I’ve got the personality that is always on the move. If I feel to engrained in routine, I go stir crazy. Lately, I’ve been semi-spontaneously booking trips to cities across the country. The only thing I’m worried about right now on my grad student budget is getting a deal. These last six weeks, I’ve gone from Arizona to New York City to Florida to Chicago, and I’ll be heading back to Arizona soon. All these tickets were booked just about a month in advance but under $200 for each leg. I’d like to believe I’ve gotten pretty good at finding flights for steals.

 

• Plan out a trip early and turn on flight alerts! I cannot stress this enough. I personally am loyal to Google Flight alerts because they give a nice graph of price over time once you start tracking, and have a really handy calendar view to compare dates. Skyscanner has flight alerts as well, but I like this format better. I personally have never been impr
  essed with Hopper – sometimes I’ll get a Google Flight alert and Hopper will totally miss the flash deal. If you’re new to scanning flight deals, try a few platforms before picking a favorite.
• Scott’s Cheap Flights is a listserv for (you guessed it!) cheap flight deals internationally. Depending on the season, I’ll get about an email every other day with a specific fare deal. It’s usually to one place, out of certain airports, for a range of a few months. They’ll tell you how long they think the deal is going to last (usually about a day or two) and what the tickets would normally cost. You have to be ready to buy instantly, but if you have the savings set aside already for a trip, you can get some incredible deals. They’ll also occasionally send out mistake fares; they’ll only last for a few hours, but they’re rare gems to be snatched up asap. I still think about a $200 mistake fare to Australia that I passed on in the fall – a $1000+ ticket!
• Book multi-city, one-way flights instead of a few roundtrips. If you’re flexible with timing, this saves you so much money because you’re cutting out 50% of your airplanes. This also decreases the carbon footprint of your travels! I especially like to do this when traveling to the east coast from Arizona; the rides are so long and it’s a waste to fly back just to fly again the following month. So, en route to visiting family in Florida, I moved a planned New York City trip for the week before. It’s efficient!
• If you like to check for the sake of traveling lighter, courtesy check a carry-on at your gate. Lazy girl pro tip! I have been doing this since I was sixteen because I hate lifting luggage up into the overhead bins, and there’s not always someone willing to help.
• Similarly, consider bag fees, especially with a budget airline. Always read the fine print, and just follow the rules. Being forced to check at the gate because you didn’t beforehand costs double on airlines like Spirit or Frontier. If the cost difference between a budget ticket and a traditional one is less than ~$50, buy the regular ticket to save on the headache later on.
• Come prepared to avoid high airport costs. Pack your own snacks and bring an empty water bottle to fill up after security. This reduces your physical waste and stops you from buying trash food.
• If you live in a town with a teeny airport do not fail to acknowledge connecting flights there. You will have transportation costs to get to your nearest big airport, so factor those into your ticket prices upfront. For instance, it takes two hours and $50+ in shuttle costs to get to my nearest big airport in Phoenix. If the flight with a connection to Flagstaff is less than $100 more, I would rather purchase that ticket. It costs the same, sometimes even less, than the two-hour commitment of getting home otherwise.

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Do you have any other big tips for finding inexpensive flights? Let me know! If you want to learn more about how to travel more sustainably, check out this episode of ECO CHIC.