#Travel Hack: How to Score Killer Airfare Deals

Edited December 2024

WAIT.  WHAT??? You paid HOW MUCH for that flight to Tokyo!?!?

Here’s how to score a ridiculously cheap flight to just about anywhere.

Miami? $33 round trip. (whaaaaattt??) Honolulu? $286 r/t. Scotland? How about high $300s??? 

When traveling, your two largest expenses are usually your accommodations and your flight. In the past, I’ve raved loudly and often about the amazing benefits of staying in hostels (cheap stays, fun times, and new friends!) and using Workaway to find cool local experiences by exchanging a few hours of work each day in return for room and board – I’ve worked at a vineyard on the South Island of New Zealand, helped at a Nepalese orphanage and was a caretaker in a Tuscan villa for 2 months. (SERIOUSLY??? Read about my Workway adventures here!)  Hostels and Workaway are some effective – and fun! – ways to cut your accommodation expenses and increase your adventure quotient while traveling.

But what about your flight? Fares were dirt cheap during the pandemic of 2020/2021, but now that the world is FINALLY starting to open for business and welcome tourists and travelers, prices for airfare are starting to creep up again.

So when I got my daily email from the flight scouting site, Going (formerly known as Scott’s Cheap Flights) about killer fares to Japan, I thought, sure! Why not? Japan wasn’t high on my list ( I don’t have an actual list anywhere… but you know what I mean!), but I’d heard great things about this small, clean, beautiful, and delicious country.

I clicked on the link in the email and began playing around with dates. After a few minutes of selecting different start and end dates to find the best pricing, I got to the airline’s website to the checkout page only to be told, “We’re sorry. One of your segments is no longer available” numerous times. (Surprisingly, for an impatient person, I can show incredible amounts of patience and doggedness 🐶 when online travel deals can be had! )

Eventually, after maybe 8 or 10 more tries, I received confirmation for a round-trip flight to Tokyo from Denver for…drumroll please…$374!!!

I was psyched!! I was going to Japan in February!!! WOO HOOOOOO!!

After the initial excitement, amazement, adrenaline, and euphoria wore off, I logged back on to the airline’s site (this fare was with American Airlines) and played around again, looking for better prices. (Hard to believe, but yes, I had noticed cheaper fares showing up on their calendar!!) And lo and behold…

Ten minutes later, I nailed a $229 fare.

Round trip.  Denver to Tokyo. Hold on…I’ll say it again.

ROUND TRIP…USA to Japan…$229!!!

Woot woot!! That’s cheaper than flying from Denver to Houston or LA!

I frantically compared and triple-checked the dates/times/flight segments of the two tickets I just bought, and surprisingly, these were both pretty straightforward flights – Denver to Los Angeles with a 90-minute layover, then straight to Japan! (Sometimes cheap flights = reallllly long layovers and multiple stops.)  Everything looked good (good???? Amazeballs!!!) so I went ahead and canceled that first flight I had booked and kept the second one (always wait to cancel the first flight in case you can’t snag the second/revised flight; in the USA, you have 24 hours after booking to cancel any flight without penalty!)

Interested? Intrigued? Confused? Here are some tips on scoring a monster deal like this:

1. First of all – Subscribe to Going, formerly known as Scott’s Cheap Flights (and yeah, I’m not too keen on their new nifty name “Going” but nobody asked for my opinion!)

(If you use this link I get a few nickels 💰 from them and it doesn’t change your pricing at all.) For the paltry price of $49/year (on sale as of this writing for $39 for new subscribers for the first year), you’ll get their Premium membership with daily emails sharing the best savings domestically and internationally.  Or choose the Elite membership to receive premium economy, business, and first-class deals for $199/year, on sale right now for $124.99.  They also offer a free version of their service as well…but you’ll get severe FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) from their teaser emails saying “Darn! you missed a $79 RT flight to NYC!” Or “Yesterday, premier members booked $389 round-trip flights to Munich!” 🙀 Going has over 2 MILLION members and is 1000% legit.

2. When the email comes, you need to jump on it—quickly. I’m not messing around—I mean it. The email will state the length of time the team at Going predicts the fare will last and the travel dates these fares are good for. And especially when the flight deal is as ridiculously low as this Japan airfare was, you’ve got to jump on it. 

3. Certainly, having great date availability and flexibility with your timing helps immensely when booking fares like this. As mentioned, I played around with various dates to get the best combination and grabbed it. Will it be chilly in Tokyo in February? A bit…but I can bring a jacket and deal with it for a stellar deal like this!

4. You can use points from your credit card or your frequent flyer miles or credits you may have with an airline to book these killer fares since you’ll be on the airline’s website. You can even pay a bit more to upgrade from the basic economy fare to the flexible fare to allow for free date change and seat selection. It was an additional $40 each way to do this on American for my Japan flight.

5. Going is not a travel agency or a third-party vendor like Expedia or Travelocity. Besides, you do know you should avoid booking with a third-party site right? Always try to book directly with the airline.  If you ever have a problem with the flight being canceled, late, or rescheduled, you will get zero customer service from CheapOAir or Kiwi.com or any 3rd-party airline ticket vendors. They simply sell the tickets, and that’s it. The airline won’t deal with you because you didn’t purchase from them directly. Don’t learn this the hard way like I did! I attempted to send two of my kids back to Denver from Ireland a few days earlier than planned, and I had purchased one of the tickets on Expedia, and the other from the airline directly. You can guess which flight was a nightmare to change!! 

6. Like they say at Nike, “just do it.” Book a good fare when you find it, but keep searching and trying different date combinations, or different airlines – and simply book another ticket if you find a better deal. Remember, when you book a flight you’ve got 24 hours to cancel any flight(s) you book. (I know that’s the policy in the USA – if you’re from somewhere else, you’d probably better check the cancellation policy in your country!) And go ahead and book the cheap flight for your kid or spouse or best friend too – you can always cancel it if they can’t join you. (Tip: Set an alarm ⏰ on your phone for 23 hours later so you don’t forget to cancel it in case you want to sleep on it!)

Although it takes some perseverance and patience, it’s well worth the time to find and book a super cheap flight using Going.  It’s been a great return on my $49 investment, as I’ve found a few great deals which more than paid for the yearly subscription!

Go to Going and sign up for the free, Premium or Elite membership today by using the link in this article – and let me (and Scott!) know when you score your first deal! I can’t wait to hear your success story! 

(EDIT – Want to hear a sad story?? Because Japan was still closed to tourists in 2022 when my flight was planned, I was unable to actually go. The airline had to cancel all flights to/from Japan for the entire year and could not rebook me at this crazy price.  In fact, the American Airlines customer service woman was stunned that I had gotten such a good price; not that it did me any good, but that’s a pandemic for ya!)

 

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See you there! 😉

 

Ya snooze, ya lose. ~ anonymous

He who hesitates is lost. ~ Joseph Addison