SKYSCANNER TIPS FOR BOOKING CHEAP FLIGHTS IN 2024
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This post is about how to book cheap flights
Are you looking for Skyscanner tricks that will save you money on flights? You’ve come to the perfect place.
As someone who has been a full-time traveller in the past and still travels alot now I absolutely LOVE to save money on hotels and flights. There’s something great about knowing the little tips and tricks to use to save money when travelling.
Skyscanner is my favourite flight search tool that I’ve using for as long as I can remember.
Over the years I’ve picked up a fair few tips that I’d like to share with you so you too can save money on your flights.
Skyscanner offers so many different search features that allows you to find the absolute best travel deals available. You can find my favourite secret Skyscanner tricks for booking the best flights at the cheapest price below.
If you’re thinking of planning your first solo trip but are unsure where to start read this article first about how to book a solo trip.
Planning your trip? Use my favourite resources!
🏨 Accommodation : I recommend Booking.com
✈️ Flights : for the cheapest flights, I use Skyscanner
🚗 Rental Car : I recommend Rental Cars
🛡️ Travel Insurance : for the best deals I rely on HeyMondo
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The Best Skyscanner Tricks for Booking the Cheapest Flights
Skyscanner is my favourite place to book my flights. I’ve been booking my flights with Skyscanner for as long as I can remember and over the years I’ve become quite the expert at how to use Skyscanner to get the best and cheapest flights possible.
You’re probably familiar with a few of the basic Skyscanner search features such as choosing ‘round-trip’, ‘one-way’ or ‘direct flights only’ but there are so many additional tools and ways you can get great flight deals in this flight search engine that most people don’t know about.
Here are the best ways to find the best flight deals possible with Skyscanner.
Load Skyscanner using an incognito window
Some people swear by using the incognito tab to save money on flights and others don’t believe it works. I firmly believe that searching for your flight on an incognito window does result in cheaper flights. Over the years I’ve definitely got cheaper flights when I’ve used an incognito window at least some of the time so I believe it’s at least worth taking a look at.
I’d recommend searching on a non incognito window and an incognito window to see for yourself if it’s cheaper.
In order to use an incognito window open your internet browser, select the ‘File’ dropdown menu and click on ‘New Incognito Window’.
Or the keyboard shortcut is Command+Shift+N
Once you have an incognito window use Skyscanner like you normally would to search flights. This simple hack is one of the easiest ways to save money on flights.
Use Skyscanner ‘Whole Month’ option
A trick that I absolutely love when trying to get the cheapest flight possible on Skyscanner is to use the ‘whole month’ option when searching.
If you want to use this feature on Skyscanner type in your departure and destination cities in the search box.
Then if you click on where it asks you to input your departure date you will get a pop up where you can select the month you want to travel.
You will then get a calendar view with different prices for each day of the month. If you can be flexible with the dates you travel, you will definitely be able to save some money on flights, sometimes you can save a substantial amount of money.
Let’s take a look on Skyscanner at what you could save on a trip from Manchester - Bangkok in April.
If you go 8th - 22nd it will cost £708 for a roundtrip
If you go 10th - 24th it will cost £578 for a round trip
That’s a saving of £130 per ticket! That’s a substantial amount of money that you can save just by adjusting your departure and arrival date by two days.
The ‘whole month’ option with Skyscanner allows you to easily see these price differences and find the best price possible throughout an entire month.
As well as the ‘Calendar’ view Skyscanner also have a ‘Chart’ view that you can use with the ‘Whole month’ option. The chart view allows you to visually see the lowest priced dates.
See the image below for an example of what this looks like.
PRO TIP: Try to plan your travels so you aren’t tied to specific dates. This can be difficult with other commitments such as work but being flexible and playing with different dates when booking flights is the best way to save money on flights.
Use the cheapest month indicator
Another great feature of Skyscanner is that they have a ‘cheapest month’ indicator. This is perfect if you can be extremely flexible with your travel dates or if you’re on a budget and want to know when the cheapest time is to visit a certain location.
I always use this feature if I know exactly where I want to go but I don’t know when the cheapest time to go there is. It’s the perfect tool if you’re travelling on a tight budget or if you simply want to get the most for your money.
To use the ‘cheapest month’ feature type your departure and destination airports. For the travel dates use the ‘whole month’ tab but instead of selecting any month click on the month that Skyscanner is telling you is the cheapest month.
Skyscanner will then show you a calendar of the cheapest month to travel between those two destinations.
In the image below you can see that the cheapest month to travel between Manchester and Bangkok is May.
If you have a lot of flexibility with the dates of your trip, you should try out the ‘Cheapest month’ option to find the best deals for your holiday.
Use the ‘Everywhere’ feature Skyscanner has
If you know when you want to go away but you’re unsure on where you want to go you can use the ‘everywhere’ option. This is my absolute favourite feature that Skyscanner has and I’ve taken a few trips to places I wouldn’t have necessarily thought of just by using the ‘everywhere’ feature to get inspired.
The ‘everywhere’ feature is a great tool to use when planning travel as it will show you the cheapest places to fly from your designated departure airport.
To try out the ‘Everywhere’ function, enter in your departure point the you can either type in ‘Everywhere’ into the destination box or click on the ‘everywhere’ button that pops up.
When you’ve done that you can either enter specific dates for your travel or you can choose a whole month to look at.
Then a list will appear like the one shown in the image below of countries with the cheapest flight options from your departure city.
From here you can then explore the different locations. Be inspired by what Skyscanner shows you. Explore countries you maybe hadn’t thought of before. You can start planning you next trip by using this function.
When you find a country that appeals to you, you can click on it and Skyscanner will show you a list of the cheapest cities to fly into in that country as shown in the image below for Greece.
They also show general prices for these flights and number of stops.
PRO TIP : Use the ‘Everywhere’ function AND the ‘Whole month’ option at the same time. This will ensure you get the shown the cheapest places to fly to on the cheapest days. A double hit and help to your purse!
Search different cities in the same country
Something I often do when booking flights on Skyscanner to try to save money on flights is to use the ‘Everywhere’ feature to see if a certain city is the cheapest to fly to in a specific country.
To explain what I mean by this I’ll give you an example. Once when I was travelling to Thailand I wanted Chiang Mai to be my final destination. I used the ‘Everywhere’ feature to determine if it was cheapest to fly directly into Chiang Mai or to a nearby airport.
I looked where is close to Chiang Mai and Bangkok is not too far. So I competed two separate searches - one for a flight from London straight to Chiang Mai and the other a flight from London to Bangkok and then Bangkok to Chiang Mai. The flight to Chiang Mai was £679 roundtrip whereas a return flight to Bangkok was £477 and the flight to Chiang Mai from Bangkok was only £51 return.
London - Chiang Mai £679 roundtrip
London - Bangkok - Chiang Mai £528 roundtrip
As you can see from that I saved £151 by heading to Bangkok before Chiang Mai! It’s always worth having a look to see if there are other airports nearby in the same country that are cheaper to fly to.
PRO TIP: This is also a great opportunity to explore a different place too. I gave myself a bit of time in Bangkok before heading over to Chiang Mai. I spent two days there before heading up to Chiang Mai. This is a great way to turn a long layover into a free mini-vacation.
Set up Skyscanner Price Alerts
It might be that you’re not flexible with your travel dates or destination. If that’s the case a great idea is to use Skyscanners price alert feature.
Price alerts will send you a notification when your desired flight drops in price.
To be able to use this feature, type in your departure airport and specific destination. Then, apply your specified dates and search.
When the flight results appear, click on the ‘Get Price Alerts’ button in the top left corner. A pop-up will ask you to create an account (completely free) using your Google, Facebook account or email address.
After you’ve created an account, Skyscanner will send you email notifications to tell you when there have been price changes on your desired flight.
Use Skyscanner for the Cheapest Flights
As I mentioned previously I always use Skyscanner to book my flights and I have done for years.
I reckon I save, on average, around 40% on my flights using Skyscanners different flight search options.
I hope you start using these tips for getting cheap flights with Skyscanner.
Solo travel good reads
TRAVEL ESSENTIALS
Planning a trip? Here are some of the resources and tools I personally use to organise my travel plans to anywhere in world.
FLIGHTS : Find the best deals on flights using Skyscanner.
VISAS : Use iVisa to check if you need a tourist visa for wherever you’re going to and apply for an expedited visa online. Use OneWayFly to obtain proof of onward travel/hotel reservation for your visa application if needed.
TRAVEL INSURANCE : Insure your trip with my preferred insurance for single trip and annual cover HeyMondo
AIRPORT TRANSFER : Pre-book your hotel transfers from the airport.
ACCOMMODATION : Find the best hotel deals on Booking.com.
DAY TRIPS : Find the best city tours and day excursions on your travels on Viator or Get Your Guide.
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