Everyone is always asking for the best way to get cheap deals on flights. Sadly, besides the obvious options of metasearch options like Skyscanner and Kayak, there really isn’t a way to get super-secret cheap flights. However, if you are willing to be flexible with your dates and your airports and play up layovers to your advantage, you would be surprised at how much money you can save.
Back in October, I took what ended up being a massive trip for a low price tag It all started one day when I received a message from a good friend asking me if I wanted to join them in Buenos Aires. Since I live in Prague, this is a major undertaking and after looking at flights and finding the cheapest one for $1250, I figured that it was too expensive.
And then I decided to get a little creative.
I had plans to be in Munich for Oktoberfest so to start, I began looking at flights out of there. By playing around with dates, I started to see the price creeping down. Then I noticed that some of the flights had a layover in NYC, my adult home. I was feeling super homesick and I had some errands I needed to take care of in the US. Why not combine Buenos Aires with a trip back to my beloved city?
I scheduled a 1 night layover on the way from Munich to Buenos Aires and 4 days on the way back and the price began to drop even lower. Great, I could visit my favorite city in the world and rest my butt for a night!
By this point, I had gotten the price down to around $1000 and then decided to try one last thing. I checked flights going to Amsterdam rather than Prague and the price dropped down to $900.
I messaged a friend in Amsterdam asking if he was free over those days and voila – I had a ticket for $900 plus a stopover in another great city!
The final thing I did was check the flight prices in different currencies. For some reason, it was much cheaper to buy the tickets in Euros or Pounds rather than in American dollars even considering the exchange rates and bam….another $70 saved.
While in the end I had to book one last flight on EasyJet to get back to Prague, overall I saved around $250 in total. The trip ended up being a few days longer than expected but I got to see more friends, visit more cities and have a wonderful trip.
Munich – New York / New York – Buenos Aires / Buenos Aires – New York / New York – Amsterdam / Amsterdam – Prague.
The moral of the story, don’t be afraid to play around with dates, if you have flexible time don’t hesitate to take advantage of layovers and try to be as creative as possible!
