Google Flights is my favorite way to find flights, and I am constantly on the website. The thing I like most about it, is that it’s tailored to you and your specific needs. Many flight websites will show you everything, for all over the US (Or wherever depending on the site). I don’t need to see discount flights out of Miami, since I need to fly from Minneapolis/St. Paul. With this tool I can set things to my specific needs and go from there. Also Google Flights will use all the airlines. Where as website such as Orbitz and Expedia don’t.
When you first get on the website, you need to put in the departing city. Like I mentioned earlier, I will put in MSP. If you know exactly where you need to go, you put that in the destination followed by the dates. For example; You know you have a wedding next month in Denver Colorado. I’ll put in the dates I need, and all the different flights for those days will pop up. In this example Friday-Sunday’s cheapest flight was $151.
Also, once you have selected a flight, the website will tell you typical prices. Personally, it’s hard to determine when to buy flights, because you are always at the risk of prices jumping and dropping. With this meter, you will know if you are ever overpaying or underpaying. I’m assuming everyone’s goal is to be underpaying, so when you see that I would jump on the tickets.
Say All of a sudden, I was granted the opportunity to work from home and am allowed to extend my trip. If I flew out that Wednesday before, and left on Saturday (granted it was a Friday wedding), the flight price would drop down to on $57 Round Trip! While prices with Frontier to include bags (as marked on the website), that still incredibly cheap! Especially if you are able to pack lightly. If you are able to be flexible with your dates, you can usually save a good amount of money.
Another tool that I LOVE, is the fact that you can put in flexible dates. Once you click flexible dates, different search results will come up. This can include the next 6 months, a specific month, a weekend, and one or two weeks. Say you don’t know where you want to go, but you know you want to plan a vacation a few months out. I leave it on a 1-week trip within the next 6 months, and results for all over the world will pop up.
I decide that I want to go somewhere warm, so I start looking at areas within the Caribbean. Here I can clearly see the cheapest prices for all the major airports. I click on San Juan Puerto Rico, which is listed at $179 Round Trip. The dates for these are February 3rd-10th. Now I request vacation for those days and have officially started off my vacation saving a few hundred bucks. Sometimes doing things backwards, can also save you a significant amount of money!
The global map is my favorite part of Google Flights, due to how easy and interactive it is. It’s extremely inspiring to see extremely cheap international flights. Plus my boyfriend and I are constantly buying each other flights. This is usually our go to instead of physical presents. But this way we can save money and plan little weekend getaways for cheap.