Last updated on January 13th, 2023
Booking flights is stressful. Airlines booking systems are designed to squeeze every penny from you, prices fluctuate massively and getting to and from the airport can often cost more than the flight itself. For this guide we’re sharing the best tips and tricks for how to bag a bargain flight and minimise the cost of getting to and from the airport to your destination.
Check your destination
Do you have a destination in mind? If so, confirm the airport you’re looking at flying to is the best one. How far from the place you’ll end up staying is the airport? If it’s a bit of a distance just have a quick look for other nearby airports and see if they’re cheaper to fly to or travel from. To see what nearby airports there are, open up Google Maps, zoom out from your airport and have a look and see if there are any nearby cities, then plug these into Google Flights and check out if there are any results.
The above image shows how a trip from London to Bratislava is half the price on the same dates with much better options if you fly to nearby Vienna instead. A train from Vienna airport to Bratislava is under £15 for a 90 minute journey.
If you’ve found a nearby airport, you can save a lot by flying into one airport and back from another. Add your options into Google Flights and instead of selecting ‘Round trip‘, choose ‘Multi-city‘, add your options and see if you can get a cheaper price.
Getting to and from the airport
Check how much it’ll cost getting to and from the airport before booking. This can easily be more than the cost of the flight ticket. In the UK You can get extremely cheap flights from Stansted and Luton, but as the airports are located quite a long distance from London it can be quite pricey to travel there. It’s so easy to become transfixed by a €10 flight fee but after accounting for airport travel, it can easily be cheaper flying from another nearby airport with a flight price of €70.
In a group? A Taxi might be cheaper
If there’s three or more of you travelling together it’s worth having a look at how much taxis to the airport cost, even over longer distances. In the UK especially, train travel can be expensive and airport buses cost much more than regular public buses. It can sometimes work out to be about the same or just a bit more than a train or bus to travel to the airport by taxi. A taxi or Uber from Bristol to Heathrow costs around £200 or £50 each for four people. A train costs between £60 to £140 per person depending on time. A bus is only £11 to £25 booked in advance but can be over £40 for a last minute ticket. It’s unlikely a taxi will be the cheapest way to get to the airport, but it could be quite a lot less stressful for not a huge amount more than other options.
Check public transport times
Finding out how to get from your airport to the actual destination is often really tricky, having to navigate clunky airport websites, pdf downloaded timetables or out of date blogs. Have a look at The Trainline if you’re in Europe, as they also show prices for a lot of European trains plus you can also view prices for buses and coaches within the app. They won’t have every destination but a lot of popular places are covered.
Cheaper flights are often very early or very late in the day when public transport may not be running. At Milan Malpensa (MXP) Airport a flight ticket from London can be found for under €15 but after trains and coaches have stopped running a taxi to/from Milan costs €105!
Check that when you need to get to or leave the airport you won’t be at the mercy of expensive taxis, and spend a bit more on a better timed flight. For the case of Milan Malpensa it’s actually cheaper to stay at an airport hotel and get a train the morning after than a taxi from the airport.
Tips for Booking cheap flights
For researching flight prices and times the first port of call should be Google Flights. It’s simple to navigate without the bloat of advertising, prompts to create an account and is free to use all features. You can set alerts for flights which will track price changes and be emailed when they change – a really useful feature if you have a few destinations in mind and don’t mind waiting to book. A price graph gives you a good indication as to if you’re paying over the odds for the flight currently.
Where Google Flights isn’t so good is for when you’re not exactly sure on where to go. You can just type in a broad location such as ‘Europe’ into the destination box to view options, but annoyingly this does not display all of the options available to you, so you can miss a bargain flight to a great destination. Instead it can be easier to just cycle through different countries on the search bar for your dates and more flights will be displayed. Kayak is a great search engine for booking flights when you are flexible on the destination or date. It is a bit more fiddly to use than Google Flights but has a lot of options to refine your search as well as featuring flight tracking and historical price comparisons.
There are also a few organisations out there who do the hard work of finding cheap flights for you and simply email you some of the best deals out there.
I really recommend signing up to the Jack’s Flight Club email list. Around once a week you’ll be sent deals for bargain flights including long haul destinations for free. There’s also a paid tier where you’ll receive a load of cheap flight deals for around £40 a year.
If you’re looking for a package holiday deal – then I recommend signing up to HolidayPirates. They’ll email or WhatsApp you a well discounted holiday deal around once a day to destinations all over the globe. HolidayPirates is free with no paid tier. One thing to take note with HolidayPirates is that sometimes deals will be for out of season dates where it could be the rainy season. To check what the weather may be like for your destination, Thomas Cook have an excellent online tool.
The final tip for securing cheap flights is to sign up to popular airlines apps and emails and ensure you’re the first to know about their latest deals and sales. Some airline’s sales are hugely popular, and the best discounts and dates will quickly sell out. Being on the email list or having app notifications turned on will mean you’ll be able to browse and book deals as soon as they’re launched.
Top Tips & Tricks for booking cheap flights
- Are there nearby airports it’s cheaper and easier to fly to?
- Use ‘Multi-city’ on Google flights to get best prices from different airports
- Work out how much it’ll cost getting to and from the airport before booking
- The Trainline App shows times & prices for a lot of European rail and coach journeys
- For groups a taxi can be the same price as public transport
- Google Flights misses out some flights when selecting broad destinations
- Get the best deals sent to you with Jacks Flight Club & HolidayPirates
- Sign up to popular airlines apps and emails to be alerted to sales first
1 comment
Comments are closed.