TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

SECTION 1: BASIC TIPS

1) Flexibility Is King
2) Where To Search
3) When To Buy
4) Avoiding Fees

SECTION 2: ADVANCED TIPS

5) Mistake Fares
6) Throwaway Ticketing
7) Alternate Location Ticketing

SECTION 3: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

8) Start To Finish Walkthrough

INTRODUCTION: HOW TO FIND CHEAP FLIGHTS

I was supposed to be at a friend’s poker game 20 minutes earlier, but instead I was at
home, furiously navigating a Norwegian airline’s website. When I finally made it to the
game, an hour late, I profusely apologized for my tardiness. “Sorry for being late, guys. I
was busy booking $65 flights to Europe.”

Of course it was a thinly-veiled humble-brag. But how could I not? Roundtrip flights
direct from New York to Milan usually cost $700. I’d paid $130 — equal at the time to
802 Norwegian krone — including all taxes and fees.

In some ways, I got lucky finding this fare. I didn’t do anything to set the absurdly low
price. I hadn’t been searching for months for cheap flights to Milan. Frankly, Milan
wasn’t even on my radar as a destination.

But in other ways, I used a number of tips and tricks to help create my own luck. I knew
where to look for these types of “mistake” fares. I knew that, for reasons I explain in
Chapter 7, the deal only worked when purchasing in a foreign currency, hence the
above screenshot pricing in Norwegian krone rather than dollars. I knew how flexibility
with times, dates, and locations would help me get the cheapest flight possible. And I
knew to act fast. (I pulled the trigger on this ticket less than 15 minutes before the deal
disappeared.)

I was swamped with questions and requests after friends heard about my $65 jaunt to
Europe. “How did you find that flight?” “Can you find others?” “Will you let me know the
next a deal like this pops up?”

Rather than trying to remember each individual who wanted to be alerted next time
there was a big mistake fare, I started an email list to let anyone interested know
simultaneously. (You can sign up here if you like.) Mistake fares like this one to Milan,
though, are rare and spontaneous. I wanted to start helping people save money on
other flights as well.

I recently spoke with a high-level individual in the travel industry about what flight prices
look like from her end. She did not have good news for flyers. “The margins on tickets
are thinner than ever,” she said. With good deals harder and harder to come by, a
strategic approach to finding cheap flights is worth its weight in gold.

That’s why I wrote How To Find Cheap Flights: Practical Tips The Airlines Don’t Want
You To Know: to give people the same tips I’ve used for years to save money on airfare.

Chapters 1 through 4 deal with basic strategies that anyone buying flights should
consider. Chapter 1 focuses on how being flexible with your dates and airports can pay
big dividends. Chapter 2 looks at the question I get asked most frequently: “what search
engine do you think is best for finding cheap flights?” Chapter 3 examines when you
should pull the trigger on a purchase, while Chapter 4 gives tips on how to avoid some
of the most common fees that travelers encounter.

Chapters 5 through 7 tackle more advanced strategies. Chapter 5 is all about mistake
fares and how to find them. Chapter 6 explains the concept of throwaway ticketing and
how it can save you money, especially on domestic flights. Chapter 7 unfolds one of my
favorite cheap-fare tricks: alternate location ticketing.

Finally, Chapter 8 gives a step-by-step rundown of how I would approach booking a

sample trip between New York City and Cancun.

These tips have helped me travel 300,000 miles, spanning five continents and some 30
countries, in the past five years. I’m a wanderlust, but I’m not made of money. Travel is
too expensive for regular people if they’re paying full price.

Of course, in order to get a good deal, you need to know what tickets usually cost for
the flight you want. After all, if you know nothing about cars and come across one being
sold for $10,000, you still need to know what it usually goes for to determine if you’re a
savant or a sucker.

You can either study the route for a while and determine what the price ought to be, or
just shoot me an email (howtoflyforfree@gmail.com) and I’ll do my best to let you know
if you’re getting a good deal. I’m even happy to take a look at an itinerary you’re thinking
of buying, and if I find you a better price you’re happy with, we can split the savings.

In any case, by all means feel free to reach out to me with any questions and good luck
in your flight purchases.
CHAPTER 1: FLEXIBILITY IS KING

A few years ago, I needed to book a long-weekend flight to Detroit. Flying out on
Thursday after work and coming back on Sunday evening gave me a ticket price of
$200. Decent for that route, though not great. But since I knew I’d be taking a day off of
work anyway, I checked what the price would be if I pushed the itinerary back a day,
flying out Friday and coming back Monday. Only $140! I cut the price by a third with just
a minor tweak to the dates.

The first step when booking is always to search your ideal times and dates. However,
that should rarely be your last step. Especially if you are planning a vacation well in
advance, altering the dates by weeks or even months can give you wildly different
prices. For instance, when I recently looked about tickets to visit a friend in Costa Rica, I
saved $100 by flying to Costa Rica the first week of April instead of the second.

Thankfully, flight search engines make it easy now to explore flexible dates. My favorite
one is ITA Matrix, a powerful search engine that lets you browse through — though,
unfortunately, not book — the best possible flights.

To use their flex search option, go to matrix.itasoftware.com, put in your origin and
destination, and click “See calendar of lowest fares”:
Then just enter a possible departure date and the length of your trip. Remember that
your length of stay can be a range (i.e. 6-10), and you should ideally search a range to
make it more likely you’ll find the cheapest fare.

Although a few other sites, like Kayak, have recently made it so you can search an
entire month’s worth of fares, I still find ITA Matrix the best.

—————————————
TIP: My friend George recently told me that the lowest price he found for an upcoming
flight from Washington DC to Las Vegas was $480 roundtrip. That route is regularly half
this price, so I set out to look for a better deal. His original plan was to fly out Thursday
afternoon and take a red-eye back on Sunday evening. Indeed, Kayak told me the only
flights that met these exact criteria were $480. However, I suspected that there might be
other rocks we’d left unturned, like taking a red-eye that left after midnight, making it
technically a Monday departure instead of Sunday. Sure enough, leaving Monday at
12:50am instead of Sunday at 11:50pm cut the fare nearly in half, from $480 to $260.

—————————————

In general, flights on Friday and Sunday are going to be most expensive, while flights on
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday are cheapest. However, doing a flex month search
on ITA Matrix or Kayak takes the guesswork out of the process.

But being flexible on dates is only half the equation. In order to truly find the cheapest
airfare, make your departure and arrival cities flexible as well.

The best way to ensure you get a cheap flight is to just go where there’s a deal. That is,
rather than starting your trip-planning by deciding on a destination and then looking for
cheap airfare, flip the script and look for cheap airfare first, then determine your
destination.

In other words: chase the fare, not the destination.

For example, when I found a flight for $130 roundtrip from Newark to Milan, it didn’t
matter that I had never considered going to northern Italy. After all, there are very few
places in the world I wouldn’t gladly pay $65 to get to. Besides, I ended up having a
fantastic time hiking in Cinque Terre and exploring mountains on the Italy-Switzerland
border.

—————————————

TIP: When searching in cities that have multiple airports, you don’t have to search each
one individually. For example, instead of running three separate searches for DCA, IAD,
and BWI, just searching WAS will encompass all three. Do be aware, though, that on
the Matrix, typing in NYC only gives you results for JFK and LGA. Instead, type in “NYC,
EWR” when looking for flights from Newark as well.

—————————————

If, however, you have your heart set on a particular destination, you’ve still got plenty of
options to cut the price.

One way is to be flexible with your departure city. Say you live in Portland, Oregon and
want to take a flight to Iceland in April. You go to ITA Matrix and put in Portland (PDX) to
Reykjavik (KEF) for 7-9 days searching the entire month of April. The cheapest fare is
$1,125. Not good.

However, instead of just chalking it up and lining the airlines’ wallets with that inflated
fare, you decide to change the departure city from Portland to Seattle (SEA), keeping
everything else the same. After all, the Seattle airport is less than three hours away by
car. The result: a roundtrip flight of $772, $353 cheaper than flying from Portland.

If you don’t have a car, you can always book a roundtrip train ticket from Portland to
Seattle for $50.

Even if you’d prefer to fly from Portland to Seattle, buying that flight separately costs just
$145 roundtrip, leaving you with a combined final price of $917 ($772 + $145), still over
$200 less than the original itinerary. What’s more, you can actually fly the exact same
itinerary spending $917 as you would have spending $1,125.

This principle of tinkering with your departure city also works with your destination. If
you’re going somewhere in Europe, for instance, it often makes sense just to find the
least expensive trans-Atlantic flight you can and then take advantage of cheap intra-
Europe fares.

I once found a roundtrip flight from Washington DC to Brussels for under $300 roundtrip.
I didn’t have much interest in seeing Belgium, but I did want to see Norway. Since flights
from Brussels to Oslo were only about $70, I booked this itinerary and saved hundreds
off of a roundtrip flight from DC to Oslo.

Of course, flying out of or into less-than-ideal airports will be more inconvenient than if
you’d flown directly from your home airport to your desired destination. Finding cheap
flights often means giving up a bit of convenience in order to save money.
CHAPTER 2: WHERE TO SEARCH

One of the questions I get asked most frequently is: what is the best search engine to
find cheap flights?

Some people swear by Kayak, while others love Orbitz. Travel snobs point to ITA Matrix,
whereas the masses use Expedia.

My answer is they’re basically all the same.

There’s obviously nothing wrong with comparison shopping between them. But at least
9 times out of 10, you’ll find the prices are identical, and even when they differ, rarely do
so by more than a few dollars.

—————————————

TIP: Search one ticket at a time if you’re buying for multiple people. Sometimes there’s
only one seat left of the cheapest fare, but plenty in the next rung up. If you search for
two people, it will automatically try to book you at the same fare, rather than giving you
one that’s the cheapest ticket left and the other that’s the next cheapest.

—————————————

Personally, I find ITA Matrix to be the most powerful in terms of finding availability
because it has features like searching an entire month’s worth of fares. It also shows
you the cost-per-flight on multi-leg trips, so I have a better sense of which part of an
itinerary may be generating a high fare in case I want to try other routes. Sadly, though,
you can’t book flights directly on ITA Matrix.

After finding an itinerary I like on ITA Matrix, I’ll usually run the search with those dates
on the airline’s website and book there. Again, because there’s little difference between
various search engines, most people’s preferences come down to what they’ve always
used or aesthetics (Hipmunk’s layout is well-designed, and thus popular, for instance),
and that’s fine.

One hugely important thing to remember: Southwest doesn’t show up on flight search
engines. Therefore, it’s always worth comparing the best price you get on an aggregator
with the best price on Southwest.com. Annoying, I know, but it’s one of the most simple
and overlooked ways to save money on your flight, especially since Southwest doesn’t
charge fees for baggage or changing/canceling your flight.

—————————————

TIP: For other great but more advanced ways to pay less for your flight using flight
search engines, read about throwaway ticketing in Chapter 6 and alternate location
ticketing in Chapter 7.

—————————————

For international flights, I like to book on Vayama.com, as they often search random
international airlines that don’t make it on to Kayak or Orbitz.

If you’re flying internationally, it can be necessary to search directly on the websites of

local budget airlines, like the low-cost European carrier Ryanair, since they may not
show up on search engines. (Be sure to check about various fees, especially when
booking with a budget carrier.)

Here are some of the main low-cost airlines, separated by region. (You can find a
comprehensive list here.)

• Africa
⁃ Air Arabia
⁃ fastjet
⁃ Fly540
⁃ JamboJet
⁃ Mango
• Asia
⁃ AirAsia
⁃ Cebu Pacific
⁃ Hong Kong Express
⁃ IndiGo
⁃ Jetstar
⁃ Peach Airlines
⁃ Scoot
⁃ Tigerair
• Europe
 ⁃ Blue Air
⁃ easyJet
⁃ Eurolot
⁃ Flybe
⁃ Germanwings
⁃ Pegasus
⁃ Ryanair
⁃ Volotea
⁃ Vueling
⁃ Wizz Air
⁃ WOW Air
• Latin America
⁃ Aerocon
⁃ Azul Airlines
⁃ Easyfly
⁃ GOL
⁃ Interjet
⁃ Peruvian Airlines
⁃ Sky Airline
⁃ VivaAerobus
⁃ Volaris
• Middle East
⁃ Flydubai
⁃ Jazeera Airways
⁃ UP
CHAPTER 3: WHEN TO BUY

You may have heard the advice that the best time to buy a ticket is Tuesday at 3pm. Or
perhaps it’s Wednesday at 1am. Or was it Sunday?

Bollocks.

Despite what some may tell you, there is no “right” day of the week to purchase your
flight. It’s false advice, every bit as credible as what you get from the Flat Earth Society.
Don’t just take my word for it, take the word of someone who sets ticket prices for a
major airline.

Instead of waiting to buy your flights until some particular day of the week, you’re far
better off considering these guidelines on how far in advance to book.

In general, I would recommend purchasing domestic flights 1-3 months in advance of

your departure date.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. If you find a ticket for a trip you need to take that
you know is a steal, like $150 roundtrip from New York to Los Angeles, buy it no matter
how far away your departure date is.

In addition, if you are planning to travel during a holiday period or will be traveling
internationally, I would book as far as 6 months in advance. Holiday prices especially
tend to soar during the month or two lead-up, so it’s particularly prudent to buy those
tickets as early as you find a decent price.

However, for most flights, you actually don’t want to buy too far ahead. That’s because
airlines set standard route fares that can often go down within 6 months of travel. Flights
a year out rarely go on sale.

In addition, it rarely makes sense to book a flight before you have firm plans. That’s
because if you alter your plans, most airlines charge at least a $150 change fee,
instantly turning a good fare into a horrible one. (See Chapter 4 for tips on avoiding fees
like these.) The only times it might make sense to book before your plans are locked
down is if you find an absolutely unbeatable ticket price, or you have elite status that
waives change fees.
One final note: don’t bank on being able to find last-minute deals. There was once a
time when airlines sold their empty seats at massive discounts a day or two before
departure. Unfortunately, that is mostly a relic of the past. Instead, prices on last-minute
seats actually tend to soar nowadays as airlines try to squeeze extra revenue out of
business travelers who often can’t make travel arrangements far in advance.
CHAPTER 4: AVOIDING FEES

There’s little worse than feeling great about yourself after buying a cheap flight, only to
find out that the various fees eat up all the money you saved.

An increasing number of airlines, such as Spirit and Frontier, are relying on this practice
of “unbundling”: offering cheap airfare but charging fees for things like checked
baggage, carry-on baggage, changing your flight, and so on.

There are a few simple ways you can avoid these fees, however. (I’ll avoid obvious
recommendations like packing light.)

Checked bags: One of the perks of nearly every single airline’s credit card is that it
entitles you to check bags for free, sometimes for everyone on your itinerary. Read my
companion book How To Fly For Free: Practical Tips The Airlines Don’t Want You To
Know for tips on using credit cards to get not just free checked bags, but free flights as
well.

Another way to get free checked bags — assuming you’re not carrying a massive
suitcase — is to bring your luggage through security and to the gate. If the flight is
nearly full, the gate agent will almost always make an announcement offering to check
bags for free to your destination.

Changing flights: Other than charging for baggage, the fee you’re most likely to
encounter is for changing your itinerary. This can run up to $200 for domestic flights,
even if you just want to move your flight back by an hour or two.

If you decide soon after purchasing that you want a different flight, you can easily avoid
this fee. As long as you’re not flying in the next seven days, federal regulation requires
that airlines allow you to change or cancel your itinerary within 24 hours of booking
without any penalty. (I once found a much cheaper flight than the one I’d originally
booked and called the airline immediately. Though it was 28 hours after I’d booked and
they weren’t required to waive the change fee, the agent told me he’d make a one-time
exception. Thanks, United agent!)

Here’s another way to change your flight without paying a fee. A few years ago, I bought
a flight home for the holidays. My original itinerary brought me into Dayton late
Christmas eve — a decidedly inconvenient time, but the only affordable option at the
time. A couple weeks after I booked, though, I got an email from Airtran telling me that
my flight time had changed — the flight would now be leaving 2 minutes earlier than
originally planned — and to call them if this caused a problem. I smelled opportunity. I
called up Airtran and explained that, unfortunately, this new flight time was going to be a
problem. “Is there availability for the same time on December 23rd?” I asked. Sure
enough, there was. With one quick phone call, I’d gained a whole extra day at home
and saved myself the usual $75 change fee. The lesson here is if you’ve booked a flight
and they change the times, even by a small amount, you may be able to call up and
change to a much more convenient itinerary.

Finally, remember that one of the perks of flying Southwest is that you can cancel your
flight sans fee. If you want to change to a different flight, you just have to pay the
difference in fare for your new itinerary. If the new fare is cheaper, you get the
difference back in credit.

Lounge access: One of the best ways to make travel less stressful is to hang out in the
airport lounge while waiting for your flight. It’s far less crowded, more relaxed, and
includes free food and booze. But unless you have an expensive credit card or elite
status and an international flight, you’ll have to pay upwards of $50 for the privilege.

That is, unless you successfully pull off this trick.

Most people with access to an elite lounge are permitted to bring in a guest as well.
What you can do, then, is hang outside the entrance to a lounge and when someone’s
heading in by themself, ask them if they’re willing to be a good samaritan and take you
in as their guest. I know a number of people who have done this successfully.
CHAPTER 5: MISTAKE FARES

In the past year, I’ve seen roundtrip flights from the United States to Milan for $160,
Kenya and Oman and Egypt for around $200, Abu Dhabi for $218, and India for about
$250.

You don’t have to be an airfare expert to know these prices are super cheap. Indeed,
each one is at least 75 percent lower than normal. Welcome to the wonderful world of
mistake fares.

Mistake fares — also called fat-finger discounts because someone at the airline pricing
desk usually hit the wrong key — are exactly what they sound like: when an airline sells
tickets for a price they didn’t intend to.

Because mistake fares are unintentional, they tend not to last more than a few hours.
Mistake fares are Christmas morning for wanderlusts, except if you don’t open your gift
quickly, it disappears. The key, then, is speed.

—————————————

TIP: Remember that federal regulation requires airlines to let you cancel your itinerary
within 24 hours of booking without any penalty. Unlike regular fares, with mistake fares,
it may make sense to book even if you’re less than 100% sure of the dates, then figure
out within 24 hours if that itinerary works for you.

—————————————

In order to book, you obviously need to know when a mistake fare pops up, and the best
ones only pop up a few times per year. In order to help people find out about mistake
fares before the airlines catch them, I created an email list — originally just for my
friends, now for any cheap flight aficionado. You can sign up for the cheap flights email
list here and get alerted within minutes the next time a great mistake fare emerges.

Once you find a mistake fare, use the tips from Chapter 1 about flexibility. First start by
searching for your ideal flights. If those don’t get you your desired price, play around
with the dates on ITA Matrix and see what you can find. In addition, remember that even
mistake fares to places you don’t want to go can help you get somewhere you do want
to go. Although Belgium was not on my list of places to go, I’ve booked multiple mistake
fares into Brussels because I knew I could inexpensively get to Ireland and Norway from
there. Again, the key is to chase the fare, not the destination.

The final thing to consider though is the possibility that the airline won’t honor the
mistake fare. This happens from time to time, unfortunately, but it’s not common. Strong
consumer protections in the United States, and particularly in Europe, often prevent
airlines from reneging on mistake fares. Still, to be safe, I’d recommend waiting at least
a week before booking any non-refundable hotels or activities.
CHAPTER 6: THROWAWAY TICKETING

Throwaway ticketing is a somewhat complicated concept, so bear with me. To

understand it, let’s first take a highly simplified look at how airfare is determined.

The most important thing to remember is the old Econ 101 theory that when demand for
something goes up, the price of it will also go up. Now let’s apply this to airfare. The
price of a fare is determined much more by the demand for that particular route than it is
by, say, the distance flown. For example, many more people want to fly from
Washington DC to Chicago than want to fly from DC to Kansas City. Therefore, the price
is higher for flights to Chicago and lower for flights to Kansas City, even though the
latter is 350 miles further. What’s more, the flight from DC to Kansas City flight usually
has a layover in Chicago.

This is where throwaway ticketing comes in.

Say you want to fly from DC to Chicago on February 13 for a buddy’s bachelor party.
You go search ITA Matrix and find that the cheapest flight that day is $179, including a
connection.

But then, remembering the principle of supply and demand, you search for flights from
DC to Kansas City on February 13, looking for ones that specifically layover in Chicago.
Setting aside the first result, which connects in Charlotte, American’s flight here is $47
cheaper, plus direct to Chicago! All you have to do is buy a ticket to Kansas City, then
get off the plane when it lands at O’Hare.

Thankfully, you don’t have to search random flights until you find one a good throwaway
ticket. Use the flight search engine Skiplagged, which will automatically look for
throwaway tickets. Because of a recent lawsuit from Orbitz and United Airlines, you
can’t currently book an itinerary through Skiplagged. But all you need is the information
from Skiplagged about what city to search for, then take that information to the airline’s
website and book.

For example, if you search DCA to ORD for February 13, you’ll get the following results
on Skiplagged:

As you can see, it’s even $4 cheaper to book a flight to Milwaukee than Kansas City.
Because the final destination in the above itineraries is Milwaukee (MKE) or Kansas
City (MCI), just search on United or American for flights from DCA to MKE or MCI. (If
you click on the price, it will tell you what airline offers that route.)

Of course, airlines don’t like this one bit. It’s not against the law, but it is against most
airlines’ policies. (If you’re worried about the ethics of it, the New York Times Magazine’s
Ethicist Chuck Klosterman has given his enthusiastic stamp of approval. “Purchasing
something doesn’t mean you’re obligated to consume it in totality. If you buy a loaf of
bread, you don’t have to eat every slice.”)
Because airlines frown upon this practice, you need to take a few precautions when
buying a throwaway ticket. First, you can’t check any bags. After all, they go through to
your itinerary’s final destination (Kansas City), not your body’s final destination
(Chicago). Second, you can only do this with one-way tickets or the return portion of a
roundtrip, because if you miss a flight you were scheduled to be on, the rest of your
itinerary is automatically cancelled. Some even recommend not entering your frequent
flyer number on throwaway tickets, since there are occasional (though rare) reports of
airlines confiscating frequent flyer miles when they catch someone.

The other precaution to take with throwaway ticketing is that every once in a while your
itinerary can change in a way that sends you through a different connection city. The
airline can alter your itinerary before you fly, or a flight gets cancelled and they rebook
you on a flight that gets you to Kansas City, but via New York instead of Chicago. If this
happens — and since you obviously can’t tell the airline that you were planning to only
fly part of the itinerary — you’ll need to come up with a clever reason why you need to
route through Chicago instead of New York. Perhaps you’re meeting up with someone
at O’Hare? In any case, there’s always a chance, albeit slim, that throwaway ticketing
will backfire.
CHAPTER 7: ALTERNATE LOCATION TICKETING

I didn’t grow up poor, but my family also didn’t have a ton of money either. So when I got
in to Stanford and applied for financial aid, their policy was generous enough that my
family had to pay virtually nothing for tuition. After all, tons of students there come from
well-off backgrounds and don’t need any help covering the $50,000+ per year tuition. It
may sound obvious, but the reason Stanford charges two different prices is that they
know some can’t pay the sticker price while others can.

This is a basic form of price discrimination: offering everyone the same product, but
adjusting the cost based on the buyer’s ability to pay.

Price discrimination exists in airfare as well, and you can use it to your advantage.
Here’s how.

Say you’re planning a trip to Argentina in March and want to see Mendoza (MDZ) as
well as Buenos Aires (EZE). So you go search on Kayak, which tells you that the
cheapest available flight is $207.
Not bad, but not great.

So how was I able to trick Kayak into giving me the exact same flight for $67 less?
Remember about price discrimination. Airlines believe that when they’ve got a potential
customer from the United States, they may have more disposable income, so they
charge a higher price. However, Kayak and most flight search engines, including ITA
Matrix and Expedia, let you change the location you’re supposedly searching from. On
Kayak, for instance, go to the bottom of the page where you’ll see an American flag like
so:

Click the flag and change your country to the country where you’ll be traveling, in this
case Argentina. After you do that, click the $ symbol and switch it back to US dollars.
Then re-run the search and there’s a decent chance you’ll find cheaper fares intended
for Argentinian consumers.
Similarly, if you are using Expedia, you’ll see the following bar at the bottom of the site:

Just remember the different flags from your 10th grade geography lessons and you’ll find
some good deals in no time.

(One nice thing about ITA Matrix is that by default, it runs its searches as though you
are searching from the departure city.)

When you’re ready, click to purchase on Kayak and it will take you directly to the
airline’s website with the chosen itinerary. Depending on where you’re traveling, the
website will likely be in another language. However, thanks to the power of Google, you
should see a bar come down near the URL, asking you if you’d like them to translate the
page for you. Thanks, Google!

Before using alternate location ticketing, remember that many credit cards carry a
foreign transaction fee, usually around 3 percent. You can check online and see if one
of your credit cards offers the perk of waiving foreign transaction fees. Even if it doesn’t,
though, the fee is small enough that you’ll still probably save money using this method.
CHAPTER 8: HOW TO PLAN A TRIP, STEP BY STEP

Let’s walk through exactly how I would go about finding a sample flight from New York
to Cancun for the middle of April.

(1) First, I’d go to ITA Matrix and search NYC to CUN for the month of April for a 5-7 day
trip. Though flights cost as much as $643 for the first week of April, I find that leaving
most days after April 9 will reduce the fare to just $427.
But then I remember that searching just “NYC” doesn’t include flights from Newark. So I
go re-search “NYC, EWR” as my departure city. Success! Flights now go down to $376.
Plus I can leave on a Friday, usually one of the most expensive travel days.

Current best option: Flying from Newark to Cancun, with a layover in Charlotte, from
April 24 to April 29 for $376 roundtrip.

But before purchasing, I want to do quality control to make sure there aren’t cheaper
flights out there.

(2) First, I search the possibility of departing from nearby cities. Returning to ITA Matrix,
I put in the same search, except this time departing from Philadelphia (PHL). It’s my
lucky day; prices are now down to $317.

But I don’t want to stop there. Let’s check other possible departure cities in the area.

Leaving from Boston:

Leaving from Washington DC:
$255!

Of course, I still want to account for the price and inconvenience of getting from New
York to the departure city and decide whether it’s worth the in savings. In this case, I
decide that I would indeed like to save $121 by flying out of DC. Besides, I’ve got
friends I’ve been meaning to see there, so I figure this is a good opportunity to kill two
birds with one stone.

Current best option: Flying from DC to Cancun, direct, from April 22 to April 29 for $255
roundtrip.

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TIP: On ITA Matrix, you can search multiple cities at once by separating the three-letter
airport codes with commas. For example, if you want to see where the cheapest flight to
Cancun is from either Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Newark, or DC, enter your
departure city search as “BOS, PHL, NYC, EWR, WAS”.

—————————————

(3) Remember to be flexible not only with the departure city, but the destination as well.
In this case, Cozumel is just 35 miles from Cancun, so it’d be easy to get there without
much trouble in case prices are significantly lower in Cozumel. However, after re-
running the searches, I find that the cheapest flight to Cozumel is $385, so no luck on
this angle.

(4) To make sure I’m getting the cheapest price, I check for an alternative location ticket
by going to ITA Matrix and, in the box marked “Sales city”, putting in “Cancun, Mexico”
instead of leaving it as default. In this case, the price remains at $255.

(5) I check on Skiplagged to see if there are any throwaway tickets available. However, I
find that the best price is still $255.

I repeat the Skiplagged search for the other cities just to be doubly sure there’s not an
even better price out there. In this case, there’s not.

(6) Because it’s currently late January and I’m thinking of traveling internationally three
months from now, it’s not too early to book. I head to Expedia, search WAS to CUN
roundtrip for April 22 to April 29, and buy it for $255!
Don’t forget that if I were to buy the flight today, only to find out tomorrow morning that
my companion can’t go that week, I’ve got 24 hours from the time of purchase to cancel
my reservation and receive a full refund without penalty.

One final point to remember: You can stop and book at any point along the way if you
don’t feel like conducting this exhaustive a search. However, if you had stopped at step
1 and not looked at nearby cities, you would’ve lost out on a ticket more than 30 percent
cheaper. If finding cheap flights were as easy as just doing a quick Kayak search and
hitting gold, everyone would do it. You’ve earned your hidden gem of a cheap flight here
by doing the legwork necessary to find it.