Flight Travel Ticket Tips
To Navigate The Airline Pricing Jungle

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Airlines pricing structure is very complicated - these travel ticket tips for booking flights are intended to assist you to navigate your way around it.

Where To Book Your Flight?

Booking flight online is increasingly popular. Not surprisingly as difficult to beat the convenience of being able to compare prices and availability in the comfort of your own home and even with your travel companions close to you. Just be careful not to make any mistakes as they can be difficult, and sometimes costly to rectify.

There are though some benefits of booking with travel agent or by phone, especially if you have a complex travel itinerary, like multiple stopovers. Specialist can offer you expert advice and sometimes they can find cheaper flight deals than you as they know all the tricks in the “complex jungle of airline pricing structure”.

If you are booking your flight online you will have great number of airlines to choice from. To compare prices and save time it is convenient to use flight comparison sites, or aggregator sites. You can find them through travel search engines.

If you are using travel agent or phoning your airline of choice directly, you can also use travel search engines to find the necessary contact details.

When To Book Your Flight?

Should you aim for “early bird” discounts and book early or should you try to get last minute deal and book close to your travel date. Like always there are pros and cons whichever booking method you chose.

Travel ticket tips recommend to book early if you are travelling during peak periods (like over Christmas) or for special high demand event (like festival or big sporting event). For standard vacations however the best results can usually be achieved somewhere in between booking really early or really late.

Most airlines allow you to book up to 330 days in advance but the prices seem to be similar as if you book only one month in advance. After that prices tend to go up, i.e. within a month from your travel date. Booking flights 6-8 weeks prior to travelling will usually get you satisfying results.

It can also matter which day of the week you book your flight. Airline ticket prices fluctuate up and down all the time but online travel agents tend to agree that they are on average highest on weekends. Travel experts estimate the best time to buy airline tickets are on Tuesdays, followed by Wednesdays.

It can even matter what time of the day you are searching for your flight. Maybe the biggest travel ticket tips secret is that some airlines reload their computers with cancellations at the end of the day so you might want to try hunting for cheap air travel deals just after midnight.

When To Travel?

When you travel can seriously affect how cheap air travel you can find. Being flexible about your travel dates is usually the most important factor when searching for the cheap air travel.

Avoid peak travel dates if you possibly can, like the day before Christmas Eve (December 23), the day after Christmas Day (December 26), the day after New Year's Eve (January 2), the Wednesday before Easter, and any dates around local holidays. Finding cheap air travel on those dates is highly unlikely.

There are also peak periods which you should avoid if you can, like during school holidays or special events (Olympics, World Cup, etc).

Most airlines offer discounts on their fares if you stay over Saturday night.

Travelling Monday through Thursday on the other hand is generally cheaper than travelling Friday through Sunday. This applies for both departure and return travel date. Most business people travel on Mondays and Fridays so travelling on Tuesday can save you some money.

The length of your stay can affect the price as prices often go up in stages. So staying 29 or 31 days can make a difference to the price, so try different dates when looking for air cheap flight tip travel deals.

The prices are also different during each day so flying on the “right” time of the day is important when looking for cheap air travel. Avoid peak hours, like early mornings, late afternoons / early evenings. The cheapest times are usually during the mid day, sometimes also late at night.

Practical Travel Ticket Tips

You would expect connection flights to be cheaper than non-stop flights but that is though not always the case. If connection flight is the option you are going for make sure you have sufficient time between the flights. Travel ticket tips recommend avoiding booking connection flights with less than an hour between them, especially if you know your connecting airport has more than one terminal. Also if you are flying with separate airlines as they might not share gate or even terminal. If you really have to be somewhere on a certain time or day then non-stop flight is a safer option.

Many discount airlines have their base at the smaller less popular airports so you might find better deals if you extend your airport search. Most of the travel search engines are able to search for the lowest fares using multiple airports within large metropolitan areas.

Airlines only allocate small number of their seats for travel award point travels (air-miles). So when using your travel award point's book as early as you possibly can. Anyway many airlines require you to book award fares within certain time before travelling. Most airlines load their award fares 330 days in advance. The majority of airlines charge a small fee if booking award fares over the phone or in person but not if you book them online.

When looking for cheap air travel deal make sure that you are taking all fees into consideration. Discount airlines usually charge for all extras which can be included in the price of non-discount airlines. Travel ticket tips recommend checking if they charge you extra for check-in luggage or if they charge for in-flight food and entertainment. Some discount airlines even charge for hand luggage and for checking in... which for sure isn't optional and should be included in the price.

Travel ticket tips recommend to check if all taxes, fees, charges and surcharges are included in the price or not. We have sometimes found the prices between discount airlines and non-discount airlines to be quite similar when we have taken all extra charges into consideration.

Last but not least... don't ignore follow up e-mails from your travel provider, they might be alerting you of changes to your flight schedule. Also make sure these post don't get into your spam filter as your travel provider has met its obligation to you as a customer by sending you the e-mail. Claiming you never got the e-mail is unlikely to get you any sympathy and even less likely to get you any refund.

We hope these travel ticket tips will be helpful when booking your flight.