A while ago, when we had the most fantastic trip to Bali in October, I realized I should start sharing some of Kevin’s expertise in the form of his travel tips. He’s an expert at figuring out our travels, and we do travel quite a bit. Lately, he’s been busy at it lately figuring out our summer travels, so I asked him, How do you go about booking our airline tickets.
I thought I’d share his main three main travel tips when it comes to finding flights–especially since I was surprised by a couple of his moves.
1. Pre-research
First Kevin has an app on his phone called Sky Scanner. (Here’s the website for Skyscanner if you prefer.) When we have a trip up ahead of us, he’s looking at this app constantly. It does exactly as it says and scans the flights from all airlines for the designated destinations and dates (how’s that for unintentional alliteration!). When travel is up ahead, Kevin will begin his research using Skyscanner.
2. Cross Reference
Once some lower fare prices present themselves, Kevin will start to compare on other sites–Kayak being his favorite. Again, he will more often than not use the Kayak app on his phone for this. He simply does this to cross reference the prices, the itineraries, schedules, plus any additional offerings.
3. Purchasing
After some solid observation, usually 2 weeks but even up to two months, Kevin will purchase. This is the area that surprises me. Just like his habit of going straight to the source with hotels, he does the same with airlines. Even though Kevin has used Skyscanner to learn of the flights and cross referenced on Kayak, he will ultimately purchase direct from the airline. He does this for one main reasons: he’s working with the source. Our tickets when purchased through the airline are then under the direct jurisdiction of that airline. There is no extra worry of surprise limitations or costs. In general, he has found the airline carriers to be more reliable plus our information is then detailed in the airline’s system. Basically, there hopefully is no reason we would get lost in the airport shuffle! Seat assignments can be chose ahead of time as well as checking in the day before. If you haven’t done this, try it. It’s amazing to just walk up and hand over the bags. Easy peasy!
What about you? Do you have any travel tips for booking and purchasing airline tickets? Do share!
By the way, here are our summer plans: we’ll be in the Pacific Northwest from June 12-August 8. From June 19-27 we’ll be in Seattle and for all of the month of July we’ll be out at the cabin at Spirit Lake, Idaho. Will we see you this summer?!
thanks for sharing Skyscanner, I hadn’t heard of it. So much I haven’t heard of. 🙂 I love Kayak for the ability to fudge my arrival and departure dates for the best price. You can put in 2 days plus/minus or 3 days plus/minus and so on. Then you see a grid of potential prices. My dates are usually flexible and the difference can be 20 or 30% less! Then I purchase the ticket on Expedia where I earn points.
Oooh, I hadn’t heard of gaining points when purchasing on Expedia. Thanks for the tip. I’ll be telling my husband who does all the booking.
Roberta, thanks for stopping by and sharing a tip! A x