Random: Travel with cheap air tickets

Call me kiasu but I just love deals.
If I had not planned for a trip, cheap tickets can changed my mind.
I love to travel with the lowest possible expenses.

I rather be SPAMMED then LUGI (lose out).
1) Sign up for newsletter for all the airlines I dare to travel on.
Be it budget, or mainstream airline, they can have quite a good bargain from time to time. Be the first to know through their newsletters, no harm signing up for a few emails which you can delete them easily.

If you have a place in mind to go, PLAN EARLY.
2) Buy the tickets early to enjoy good bargains (for most airlines). Especially budget airline, most of the time they will have really good promotions if you be an early bird and purchase their tickets in advanced like… 6 months beforehand. My guess is, running a business, the airline would love to secure as much passengers as possible to ensure they do not need to send a 30% fill flight flying and make a lost out of that flight.

BE FLEXIBLE. Unless you have certain events/festivals/dates in mind to attend in the destination country, please check your calendar before you book a flight.
3) Avoid school holidays seasons/public holiday period if you can help, the flight tickets can easily cost two-fold of normal days. Also, won’t you feel bored going oversea and just see the whole batch of your fellow countrymen filling up the foreign land, doing what you see everyday in your own country?

If unfortunately, you only have certain days which you can travel, Just KEEP CALM AND …

4) Use aggregator sites to search for fares. (Aggregator sites are website that enable you to compare flights between all participating airlines to give you the best price.)
For me, I will go to www.zuji.com.sg. I am not sure how updated it is, if promotions price of the flights are updated real time or what… What I will do is, Keep calm and be KIASU.
I will go Zuji to have ‘bird-eye view’ of the flight ticket prices from various airlines, and then go to website of the airline I am interested to travel on, and double confirm if there are any relevance promotion. I will do a ‘walk though’ to simulate a flight booking, select all the add-on services/requests I would need for my trip and compare the final price.

Do not be surprise (especially applicable for budget airline) that after you select the add-on service, e.g. choice of seats, add-on meals, checked-in luggage; you might get a much higher ticket cost for a budget flight than a mainstream flight, so just make sure you COMPARE, COMPARE, and COMPARE!

Something I learn recently which is quite amazing (at least to me) when I last purchased my air ticket for my next trip.

Warning, do this at you own risk! Try only if you are too bored, too poor (unfortunate I am the latter) and have a super flexible travel date.

Since I have missed the “early-bird” window to get my promotion flight tickets, and after referencing aggregator sites, all airlines’ ticket just seem as expensive,
5) I just log into the two targeted airline website and CHECK ON THE RATES, DAILY.
For some reason, I realised that the rates can varies everyday for a certain airline. After few weeks of ‘analysis’, I found out that $X will be the lowest possible rate for the period and I immediately make the reservation without hesitation. Not sure if this applies to all airline, but if you have 30mins to spare daily to play Candy Crush, you definitely have the time to do a quick check on the website 🙂

Not sure if this is useful to anyone out there, if you tried it, do leave a comment to share your “review” on my tips 😛

Image courtesy of thaikrit  / FreeDigitalPhotos.net