Here are our travel hacking tips and tools to help you find cheap flights!
Being a travel hacker means trying to save money on all your travel expenses:
Whether you redeem loyalty program points or you are smart about how you spend your money, it’s possible to save hundreds or even thousands of dollars on EVERY trip!
Discover our tips and the best tools to find cheap flights and save on airfare.
You could very well wait for sites like Yulair to alert you to “low cost flights”.
But sometimes it will be:
While in travel, whether it’s with loyalty points or paying for your ticket, FLEXIBILITY is key to finding good deals, sometimes it’s just not possible.
Families know this when they have to leave for spring break or the holiday season.
Before we look at the different platforms for booking airline tickets, here are some tips for finding cheap flights.
The search tools have become very sophisticated and often allow you to choose several destination (and even departure) airports.
If you are willing to travel to or from the airport to get a cheap flight, this is often an opportunity to save a lot of money.
This technique is especially valid for Transatlantic flights: you find a cheap ticket to fly across the Atlantic, then you use a reliable low-cost airline like Easyjet or Ryanair to reach your final destination.
It is not uncommon to see airfare between Montreal and Paris around $500-600.
And from Paris you can fly to any city in Europe with a low cost airline.
When you are alone or with a partner, it can be difficult to justify going to these U.S. airports because of the :
This often exceeds the money gained.
However, when you travel with your family or a group of friends, it may be worthwhile to compare prices.
It’s up to you to make the profitability calculations.
From 3-4 people, the savings can be substantial: you share the costs (car travel, hotels) but each of you saves on his ticket.
Don’t forget the opportunity to use your hotel points to save on your night in Plattsburgh or Burlington if you choose this option. We have tried it and have been particularly helpful in this regard.
With the Best Western Rewards® Mastercard, you can, for example. get 20,000 points for free! That’s the cost of a night at this Best Western Plus hotel in Plattsburgh.
Positioning is a travel hacking trick: you use your points to position yourself at an airport (often in the United States) that has very competitive prices compared to Canada.
Here you can use Avios miles to get to Miamibecause you found a cheap ticket to Sao Paulo.
The reverse is of course possible: you pay for an airline ticket to pick up an award ticket from another airport.
For example, here you will pay your airfare to Miami . And from Miami you will go to Sao Paulo, thanks to Avios miles:
And even better: you’ll use miles from one program for the first flight… and miles from another program for the rest of the trip!
In this last example, you found availability on Aeroplan for your flight to Miami and availability with Avios miles for the Miami – Sao Paulo portion.
Positioning is a great travel hacking technique to find cheap flights!
The airlines’ algorithms are designed in such a way thata person who wants to book a direct flight (Montreal – Vancouver) will pay more than a person booking a connecting ticket (Montreal – Vancouver – Las Vegas).
In the example below, the first flight is identical, but the passenger adding Las Vegas as a destination will get a lower fare.
So all you have to do is get off the plane in Vancouver and “miss” your connection to Las Vegas.
Of course, this type of travel hacking technique is questionable and fought by the airlines. If you want to do this, there are several caveats:
One of the major “dangers” of this technique: the change of schedule!
In the above example, if your Montreal – Vancouver flight was cancelled / delayed for any reason, the airline could impose a new itinerary which would not go through Vancouver to reach your final destination!
So you’d be in Las Vegas… not Vancouver!
Now that you are familiar with the different tips to find cheap tickets, let’s take a look at the different tools at your disposal!
Google Flights is certainly the most popular and user-friendly search tool for:
Here is an example of a search for a low cost flight for a week, anytime in the next 6 months between Montreal… and anywhere in America.
A really vague search… but this is the type of search that sites offering discount flights like Yulair do manually/automatically.
Here, you can see for example a low cost flight between Montreal and Toronto on Air Transat at only 139$ round trip.
So this is the kind of research you can take the time to do yourself on Google Flights… by fine tuning YOUR criteria:
The Google Flights interface has recently been revised and is fully customizable: sky is the limit!
We particularly appreciate the real time update of the results according to the movement of the map.
Please note the important differences for a same day flight to different airports in the Los Angeles area:
Kiwi.com works under the same principle as Google Flights, but will also offer, for some destinations, bus and train trips in addition to the plane via the NOMAD tool.
For example, here is a search for 3 to 5 nights in each of these 3 destinations: Paris, Nice and Athens.
NOMAD will offer me the best options by combining different carriers and especially the ideal itinerary!
You can ask Kiwi. com to set up crazy itineraries with the NOMAD option.
Here, I asked Kiwi.com to go through 3 regions: Southern Europe, South Africa and Brazil. The tool found me a nice combination of tickets.
You can use our dedicated page to search on Kiwi.com to find low cost flights that match YOUR desires!
Escape is a search engine for cheap flights. It was developed by the MIT Senseable City Laboratory in Singapore.
What makes it special? You put in your departure airport, your return dates, and it takes care of displaying all the flights on a map… so that you can choose your low cost flight on dates that match YOUR availability!
In addition, the tool allows you to filter further according to:
For those who like “Big Data“, the site is really nice visually and clearly displays all the available airlines in your price range.
And once you click on the search Magnifying Glass, like I did on the price of Morocco at $695, Escape focuses on that destination and offers you other information like “specialties” of that destination.
Finally, by clicking on the city – here Tangier / Morocco – the search starts with all flights.
We can see that the main engines used are those of Kiwi.com and Skyscanner, the two market leaders. Escape also shows you weather information, and Tripadvisor data.
So Escape is an impressive site where we could spend hours “playing” to find cheap flights!
Skiplagged is a real Travel Hacking tool…. which announces the color from its homepage:
This tool will allow you to find cheap flights via the hidden city technique.
You can search with a specific date but without a destination to find cheap flights.
Like this example for a low cost flight from Montreal on 10/09:
Let’s look at the case of the flight to Washington posted at CA$157 instead of CA$193:
Here you book a flight from Montreal to Boston. But you will stop in Washington to take advantage of the 157 CA$ fare!
If you book a “hidden city” ticket, Skiplagged reminds you of the usual precautions:
After the tips and tools to find cheap flights, let’s take a look at the loyalty programs that allow you to apply points to your airfare purchases!
Booking a ticket with the right credit card can save you a lot of money. Simply apply your points to the expense.
The American Express Membership Rewards program is arguably the most flexible rewards program in Canada.
Membership Rewards can be used in a variety of ways:
So you can use any American Express Membership Rewards card to book your low-cost flight… and apply your Membership Rewards to the purchase of your airline ticket:
See, for example, this purchase of an airline ticket on Air Transat with theAmerican Express Cobaltᵐᶜ Card:
You can use as few as 1,000 points to reduce the bill by $10.
By using your card to purchase the ticket, you are covered in case of flight / baggage delay!
The principle of the HSBC Rewards program is the same.
Here is an example of travel purchases charged to the HSBC World Elite Mastercard. You can follow the process here.
When you pay for your airfare with a card like the HSBC World Elite Mastercard, you’re covered with excellent insurance. In addition, this is one of the only cards in Canada that does not charge any foreign currency conversion fees. Save money on your low-cost flights purchased abroad!
Nous espérons que vous avez maintenant tout en main pour, vous aussi, dénicher des vols à bas prix.
Ces conseils sont particulièrement utiles lorsque l’utilisation de programmes aériens n’est pas optimale !
Sur un sujet similaire, découvrez comment il est possible d’économiser grâce aux points pour des locations d’appartements sur airbnb.
Savings are here:
