
The first place I look is SkyScanner.net, which I’ve written about before. Skyscanner is an excellent aggregator of bargain priced flights from all over the world. I’ve found it particularly useful for finding budget flights in South East Asia.
Unfortunately, Skyscanner.net doesn’t yet cover the traditional airlines in many cases, which is a real shame, as their website is a pleasure to use.
2) Kayak.com
I’ve only recently started using Kayak.comand have been quite impressed with the slick way it deals with processing and presenting a lot of information to the user. Kayak.com
is another flight aggregator that finds flights all over the world, and comes back with an extensive list of carriers for most queries. This is where I get a sense of what the baseline price for a particular flight route is going to be.
3) OneTravel.com, Farecompare.com and Zuji.com
I like to compare the best Kayak fare with these three other flight aggregators. Onetravel.com has a very similar interface to Kayak.com- it might even be the same engine underneath both websites - and Farecompare.com is Yahoo’s travel offering. Zuji.com is a Singapore based flight aggregator who I like to check with for any flights with AustralAsia just in case they have some local specials that haven’t been picked up by the big American companies.
4) Doublecheck the fare direct on the airlines website
Once you find a fare you like on a flight aggregator site, go to the specific airline’s official website and see if it’s any cheaper buyng it direct. It’s best to do all this as soon as you can, and grab the flight that’s cheapest either on the official site or the aggregator, as flight prices and availability change constantly.
5) I’m not so impressed with…
Fare.net, which used to be pretty good but just seems slow and clunky with not many airlines queried by its search process. I don’t usually bother using Fare.net anymore. TripAdvisor.com I love for their hotel reviews from previous guests, but their airline search always seems to be quite expensive because it uses the likes of Expedia.com for pricing.
6) Ask a real travel agent
As well as conducting your own internet search, you might want to email local travel agents with your flight route and dates and ask them to find you the best price they can. Some travel agents are very resourceful at finding the best fare for you, and also save you the irritation of sifting through lots of sites yourself. Here in Bangkok I regularly use Chawla Travel to do this. The flight quote is free and without obligation, and often Chawla comes up with a price that is marginally better than what I can find online, even including their own commission.
Other Websites: flights to sydney
Other Travelhappy posts of interest:
- Skyscanner.net flight comparison engine
- Bangkok Airways Begins Flights From Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City
- Half Price Flights To Australia From British Airways
- Cheap Flights From Bangkok to the Philippines
- Bargain AirAsia Flights For The Next 10 Days
Make A Comment: ( 7 so far )
7 Responses to “Cheap Flights: Where To Find Them Online”
ubertramp
April 2nd, 2007
Excellent list of sites that offer affordable airline flight rates to consumers. Very useful info to busy travelers like me.
Rcon Pascua
April 4th, 2007
Hi,
I would suggest to have a look to travel search engine Trabber to find the cheapest air fares. Here is the address - http://www.trabber.com
Ciao
rams
April 13th, 2007
[…] You should also shop around for the cheapest flights to Thailand - Kayak.com compares lots of different airlines and their prices so you can find the cheapest flight. (Follow the link for more info on finding cheap flights online). […]
How much money do I need for Thailand? · Thailand Backpacking: Travelhappy.info
September 12th, 2007
Tried to get Skyscanner fares …..useless!Even giving the whole month of November to leave from UK airport to Bankok and return anytime Feb ……zero.Likewise cheaptickets.com….no results.
David Tucker
September 26th, 2007
[…] Finding Cheap Flights To Bangkok […]
Superb compilation of some great online flight booking engines there, Chris. Especially with Skyscanner being among them - I always give it the once over whenever I have to book flights. I particularly like the way that you can call up the map and use it (sometimes backwards, from desired destination to country of origin), to find where the cheapest deals fly out from. Always handy if you don’t really have a set departure airport in mind.
I’ve never heard of farecompare.com before, but I shall definitely add it to my already comprehensive arsenal of cheapie flight bookers!
One more good one, along the lines of Kayak.com, is www.cheaptickets.com - I’ve picked up a couple of really low transatlantic fares there.
Cheers, Nath.