There are around 30,000 flights soaring very high up in the US skies every single day. That’s quite a lot of airplanes and even more passengers. In fact, you would be surprised to find out that people who are sitting next to each other on a plane have all paid a different price for their flights.
Do you want to be the one with the best deal? Then, we have some tips for you. Besides being flexible, taking into consideration the closest airports, and buying your flights, which can only take you so far, we also want to show you a couple of other tips and hacks that will help you save even more when you’re flying domestically in the USA.
Search for the “hacker fare”
When you need a round-trip flight ticket, then there are specific things you should do. For instance, try to search for two one-way tickets on different airlines instead. Then, your search results page will get much longer AND better, and only because you will be able to book combinations you otherwise couldn’t have, such as competing airlines.
Here’s the thing: airlines can only sell round-trip tickets with their own or partner airline’s flights. This basically means that the wide majority of the competing airlines with whom they do not have any kind of agreement will not show up in your search, even if their return flight might could be a lot cheaper.
Check out Southwest.com
Especially if you plan a shopping trip, Southwest will instantly give you two bags to check in for no additional costs. You won’t have to worry about extra fees for checked baggage, laptop bags, using the toilet or even breathing in the airliner.
On top of that, the best part is that it might depend on how you look at it, because Southwest doesn’t come up on meta-search engines. And that’s mainly because they don’t want to. You can combine this tip with the first one to yield the best results. Also, you might want to check out their “Companion Pass”, which basically entitles a companion of your choice to fly with you for zero costs.
Take advantage of free cancellation if the price drops
As a general rule, you can cancel any purchase from an airline or any other major online travel agency (OTA) in the United States within 24 hours of making it. I know everyone would think that people already know about it, but actually, most consumers are unaware of this.
The secret is to check flight ticket prices again before that 24-hour deadline has passed, and try to rebook if you get lucky and the price drops. Luckily, Southwest takes it even further, as you can get a credit for the fare difference up to the day of the departure.
Sign up for newsletters
If you are willing and have to capacity to make your travel decisions fast, then airline and other online travel agency newsletters are also something worth signing up for. It’s true that most of the time you might have the usual marketing talk, but more often than not, there could be something better in them.
For instance, let’s take flash sales. The booking window on those is generally quite short: from a couple of days to a week. Even so, the savings you might get for acting fast might help you. It might also happen that the campaign can apply when you bundle up flights with a hotel or even a rental car. So, not everything is actually spam.
Pro tip: hidden city ticketing
If you are quite a rookie when it comes to airline lingo, then this could sound quite mysterious to you. However, hidden city ticketing is definitely something that’s real and used quite often. The trick here is quite simple. For example, let’s say that you have to get from New York City to Atlanta.
You start searching for flights and the outlook isn’t all that nice. However, if you search for flights to Miami, going through Atlanta, then the picture might be a bit brighter. You book the flights from NYC to Miami, but you’re also walking out of the airport in Atlanta because you don’t need to fly to Miami.
However, bear in mind that this can only be done with carry-on luggage. You also shouldn’t do it too often with the same airline, because they don’t like it and could even close your frequent flyer account.
Book one passenger at a time
Let’s take another scenario: you are carefully planning a getaway with your friends or even a family holiday. There are six of you in that group. As you are searching for your flights, you obviously put in the complete number of people in the group. That’s great, but hold on just a minute.
Try this instead: write the total down and calculate the per-person cost you might get when you buy those six tickets there and then. Then, go back to the beginning and proceed to look for flights for one, two, three, and so on number of people.
Every single time, check what the price per person is. Chances are that by buying your tickets in groups of 2-4 or 3-3, you might be able to save on your total costs. The secret is that not every single seat on an airplane has the same price. Also, booking engines can’t really mix different-priced tickets into one booking, therefore, they might give you the fare category where there’s availability.
Upgrade to cheap First Class
If you are flying on any major US carries and you need to have more than one piece of checked luggage with you, then it could be a good idea to look into first-class fares. In some instances, they could be a lot more reasonable and cost-efficient than actually paying a lot of money for checking in your luggage and still getting a place in coach.
Book your last-minute flights with miles
The airline business doesn’t actually operate as others do. They don’t really believe in last-minute discounts. However, life gets in our way and we need to buy tickets a couple of days, or maybe only some hours before departure.
Then, it would make all the sense to check out what you could get for your miles. You can even end up paying much less with your miles for a last-minute trip than in real cash. That’s just one of the reasons why you should collect those frequent flyer miles.
Check for student or youth discounts
If, by any chance, you are a qualifying student or even a young adult under 26 years old, then you should search for different student agencies. They tend to specialize on international flights, but sometimes have the best discounts for domestic flights.
Hire a professional travel hacker
If you don’t have enough time or interest in implementing these tricks yourself, then you should hire a travel hacker. For instance, Flystein’s travel experts might be able to apply every single trick in their book to get you the best possible flight out there.
If you found this article useful, we also recommend checking: Free Money? Here Are 7 Sure Ways to Get Them
