You can buy a plane ticket at a significant discount if you follow a few simple rules. Some booking methods allow you to purchase it for almost the price of a train ticket.
Plane tickets are expensive. But some people manage to purchase them at significant discounts. To fly cheap, you have to be cunning and follow some simple tips. These tricks will significantly save your family budget.
Catch the right moment
To save money, you need to study ticket prices not only on the official websites of airlines, but also on specialized Internet sites. It is very profitable to fly by charter flights. Information about them can be found on the websites clickavia.ru, tourdom.ru. Charters only fly to certain locations and generally during high season. Travel agencies use such flights as part of package vouchers. It so happens that the seats on the plane are not fully redeemed. In these cases, tickets are posted to the general database. They can be purchased at very affordable prices. This method of booking seats has its drawbacks as well. The charter flight can be canceled or rescheduled. This does not happen often, but you need to be prepared for changes. Tickets for "last minute" tours can be purchased at great discounts. Some tourists save a lot on this. But this buying method is not for everyone. If you need to be in a certain city on certain dates, it is better to book your ticket in advance.
Take advantage of someone else's mistake
Sometimes airlines offer cheap tickets by mistake. An employee may miscalculate the fuel surcharge or make a mistake in some figure by accident. This is a human factor from which no one is immune. Usually, tickets with incorrect prices appear on websites for only a couple of hours. When someone notices a mistake and informs the administration, the cost is corrected. But if you manage to book or pay for the trip before this moment, you can save a lot. Erroneous fares are more often displayed on aggregator sites, but it is more reliable to buy such tickets directly from airlines. In this case, the chances that the price will not be corrected are greater.
Get rid of surveillance
People who order tickets online are not faceless. Search engines determine from which city a potential buyer is, from which device he is viewing information. On the same flight, a New Yorker will see tickets at a higher cost than, for example, an Indian from Delhi. When searching from an iPhone or iPad, a user sees a product at a higher price compared to a search from Android. If you enter the same search query several times on the aggregator's website, the price will increase. This trick encourages potential buyers to book more quickly. To outsmart marketers, you need to clear your cookies or set your browser to "incognito" mode. This way, the aggregator will not know if the user has searched for these tickets before. You can also use an anonymizer program. It hides all data about the type of device and its location.
Don't get attached to a place
In Russia, it is more profitable to take tickets for international flights from Moscow. This is a major interchange hub, through which many airlines fly. If a flight is planned from another city, you need to carefully study the possible options. Sometimes it is much cheaper to take the train to a major airport and then take a plane ticket. The residents of St. Petersburg were lucky in this case. They have the ability to quickly get to Helsinki or Lappeenranta, and from there European low-cost airlines fly. The destination is also important. In Europe, major airports charge a lot of money for aircraft maintenance. It is more profitable to plan a flight to a small city, and from there get to the desired place by rail or bus. For example, flying to the Dutch city of Eindhoven is more profitable than flying to Amsterdam.
Transplant tricks
To save on air travel, you can buy a connecting ticket and simply ignore the last segment. The paradox is that some direct flights are more expensive than tickets to other destinations with a connection in the desired city. For example, the cost of a ticket for a Moscow-Oslo flight with a connection in Tallinn is higher than for a direct flight to Tallinn. You can take advantage of this. There is nothing illegal in this way of moving. Nobody will stop the passenger. You just need to check in your baggage to the transfer point. If the passenger only has hand luggage, it's even easier. To take advantage of such an easy way of saving, you need to know which airlines fly to the desired city where they are based. The disadvantage of this method is the inability to purchase a round-trip ticket immediately. This also helps to keep costs down. You always need to consider several options for yourself at once, and then choose the most profitable one.