7 foolproof tips to finding cheap flights online ✈️

Get ready for takeoff without breaking the bank.

If you’re always jealous of your friends scoring super-cheap flights to Asia they’re booking or fares across Australia that you could have bought for less than the price of your Friday night UberEats order, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve spend years trying to discover the best way to find cheap flights online and are ready to share what has always helped us get the lowest prices possible.

1. Make the most of flight aggregators

This isn’t just first on our list, but it’s the first thing we do any time we’re looking for a flight.

What flight aggregators do is allow you to search for flights on a multitude of websites in just one go, including both airlines and third-party agents (for example, an online travel agency).

For example, let’s say you want to travel from Melbourne to Adelaide from 1-3 December.

You’ll be able to sort it by a bunch of options, which is super convenient because what each person is looking for in a flight is very different. One person may just want the cheapest flight no matter how long it takes and how many stops there may be, while others just want the fastest flight.

You’ll also be able to see flights from various airlines at once, which you wouldn’t be able to do if you went straight to a specific airline’s site.

And it’s not just various airlines you’ll be able to find, but a whole list of websites where you can book each one, and how much they each charge.

So, using an aggregator can help you figure out that flying with Jetstar and booking your fare with Flight Network will get you to between Melbourne and Adelaide for the cheapest price.

P.S. You’ll want to bookmark both of these sites: Skyscanner and Kayak (the latter is where these screenshots are from). Which one you use is totally up to personal preference, but we find Skyscanner has a few more handy features (which will come up later in this post).

2. Join a cash-back program

These programs are exactly what they sound like. You make a purchase, and you get cash back.

They work in a similar way to how some credit cards offer cash back on spending, but there aren’t any nasty catches like interest or annual fees to join. Instead of getting the money refunded to your card though, you’ll have a balance on the cash-back program’s site and you’ll need to withdraw it.

Two of the most popular ones in Australia are Cashrewards (which is where the above screenshots are from) and Shopback. You’ll be able to find airlines like Virgin Australia, Etihad, Qatar and Air New Zealand are affiliated with them.

Most airlines them hover around the 1-1.5% cash back mark, but there are often “boosted” deals that offer extra savings. These tend to pop up around popular sale times like Black Friday, Boxing Day and EOFY.

While there aren’t a ton of airlines currently partnered with cash-back sites, but it’s well worth checking out anyway. Online travel agencies are also partnered with them, but often the return on flights is quite low. (But low definitely isn’t zero!)

3. Check for and use a flexible dates calendar

While flexibility is pretty integral in getting a good deal on a flight, searching for a whole bunch of dates individually can be a pain. That’s why we always look out for a little “flexible dates” tick-box or a calendar search option when booking.

These are a bit different depending on what site you’re looking at them.

Some, like Qantas’ as pictured below, will show the prices on dates surrounding the one you’ve selected at the time of booking. These are handy if you already know when you want to go, but are flexible enough to add on an extra day, or leave a day earlier, if it means saving you enough money,

Others, like Jetstar’s as pictured below, will let you see an entire month’s worth of pricing before even committing to a date to search. For this example, I just entered in that I wanted to fly from Sydney to Darwin and clicking on the dates field reveals a calendar that will show me the cheapest day to fly in each month.

These Australian airlines all offer flexible date calendars:

• Jetstar (Monthly)
• Qantas (Weekly)
• Rex (Weekly)
• Virgin Australia (Weekly)

4. Memorise when the regular sales are

We’re not just talking about Black Friday and Boxing Day here. Some airlines have their own special sales, whether a weekly event or an annual sale, that can heavily discount the price of flights.

The two most important ones for Aussie travellers include:

• Jetstar’s Friday Fare Frenzy: Takes place on Fridays from 12pm until 8pm, but occasionally gets extended through the weekend. If there is another sale happening, sometimes the Fare Frenzy gets skipped that week.
• Virgin Australia’s Happy Hour: Takes place on Thursdays from 4pm until 11pm, but occasionally gets extended to a 12-hour sale starting at 11am. Like Jetstar, if there’s another sale on at the same time, Virgin sometimes skips Happy Hour.

While those two sales start and end at a set time each week, some others aren’t as easy to track as we know roughly when they’re going to happen, but it’s not quite set in stone.

Some more regular sales to keep an eye out for:

• AirAsia’s Birthday Sale: November/December each year
• Jetstar’s Birthday Sale: May each year
• Scoot’s Birthday/Anniversary sale: Between April and June each year

5. Sign up for airline newsletters and follow them on social media

Not only can this sometimes reward you with extra savings, but signing up for airline newsletters is an excellent way to find out when a sale is starting. Sometimes, they’ll even give you a heads up that it’s coming so you’ll know exactly when to be online with your credit card ready.

Following social media accounts is another way to find out about sales. Just like we announce our latest deals on our Instagram and Twitter accounts, lots of airlines do to.

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6. Become a member

Like signing up for an airline’s newsletter, joining its membership program can help you find out when the latest sales are — or even put you at an advantage against those who aren’t members.

We’ll look at two different types of members here: loyalty-based ones (like frequent flyer programs) and non-loyalty based ones.

Loyalty-based memberships

There’s a lot more involved in the loyalty-based membership benefits that tons of websites, like The Points Guy and Champagne Mile cover in great detail, so we’ll just touch on this one quickly. Joining a frequent flyer program can help you earn points that you can use toward free or discounted flights.

And, sometimes, members of these programs get bonus offers, like a discount on the number of points you need to redeem a flight. For example, Qantas sometimes offers deals like this.

Non-loyalty based memberships

Unlike loyalty programs that most full-service (and some budget) airlines have, non-loyalty memberships are a bit harder to come by. But when you do, they can be well worth it.

Club Jetstar is one such program. While you have to pay $55 per year to join, this can easily be paid off in just one or two flights. For example, this flight from Cairns to Tokyo is $20 cheaper each way for a Club Jetstar member. You can use your membership to buy tickets for a travel companion too.

So, when you book a return flight ($40 savings total) plus a ticket for your companion, that’s now $80 that you’re saving. And if you travel multiple times per year, that can easily add up to even more.

The airline has also held members-only sales with huge discounts you wouldn’t be able to get otherwise, like this deal for $38 flights across most of the country.

Plus, other than just discounts on the fares, Club Jetstar members save 20% on seat selection and checked baggage.

7. Book with a third-party site

(Now, we’ll start off by admitting this one is a bit controversial, but it could save you money!)

If you’re not familiar with the term, a third-party site is sort of like a middleman. In the online travel space, it’s like a virtual travel agency that sells flights rather than buying them directly from the airline.

Let’s go all the way back up to step one and revisit the image of the Melbourne-Adelaide flight with a whole list of sites where you can book the flight.

On the right, you can see the cheapest site where you can book these flights, mytrip.com, which is selling them for $176. On the left, you’ll see the price of booking them directly with Jetstar, which sells them for $178. There’s also another dozen-or-so third-party sites that are also selling these flights for a range of prices.

In this case, you’ll be saving just $2 by booking through mytrip.com instead of Jetstar, which may not be worth going through a site you’re not very familiar with. But, in other cases, you can be saving a lot more. This is especially true with longer-haul flights.

Here’s a good example: We looked for a flight from Perth to London and found the savings were a huge $90 per person. If you’re travelling as a couple, that adds up to $180 in savings.

Booking the return flight with mytrip.com or FlightNetwork costs $1,735 return, while booking directly with Malaysia Airlines will cost $1,825.

What makes it controversial though?

But, you’ll need to keep a few things in mind when using a third party.

• Third parties often tack on high credit card fees compared to booking with an airline. A good way around this is to see if certain cards have lower fees (American Express is almost always the most expensive to use), or if you’re able to pay via PayPal or bank transfer.
• If something goes wrong, getting your flight changed or refunded can be a nightmare. While travel was disrupted during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, there were lots of issues with travellers not getting refunds or not being given the same rights as travellers who had booked directly with the airlines. Third parties may have their own cancellation policies that are different to the airline’s.

What else can you do to find cheap flights online?

Right here, of course! Check out our latest deals and offers for cheap flights.