Always chasing the best flight deals? Try the new trick of travel junkies on the hunt for bargains everywhere – flight hacking! You’d need to look at all the variables that influence airfares, which can be a little time consuming, so we brought you the sites that’ll make bargain airfares a lot easier to find.
Here’s how to get started.
FlyerTalk
If you didn’t already know, there’s a whole community of people online that are completely into frequent flyer miles and programmes on FlyerTalk. There’s a lively discussion on mileage runs, which refer to cheap flights (nearly) worth going on just for the miles. Use their Mileage Run forum and search for cheap flights that connect to your home airport (command + f has never been more useful!).
Tip: this is more useful for long-haul flights with stopovers. For good deals that don’t qualify for mileage runs, check out this forum.
Kayak
An upstart flight search site, Kayak displays (and trademarked the phrase) Hacker Fares, which means buying two one-way tickets on separate airlines ‘cause that’s just cheaper than the best round-trip ticket. The folks at Kayak are experts at finding holes in the matrix, and we appreciate that. The price alerts according to your customisations on Kayak give you a heads up whenever a good deal comes along.
We shouldn’t have to tell you this, but it’s very important to jump on these deals super quickly – they evaporate within hours, if not minutes! You can also download their app on iPhone or Android.
Darjeelin
If you’re really that time-starved, engage your own flight hacker to do the research for you on Darjeelin. The people at this human powered flight search engine claim to be able to save customers an average of 25% on airfares. Simply enter the flight you’ve already found and their community of fight hackers will get back to you in 6 hours. If their flight proposal is anything cheaper and you’re interested, all you have to do is pay 10% of the savings to your expert.
However much the savings, we think Darjeelin is great for long-haul, extended family vacations (which can be a total nightmare to plan) because their flight hackers are travel planners too. The best part? They’ll send you booking URLs from other websites, which means total transparency in travel advice!