8 Tricks to Save Money on Flights

The art of saving money on travel can be endlessly complex.

Maximizing Miles & Points is one way to expand your range of travel possibilities without spending a lot of money, but there will always be times when you need to pay cash for a flight.

Whether it’s because you can’t find award availability on your desired dates, you don’t have enough miles saved up, or you’d just prefer to keep your miles for a later date, purchasing flights with cash is inevitable.

Luckily, there are quite a few techniques that can help you reduce the cost of your airfare, often by upwards of 30–40% if you combine a few of these tricks together.

In this article, we list some great techniques that you can use any time you need to pay cash for a flight, so keep it handy for the next time you’re looking to score some additional savings.

Saving Money on Flights

When purchasing flights with cash, most travellers will buy round-trip flights, either through the airline directly, through a travel agent, or through a third-party portal like Expedia.

Additionally, most travellers start their flight searches with relatively strict requirements, perhaps that they must leave on a specific day and come back on another specific day. As we’ll show in this article, this sort of mindset can restrict your ability to save on the cost of your flight.

If you’re willing to slightly adjust the way you approach booking a flight, the eight tips and tricks listed below will help you save money any time you need to book a flight with cash.

Also, if you’re not already familiar with using Google Flights as a search tool, check out our guide to using Google Flights to learn some invaluable skills for planning and booking the most cost-efficient flights.

1. Redeem Miles One Way and Pay Cash the Other

When travelling within North America, round-trip fares are often very close to being equivalent in cost to the sum of two one-way fares.

When round-trip fares happen to be higher than usual, it can often be the result of the one-way fare in a single direction being unusually high, while the fare in the opposite direction remains quite reasonable.

For example, if there’s a major event taking place in your destination near the date of your arrival, then the outbound flight will likely be very expensive. If you’re returning home a while after the event ends, the return flight…