Adventure is a State of Mind
Are you planning a trip that requires a plane flight? If you’re like me, this may be the most stressful and frustrating part of the process of planning a travel adventure. There are useful strategies with the website Google Flights, however, that can reduce some of the stress.
Ever-Changing Ticket Prices
Doesn’t it seem like the prices of flights change randomly? The airlines say that they are basing flights on algorithms and demand, but sometimes I wonder if there’s a sadistic person sitting in a back room somewhere giggling in evil delight as they change the prices, both up and down, just to mess with us!
I believe most of the suggested hacks to save on flights, such as buying your tickets on a certain day of the week, are mostly urban legends. Since Covid, this is probably even more true as the airline industry has experienced significant changes. For example, in the past, if you were gutsy enough to wait until the last minute to book a flight, you supposedly could score a bargain as the airlines were hoping to fill any open seats they still had. Now, with the airlines frequently overbooking flights, if you wait until the last minute, you risk not getting a flight at all.
Although I don’t think there are any reliable tricks to finding a reasonably priced flight, I do think that if you are monitoring the flights you want, you sometimes can catch the favorable price changes when they occur.
At the least, you can get a feel for what the average prices for those flights are and (hopefully) not buy your tickets when they’re at their peak price!
Planning Ahead
In a previous post, I discussed how planning a trip, especially if you are traveling abroad, often begins a year before you plan to leave. If your travels require a plane flight, you probably won’t be buying your tickets a year in advance, but that might be the best time to start monitoring the price of flights to get a feel for what flights to your destination cost in general, and therefore what might be an especially good deal.
A great way to monitor flights is to use Google Flights. I’ve discussed the website before, and if used effectively, it’s a very useful tool.
How to Find Ticket Prices
To get a feel for pricing, go to the website and enter the airports you want to travel from and to. You can also indicate whether you want to look at a one-way flight or round-trip and what class of ticket you are interested in buying.
Initially, you don’t have to put in any dates. If you leave the dates off and click on “Explore,” a calendar will appear with prices of the cheapest tickets available on those days. If a day is blank, it often means there are no flights to that area on that day. (Some less populated and less popular locations might not have flights arriving every day.)
At this point, if you have selected “Round trip,” you can click on your departure date and return date on the calendar. Click on search and it will give you the available flights for the destinations you requested. You can select the different flight options to get more details regarding the individual flights, such as the number of stops and the length of time for both the flights and any layovers.
Booking Your Flight
You can continue and Google will give you the option to book your flight from one of several flight consolidators they partner with. I personally, however, leave the Google Flights website and go directly to the airline to book through them. (You may need to search a bit to find the same combination of flights you selected on the Google Flights website, but it should be on the airline’s website for approximately the same price.)
The reason I book directly with the airlines is I find if there are any problems or I need to change a flight, the process is much easier if the flight was originally booked with the airline.
Tracking Flight Prices
Back to Google Flights – If you look at the prices and aren’t initially happy with them, so long as you’re starting your planning far enough in advance, you don’t need to book yet. Consider this just your first look as to what the prices might be like.
Many travel experts and surveys suggest that the best time to buy an international flight is four to ten months in advance. Personally, I think once you get a feel for the cost of a ticket to that location, the best time to buy a ticket is when you see the price drop to something that sounds good to you. (I always kick myself when I pass up a good deal in the hopes that it will get even better… but it doesn’t and actually gets more expensive!)
The best way to get a feel for the price of a flight to a given location is to track it over time, and one of my favorite features with Google Flights is the tracking feature. Here’s how to use it:
- Go to Google Flights and put in the airports you are flying from and to and the dates you want to fly.
- Click on “Search.” You will get a list of “Top Departing Flights” with a list of other flights below it.
- Directly below the top flight options, it will say “Track prices” and your travel dates are listed with a button that you can toggle to start tracking this current flight combination. If you do this, Google Flights will begin sending you emails when there are significant changes in the price of the flights you are tracking. That way you don’t have to check the website every day.
One of the nicest things about the tracking feature is that you can track multiple flight combinations so that you can compare whether different dates or different airports provide you with better ticket prices. As far as I know, there aren’t any limits to how many flights you can track at any given time. This works well if you have several options for dates you want to consider.
It’s also great if you have multiple trips you’re trying to plan!
If you don’t make the time to work on creating the life you want, you’re eventually going to be forced to spend a lot of time dealing with a life you don’t want.
Kevin Ngo
Once you’ve purchased your flight, the next time you receive an email from Google Flights, at the bottom of the email are options to either “manage price tracking or “unsubscribe from all Google Flights emails.” (Don’t do the last one if you’re tracking more than one trip!)
If You’d Prefer Not to Receive Emails
If your email inbox is already too full and you don’t want to be receiving regular emails from Google Flights, on the website on the same line where you can toggle to begin receiving the tracking emails is an option for a “date grid” and a “price graph.” These can give you an additional way (besides the calendar we discussed earlier) of looking at how the prices change for different dates.
If you don’t sign up for the tracking email, however, you will need to check back on the website frequently – every few days or at least every week – to (hopefully) catch when the prices shift.
Be Ready to Jump!
Ideally, be ready to purchase your tickets immediately if you see the price drop significantly. Airlines can sometimes change their prices in minutes, so if you still need to double-check the dates with your travel companions, or you haven’t gotten all of the information you need (such as passport-matching names and birth dates for your travel companions), you could miss out on a bargain by the time you do what you need to do and then come back to order the tickets.
If the idea of immediately buying a flight without mulling it over or discussing it with your travel companions gives you hives, remember that when you book a ticket you have 24 hours in which you can still cancel that ticket. (This is a regulation from the US Department of Transportation and covers all flights going to or starting in the US and booked at least seven days before departure.)
Experiment
Like so many things in life, experimenting is the best way to figure out if something works for you. I’ve used Google Flights for a few years now, so I feel fairly comfortable with how it works.
If you try Google Flights and it just doesn’t seem to fit how you think or doesn’t provide the information you want, there are other options out there that do similar but different things. One possible option is Skyscanner. I don’t have enough experience with it yet to feel like I can explain the process, but if you’re interested in learning more, check out the post by Nomadic Matt, including directions on how to use Skyscanner to try to find the cheapest flights.
Where do you want to travel to next? Have you started tracking the flights yet? What tools can you use to help you get the best deals on flights?
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