Don’t waste money on travel agents.
As a young person who is always traveling on a budget, it’s really important for me to save money in all aspects of a trip.
The most important one is the flight.
It’s really important to make sure you find the best deals for international flights with layovers.
By best deals I mean how much you’ll pay for the flight ticket and how long it’ll take you to get to your final destination after 1 or 2 layovers.
Now, this is what I do to find the most convenient flight for the dates I wanna travel on.
It’s a very simple guide to follow.
1- Find some free time for research
Grab a couple of hours of your weekend, maybe on a Saturday afternoon, get a cup of coffee or tea and open your laptop or use your phone.
2- Open any flight search engine of your preference
As a first-time or still novice traveler like me, this is a very important step so you know which airlines operate the route for your flight, average price, and other important travel details.
It will give you a good understanding of all the things you have to consider before and during your flight.
My favorite one is Skyscanner
Proceed to input the date for your trip and destination, plus other information such as one way or return, how many adults, cabin class, etc…
3 Pay attention to the important details
Click Search Flights
Now take a really good look at the information presented to you when the search is done.
For this example, I’m trying to find the best deal in terms of money and time for a flight from Miami to Rovaniemi, Finland.
Budget for vacations in Rovaniemi, Finland
At the top of the results, you’ll see three categories, Best, Cheapest, and Fastest.
Now you wanna go and take a look at the “Best” is always the one that makes more sense regarding money and time.
The fastest is always very expensive and the average time it takes is almost the same as the “Best”.
The “Cheapest” option will always take longer to get you to your final destination.
This means long layovers of up to 8 hours or more, but if you don’t mind the waiting then is not a problem.
You might even have the chance to go out of the airport and explore the city for a little bit.
Or join free airport tours for passengers with long layovers like the one Singapore’s airport offers. Changi Airport Free Tours
Important pieces of information you need to pay attention to
These are 3 very simple things you need to know to find the best deal for international flights.
First, which airlines operate the route? In the results you can see is British Airways and Finnair.
Second, the layovers, how many layovers will there be and where? all of that is shown in Skyscanner.
Third, is the connecting flight in the same airport?
When you have a connecting flight, usually you have it within the same airport where you just landed.
But in case you have to change airports it will be stated clearly in the results page.
When you click Select, you will see all the details for outbound and inbound flights.
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Outbound Flight -
Inbound Flight
In the outbound itinerary, you can see it takes 16 hours and 55 minutes total to get to Rovaniemi. Things to do during winter in Rovaniemi
You can also see the breakdown of the connections.
In New York, you have to go from La Guardia to JFK for your flight to Helsinki.
From La Guardia to JFK is around a 20 minutes car ride, and the time allotted for the layover is 3 hours and 47 minutes so you’d have no problems making it on time.
The return flight is different
It takes 27 hours and 50 minutes, but hey you have 12 hours and 35 minutes in Helsinki.
This would be a great opportunity to go out and see a bit of the capital of Finland.
You’d be getting the chance to explore more of the world, that doesn’t sound bad to me at all (If you’re not short on vacation time of course).
In summary, this is the Important information you need to know
- How much is the average cost?
- What is the average flight time?
- Which airlines handle the flight?
- How many layovers are there?
- Do you have to change airports for a connecting flight?
- Does one of my layovers give me enough time to tour the city for a bit?
After checking all of that, now you have a pretty good knowledge of what the flight to your desired travel destination requires.
Now, you can start budgeting and decide how much vacation time you need to enjoy where you’re going while considering how much time you’d be spending just flying.
If you ask me the main deciding factor will always be the price, but the rest of the information is also important.
And depending on how many days you have available for your trip you can play around with that.
If your time is limited, of course, you’d want to find the most direct flight possible.
But if you have plenty of free days you might even opt for a cheap flight with two long layovers and stroll around those cities for a while.
Now comes the final and most exciting step of them all, BUY THAT TICKET
4- Choose where to buy the ticket
To finally make the purchase you have 2 options.
I truly believe one is the best to accomplish the purpose of finding the best deal for international flights.
Just read a little bit.
A) Buy it with a third party vendor.
This is the option most flight search engines provide, for this example, Skyscanner will redirect you to Opodo or eDreams to buy the ticket.
After clicking select, you’ll be redirected to their sites and there you’ll have to input all your personal info and credit card details to purchase the ticket.
After a successful purchase, you should receive, in the inbox of the email address you would provide, a receipt for your purchase and an itinerary of your flight.
Most likely they’ll send them in the form of PDF files.
B) Go directly to the website of one of the airlines that operates the flight
In the example above, Miami to Rovaniemi, we can see that the flight is operated by Finnair and British Airways.
So I would go to either one of these airlines’ websites and input the same departing and arriving city, also the same dates.
I’d make sure the rest of the information like layovers, and the price is the same or at least similar, all you have to do is follow the steps of the Airline website’s form.
Just like in a third party vendor, after a successful purchase, you will receive an email with the receipts and itinerary of the flight.
Expect the final prices shown on a third party vendor or an airline website to vary from what you see on a flight search engine.
The flight search engines, sometimes, might not take into account tax fees and luggage fees.
So, you have two choices, but the one I recommend is option B.
The reason why I believe this is the best options is that, in the case of an eventuality like missing your flight or having to cancel it.
You’ll get full support from an airlines’ customer service team or any staff at a boarding gate.
You can also sign up for a member’s club program which is never a bad idea.
Why buy it directly from the Airline?
If you buy your ticket through a third party vendor, in the case of an eventuality, airlines will simply tell you to contact that third party vendor and solve your issue with them.
And third-party vendors customer support, most of the time, is no good believe me.
Even if you call an airline’s customer service phone number.
Before you actually get to talk to anyone, there’ll be a recording asking you if you bought your ticket with the airline (press 1) or a third party vendor (press 2).
If you did the latter, you’ll get a recording telling you to contact that third party vendor and treat your issue with them.
So remember, find time for research, open a flight search engine, find all the important details of the flight.
And -I recommend- buy the ticket directly with an airline
Here is a very helpful info-graphic summary I made for you guys, hope you like it
Other important information to have in mind.
-When you have a flight operated by more than one airline, the baggage policy of the airline that covers the longest part of your trip, in the example above that’s Finnair, will prevail above the one of the other airlines.
If in your flight Finnair states that you are allowed to have 1 carry on suitcase plus 2, 30kg check-in suitcases, then that’s what you’ll be allowed to carry in all the legs of your trip.
-Most people don’t need to apply for visas while transiting a country, this depends on your nationality, but in order to be sure please refer to a government immigration site of the country you are transiting through to confirm this.
Hope you guys enjoyed this post!!!!
Cross Bordering South East Asia