If you’ve ever found yourself daydreaming about what it would be like to fly business class on your next international flight, you know it can be tempting. After all, the thought of extra legroom, free drinks, and gourmet meals can make regular old economy class feel like a total drag.

But is business class really worth the higher price tag? Let’s find out!

Is Business Class Worth It?

Whether you’re looking to book an international flight from the UK to Australia, or a long haul business class flight to Greece, there’s a lot to consider.

While you can sometimes find business class on domestic flights, it’s mostly found on international flights, and offers more comfort and amenities than standard economy, premium economy, or domestic first class.

One thing we can guarantee, because business class is more expensive, and geared more to solo business travelers, you’ll likely have fewer babies and children in business class.

Not all business class tickets are made equal

A word of caution first. Not all business class tickets are equal.

Some business class flights have lay flat seats, meals designed by celebrity chefs, multiple bars for business class passengers, and fantastic service. Other business class tickets are minimally upgraded economy tickets, with barely larger seats, the same food as economy, and a seat toward the front of the plane. There are huge differences in business class between different airlines, specific routes, and even airplanes.

Different airlines may also call their business class seats by another name, like executive class, upper class, club world, or club Europe.

Cost

The biggest knock against business class tickets is their cost. A long haul full fare economy ticket can cost as little as a few hundred dollars, while a business or first class ticket can set you back thousands of dollars. But if you’re looking to splurge on a once-in-a-lifetime trip or fly in comfort for an important meeting or event, the extra money might be worth it.

Generally, business class is more expensive than economy, but considerably less expensive than first class.

Short haul flights also tend to have smaller cost differences between economy and business class than long haul flights. For some long haul flights, for example between the UK and Australia, business class can literally cost thousands more than economy.

Meals

If you’re flying over several time zones and want to thoroughly enjoy your journey, then it might be worth shelling out some extra cash for quality meals in business class.

Many airlines offer better quality food than what’s available in economy (think fresh salad instead of soggy sandwiches) plus complimentary wine and champagne (if that’s your thing!). Business class also often includes on-demand snacking.

In general, business class food is marginally better than economy, but there are certain exceptions where business class food is much higher quality. For example, Air France has commissioned Michelin star chef Anne-Sophie Pic to create eight dishes for business class customers.

On short haul business class flights, however, the meal won’t make much of a difference, since most flights don’t have time for a proper in-flight meal service anyway.

Seats and comfort

Business class seating can be night and day compared to the experience you get in economy. First off, business class seating provides added luxury and comfort with bigger, reclining seats, and more legroom.

Long haul business class flights generally offer a lie flat bed, but it isn’t guaranteed. With some airlines such as TAP, the business class seat only partially reclines.

A great seat isn’t just about comfort. On a long haul flight, a comfy experience can give you a much better sleep and less jet lag, leading to a more enjoyable vacation (or business trip). It can also mean choosing an overnight flight and a decent rest rather than a day flight. Not only can you save on hotel costs, you can also get off the flight rested and ready for your first adventure.

Want to know the specific details of your seat? Find your airline on seatguru and check the specifications. Here are a few things to look for. How wide are the seats? How close are you to other passengers? How many seats fit in a row? Does the seat recline? Will the seat convert into a bed?

Departure and arrival

Some, but not all, business class tickets offer a better departure and arrival experience. Depending on the airline and route, this can include express check in, fast track security, priority boarding, priority immigration plus a more generous baggage allowance for the best business backpack.

Services and perks

You can expect better perks in business class than economy, from powerful chargers to keep all your devices in working order, better entertainment options, and even complimentary amenities like free Wi-fi access, newspapers and magazines.

Plus, business class travelers get priority boarding and check-in services so they can be one of the first passengers on board. Business class generally has a higher flight attendant to passenger ratio, leading to better service, including faster meal service which means meals served first and more time with lights out for a better sleep on long haul flights.

Some business class flights offer extra perks like chauffeured pick-up and drop off, and an in flight amenities kit including items like socks, eye masks and toiletries.

Generally, (though not always), a business class ticket gives you access to the airline’s airport lounge. Lounge access often includes amenities like free meals, alcohol, showers and clothes pressing.

Business class vs first class

In business class, you’ll expect perks like wider or more comfortable seating and priority boarding.

When you upgrade to first class, you’re pampered from start to finish. From dining experiences that rival high-end restaurants and personalized concierge services, to private suites with beds, showers, and sound-proof areas for business conferences, first class is a much more luxurious experience.

Food in first class can often rival that of the best restaurants, and can have menus designed by famous chefs.

Business class has more legroom, but not always a private space while first class sometimes offers seats that turn into a bed or an mini apartment.

How to save money on business class tickets

If you just can’t stomach the cost of business class there are a few tricks that may help drop the price.

Wait for a last minute upgrade. You may simply get an offer from the airline at the last minute to upgrade. At one point in the past, they often gave someone a free bump up but those days are generally over since planes often max out their occupancy and it will usually cost you, though oftentimes at a much reduced rate, than you’d pay ahead of time.

Use your airline points or frequent flyer status. If you have points or miles, then it may be worth it to you to shell out some of those points to upgrade. If you time it right, there are times where using points makes the most sense.

Consider premium economy tickets. If you can’t quite justify the cost of business class, premium economy is another option. Generally, premium economy gives you bigger seats, seats toward the front of the plane, better food, and a few more perks at a much lower cost than business class.

Book early. The early bird gets the worm, or in this case, the cheaper business class ticket. Book as far in advance as possible to secure the best deals. While hoping for a last minute upgrade can sometimes be cheaper, there is zero guarantee a better deal will pop up.

Consider alternative airports. Sometimes, flying into a nearby airport can save you money on business class tickets. Don’t overlook smaller airports in the area.

So is business class airfare worth it?

In the end, choosing business class or economy is a personal choice. It really depends on your budget and how important comfort is to you when flying long distances (or short distances).

If you’re cash rich and time poor, business class may be for you, and by all means go ahead and book yourself a seat in the front cabin, but make sure that you maximize your benefits by taking advantage of any perks offered along with your ticket, like lounge access or priority check-in privileges!

Should a business class ticket be on your business travel checklist? A good business class experience really makes getting from point A to point B a pleasure rather than an endurance test!

However, if saving money is more important than indulging yourself, then economy may be the way to go. Just remember that there are always ways to make your flight more enjoyable by researching airlines’ amenities before booking your ticket!

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Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to book wholesale airline tickets?

There’s a lot of information out there on how to get the cheapest flight, like finding mistake fares, signing up for curated email newsletters, or just looking at a comparison website.

I remember when flight aggregators became the go-to way to find a cheap flight, around 2010. Aggregators search dozens of airfare booking engines, airfare sites, airlines themselves and OTAs (online travel agencies) and compare prices.

Back in 2017, I remember the going advice was to book around 50 days before your flight to save money. In 2018 and early 2019, there was a lot of buzz about email subscription services (where you sign up to get emails from companies that send you weekly deals).

I’ve been a little frustrated lately, because it seems that it’s getting harder to get a great deal. Generally, I get the same airfare prices from most online flight search engines. While I do see some good deals from my email subscriptions, most of them are either at the wrong times for me, or out of the wrong airport.

How to Book Wholesale Airline Tickets for Cheap Flights

So, I was definitely interested when I got an email from FlyLine inviting me to try out their service. FlyLine says flights through them are cheapest because they don’t markup the wholesale rates that they source from the airlines.

What is FlyLine? FlyLine is a subscription based service that doesn’t charge booking fees. You pay for a yearly subscription to access wholesale flight prices. You can see more on the FlyLine website.

How can FlyLine save you money?

When you book flights through a travel agency or online site, they often get their wholesale prices from a computer database (a GDS). The travel agency or online search engine then adds their markup, and then charges you the marked up price.

FlyLine saves you money by giving you the wholesale price directly, with no markup. Instead, FlyLine makes their money through an annual membership.

What airlines can you search?

The FlyLine network sources flights from over 250 airlines, including Delta, Alaska, jetBlue, KLM, easyJet, Southwest, and Air France.

FlyLine sources wholesale flight tickets with a zero markup from all of them. FlyLine also lets you connect one-way flights from various airlines (this is called interlining in the airline industry).

You can search wholesale business class flights, or first class, economy or premium economy, plus wholesale international flights or domestic flights.

What’s the FlyLine Membership like?

FlyLine is a membership-based system, which means that their wholesale flight prices are available only to subscribed members.

JoinFlyLine offers two types of memberships, Basic and Premium. Both memberships offer flight searches and bookings, automatic check-ins and deal alerts.

Basic membership. Basic membership offers access to six bookings for every 12 months . The Basic yearly subscription fee is just $49.99 a year.

Premium membership. Premium membership offers unlimited bookings per year. Premium subscription offers a companion account for an even more exclusive user experience. The yearly Premium membership fee is $79.99.

Is there a free FlyLine trial?

If you don’t want to subscribe right away, there’s a free 14 day trial. You’ll need to provide your credit card for the trial.

FlyLine sends you an email reminder three days before your trial ends, and you won’t be charged until the end of the two-week trial. You can’t book through FlyLine during the trial, but it will let you look at wholesale fares to see if the deals are going to work for you.

Can I cancel?

If FlyLine isn’t for you, you can cancel online, if you like. Just navigate to the account tab click on Subscription management, and then click Cancel Plan (or Downgrade Plan to cancel the Basic Membership).

How much can you save?

We’re looking at booking a few upcoming flights, so we thought we’d give FlyLine a test run so see if their claims really hold up.

I started with a flight from our hometown airport in Canada to Barcelona in April.

Since FlyLine shows flights in USD, I searched KAYAK in USD as well.

FlyLine showed a price of $745 USD, while KAYAK was much more expensive at $963. That’s a $218 USD difference per ticket!

What really surprised me is that my go-to booking engine, Google Flights, showed a price of $968 USD.

FlyLine was $223 USD cheaper! That’s a discount of over 22%!

Since we fly as a family of four, that’s a savings of $892 USD for our family (223 USD times four). Wow!

Next, I tested FlyLine on a domestic flight from Kelowna to Winnipeg for a summer trip August 2 to 9. The FlyLine price came up as $281 USD, with plenty of options to choose from at under $325 USD.

I then checked prices on KAYAK, and they came in at $297 for the cheapest flight.

That’s a difference of $16. Admittedly not a huge difference, but a savings nonetheless.

What’s interesting is that FlyLine had plenty of other flight options to choose from at under $325 USD. The next cheapest flight on KAYAK was $436!

FlyLine isn’t always the cheapest, and there may even be rare occasions where you can’t get a price.

To check prices to and from smaller airports in Canada, I pulled up prices from Kelowna to Sudbury, Ontario (where I’m planning to attend a conference in June). Unfortunately, FlyLine wasn’t able to show a result for me.

Flight purchase prices include all applicable taxes. There can be an additional cost for checked baggage or carry-on.

One thing that I didn’t love is that occasionally FlyLine was a bit slow in pulling up airport codes in the search box. It’s a fairly new service, though, so I expect that to improve.

Is FlyLine right for you?

Whether FlyLine works for you will depend a lot on the specific flights you’re looking at.

Generally, international flights have more markup, so you may save more if you fly a lot of international flights, or if you have an international trip planned.

Markup on individual flights range a lot, so you may save a small fortune booking wholesale through FlightLine, but some flights might not be cheaper. Occasionally, online travel agents even sell at less than wholesale cost, either to grab market share, or as a loss leader (hoping to make up the difference when you book hotels or cars through them).

Also, airlines and OTAs sometimes have flash sales and discounts that make their fares cheaper than FlyLine’s for some routes. FlyLine says that when this happens, they’ll show these discounted sale flights ahead of theirs so that subscribers see the best deal first.

Confused by the airline booking jargon?

Unfortunately, understanding how airfare prices works means understanding a few technical airfare terms. We’ve broken the airlines codes down here to help you out.

GDS. In the airfare industry, a Global Distribution System (or GDS) is a computer database offered by airlines (and hotels and car rental services). Human travel agents, and Online Travel Agents (OTAs) like Kayak find their flights through the GDS, and then they add on a mark-up to sell it to you, the end consumer. which they source flights for passengers like you. An example airline GDS is Amadeus CRS, though there are others.

FlyLine accesses the GDS directly, with no intermediary or middle man to to their own margin or mark-up.

OTA. An Online Travel Agency (OTA) is a company that sells you flights online. Expedia and Kayak are OTAs. They find flights (and hotels and car rentals) through a wholesale GDS, and then sell them to you at a markup.

Interlining. Interlining (or interline ticketing) is an agreement between airlines that lets the lets multiple airlines to sell passengers tickets that require multiple airlines. Interlining lets passengers change from a flight on a first airline to a second flight on another airline without having to gather bags or check-in again. It also lets passengers buy a single ticket with the first airline, rather than separate one way tickets.

Codeshare. Codesharing happens when a flight is numbered with an airline’s code (abbreviation) even though the flight is operated by another airline. Basically it’s an agreement with two airlines to sell the same flight with a different flight number, increasing business for each airline.

Alliance. An airline alliance is an agreement between airline groups that let them share overhead. Travelers can benefit from lower prices, more flights (through codesharing) and more rewards points options. Alliances like Star Alliance or oneworld almost always have interline agreements. 

Wholesale rates. Wholesale rates are the costs offered directly from the supplier, or GDS.

Wholesale airfare consolidators. An airline consolidator sells wholesale airfare. Tickets bought through a consolidator often jave different fare rules, and tickets may not be eligible for reward programs.

Do you have any tricks for finding wholesale airline tickets? Let us know!

One of the biggest travel misconceptions we hear is that return flights are cheaper than booking one way flights. While that may have been true years ago, it’s definitely not the case now.

We love to book one way flights simply because it often saves us a lot of money! We’ve scored some amazing deals over the years by booking one way flights.

How to Get Cheap One Way Flights

Ready? Here are our best tips for how to find cheap one way flights.

Be as flexible with your dates as possible

Having flexible dates is probably the easiest way to save money on flights. Flexible dates regularly saves us 20 to 50 percent off our flights, and often more. The more flexible you are on timelines, the bigger savings you can get.

Even better, you can save a ton of money by avoiding peak times like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Spring Break.

Find the cheapest destination

Your destination airport is probably the biggest factor that can save you money, sometimes more than 50%. We use this trick all the time – it’s landed us some great deals.

On our last visit to Europe, we planned to stay three months, and we knew we were leaving from Cancun, Mexico.

Keeping our destination city open landed us a one way ticket from Cancun to Madrid, Spain for $160 USD with Pullmantur Air (now branded as Wamos Air). This was a lot cheaper than our second cheapest option of $391 from Cancun to Frankfurt.

Use the right flight search engine

Not all search engines are created equal – some, like FlightList, make finding one way flights especially easy.

Right now, we’re searching for cheap one way flights to Europe in the fall. Since we’re going to be there for a few weeks (at a minimum), and we’re going to visit a few countries, we have a lot of flexibility in our arrival and departure cities.

Europe has some of the most affordable discount airlines, so we have the flexibility to fly into almost any city in Europe, and catch a cheap budget flight to the countries that are on our main list: England, Scotland, France, and Italy.

We’re flying out of our home city in Kelowna, BC, Canada, making this a pretty challenging search. Kelowna’s a small city that’s not served by many budget airlines, and it has no direct flights to Europe, meaning we’ll need a minimum of one stop. Flights from here tend to be a bit pricey, and generally a pain to find.

I really like Flightlist for cheap one-way flights, because I can choose an entire country or region as a departure (or destination). In the screenshot below, we easily found the cheapest flight between Kelowna and Europe (Kelowna to London Heathrow) for $322 USD a person. Love it!

What I really love is that this search includes discount airlines like Wizzair and Swoop that I don’t see on other search engines.

Check for discount budget airlines

Flight search engines are getting better and better at including discount airlines in their searches. That said, there are some budget airlines, like Southwest Airlines, that don’t allow bookings with flight search engines.

Budget airlines can save you a bundle, but the problem is that it can be hard to figure out which budget airlines serve a specific airport.

Don’t know where to start? Wikipedia has a helpful list of low cost airlines here. You can almost always find a list of airlines that fly in or out of an airport directly on the airport’s website, which you can usually find with a Google search.

Consider flying in to, and out of, alternate airports

When you do a flight search, be sure not to limit your search to large airports like LAX, LFK or London Heathrow. You can often catch a much better deal by flying into alternate airports nearby.

Smaller airports often have lower landing fees, and they’re less busy, allowing airlines to offer lower fares and more flight times.

Just make sure you budget transportation to and from the alternate airport into your travel plans! This can often add a hefty unexpected expense.

Search for one person

Airlines often offer one or two seats on a flight at a lower price than the rest (I’m assuming so their flights show as cheaper on flight engine). Since most airlines offer the same rate for every passenger in a booking, that means that a family of four (like ours) will miss out on the deal.

For example, if there is one seat available for $500, and the rest are at $800, a family searching for four seats will get a rate of $800 per seat, missing out on that one seat deal for $500!

This often means that a family booking together will miss out on a lower fare.

To get around this, you can do separate bookings to score the cheapest deal. The downside is that there’s a bit more work to do the separate bookings, and you may end up seated separately.

Search in Incognito Mode

You’ve likely heard this before – some say flight booking websites track our airfare searches, and increase prices when they see us searching for the same flights over and over.

In response, you’re supposed to put your web browser into incognito mode (which hides your search history), preventing websites from tracking your searches, and getting you a lower price.

The best actual research we found on this was from a CBC video on how to score the best deal online. What’s interesting is that they found that prices sometimes did change if you were in incognito mode – and this is interesting – but sometimes they were lower, and other times prices were higher.

That said, it’s insanely easy to switch your browser to incognito mode, so you may as well give it a try.

Don’t forget about luggage fees

Sure, a flight may seem cheap, but if you’re going to be dinged with huge fees for carry-on and checked baggage, it may cost a lot more than you anticipated.

This doesn’t mean you need to layer on seven layers of clothing to avoid baggage fees. Just know what you want to take – carry on, a larger checked bag, or nothing more than a tiny personal item – and budget for that.

Watch for special deals

If you know what airline you’ll likely be flying, sign up for their newsletter to catch special deals.

Keep watching fares for 24 hours after you book!

Many airlines allow you to cancel your tickets within 24 hours after purchase, meaning you have 24 hours to find a better price.

Then, you can either get a refund and buy a new ticket, or try to call your airline and get a the difference refunded.

Do this with caution, however! The 24 hour free cancellation isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Some airlines only offer the 24 hour refund ONLY on refundable tickets, and many don’t offer this if you use an online booking site or in real life travel agent.

Like this article? Check out more ways to save:

• How To Find The Cheapest Flights To Anywhere
• 45 Great Jobs you can do while Traveling the World and How to Get Them
• Advanced Flight Hacking: How to Save Money if Your Departure City is Flexible

Do you have any tips for finding the cheapest one way tickets? Let us know!

We’ve scored some fantastic deals using airfare search engines that let you type in your departure city (or country) and search for cheap flights to virtually any destination in the world. This is perfect if you’re searching for flights without a destination in mind.

Updated in 2022! We still prefer Skyscanner and Google Flights to other search engines – keep reading to see why.

Want to get started now? Click here to search on Skyscanner, and be sure to put Everywhere in the destination field to find cheap flights to anywhere in the world.

Using these hacks, we found cheap one way flights from Cancun, Mexico to Madrid, Spain for $160 USD all in. We also just booked a one-way flight from Istanbul, Turkey to Toronto, Canada for just $288, including taxes and fees

That’s less than your average local flight within Canada. These tips will work to find the cheapest flights from NYC to anywhere, or really from any city or country!

Travel tip! If you want to protect your privacy on public Wi-Fi in cafes, airports, and hotels, look into getting a VPN. Using a VPN can help you get cheaper flights, if used correctly, even if you’re debating surfshark vs pia.

I also use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to access country-specific websites. As a Canadian, a lot of websites from the USA are blocked in Canada (and elsewhere outside of the USA). To get around this, I use a VPN to “trick” the USA based website into thinking I’m browsing from the USA. With a VPN, I can access these websites just as if I was in the USA.

A VPN can be set up on a smartphone, tablet, computer or laptop. It protects your privacy when on public Wi-Fi, and even lets you stream your favorite TV shows from home.

See Private Internet Access VPN prices and more here.

How to find the cheapest flights to anywhere

Sound interesting? In this post, we:

• Tell you how we find cheap flights to anywhere (and no, none of these companies paid us to write this post).
• Review the major flight search engines that allow you to search from a departure city (or country) without including any specific destination. You can use this feature to search cheap flights by date not destination.

Skyscanner

Let’s start with what we think is the best search engine of the bunch for finding cheap flights anywhere: Skyscanner.  To find cheap flights to everywhere from your destination, just leave the To field blank in your Skyscanner search (or type Everywhere). This works really well to find last minute cheap flights to anywhere as well!

Click here to search on Skyscanner.

Skyscanner lets you see a month of fares at a time, which can save you a bundle if your dates are flexible. It will also let you see the cheapest month.

To see flights for a whole month, or choose the cheapest month, just click in the Depart box.

Skyscanner Explore also lets you type in a country name in the From box to find cheap airfares from all cities in the country.

Skyscanner map search. This is one of our favorite features on Skyscanner, and it’s a great helping in showing you how to find random cheap flights to anywhere. On the Skyscanner site (click here to search on Skyscanner), scroll down and click on the map to see an airfare map with prices and explore cheap flights.

Then just select your departure city or airport and date. You can only select one month at a time for fares, but this flight price map is a great way to see cheap flights to a random destination in the world.

Free Apps: We use the Skyscanner iPhone app a lot as well to find Skyscanner flights to anywhere. The app seems to have almost all of the features of the site, including the ability to search for flights to anywhere, and for a month at a time. It also features a cool interactive cheap flights map that lists prices to cities around the globe. The app is available for iPhone, iPad, on Google Play, and Amazon apps.

The prices listed on Skyscanner are based on previous flight search data. That means when you click the link to search prices, your new search prices may be different from the first prices you saw. When you actually go to book, prices may change as well.

What we don’t like: The prices you see first aren’t always the final price you pay, as they’re pulled from earlier searches by Skyscanner users.

Our take: The best of the bunch. Skyscanner is easy to use, we’ve found that the fares it comes up with are generally accurate, and it even comes as a well designed app. Love it. It also makes a great tool to quickly find cheap alternative routes to your destination, and find cheap flights without a destination in mind.

Kayak Explore

The Kayak Explore tool is made specifically for searching for flights to anywhere. To find flights on Kayak flights to anywhere, type your departure city and select Anytime.

Kayak’s Explore tool lets you search for airfares for different seasons, like spring or winter, making it a great tool for long term planning.

Results show up in a map. You can drag and zoom, making it easy to see airfares to different regions, or even for the entire world at once.

Kayak Explore has some fun search filters that let you see only fights by weather, and by things to do (golf, gambling, and so on). You can even narrow down results by budget. It’s among the best cheap flight finder to anywhere, but it’s not perfect.

Note: The Kayak Explore flight map prices are based on flights found on Kayak in the last 48 hours. When you actually go to book, prices may be different.

Free Apps: Kayak has a free app for iPhone, iPad, and Android.  You can use the Kayak Explore map feature by clicking Explore the world on the home screen.

What we don’t like: We’re not keen that the Explore tool only lists round trip fares, making it harder to plan trips with multiple legs. Another thing we don’t love is that Kayak Explore won’t let you see all flights from a specific country. Instead, you’re limited to searching from specific cities.

Our take. Very good. We love the map display of fares, and the fun search options, but don’t like that it only lists round trip fares (Kayak Explore one way doesn’t work), and that it won’t find cheapest flights any date from a specific country.

Google Flights

Google Flights Explore Map is quickly becoming one of our favorite ways to search for affordable flights anywhere in the world.

It’s fast, prices are accurate, but it just doesn’t offer enough functionality for searches to random cheap destinations. The major drawback is that you have to specify a departure date, and you can’t search for cheapest flights for an entire month or year.

It has an annoying feature I wish they’d correct; if you’re in the Explore map, and you happen to have a date in the Return box, you can’t delete it. Instead, you need to go back to the main Google Flights page, and re-enter your search without a return date to see one way flights.

What we like: It’s fast, and prices are among the most accurate of the bunch. There are about a million filters, which can be nice if you’re picky about price, number of stops, or flight duration and the like.

What we don’t like: You need to specify an exact departure date, which is annoying. You also can’t search for airfares from an entire country, which can be nice if your departure city is flexible.

Our take:  Not bad. Not quite good enough to move away from Skyscanner as our first choice for finding the cheapest flights today to anywhere, but it’s getting closer.

Escape from MIT

There’s a relative newcomer to the flight search engine landscape called Escape at www.greatescape.co that’s worth a mention. It was developed by the MIT Senseable City Laboratory in Singapore.

It’s a great choice if you’re a visual person, since it displays flight prices on an interactive map. Escape searches searches both Kiwi and Skyscanner for prices.

You can search by your departure city to Anywhere in the world, and then see the prices displayed on a map. You can search by one way or round trip, or by fixed or flexible dates. You can also put in a trip duration from 1 to 31 days.

The flexible dates feature is pretty nice, since you can choose months at a time to search, or just a few days, whichever you prefer.

The main downside to Escape is that you need to put in a specific departure city, making your search a little less flexible.

I tried Escape out, comparing it to Google Flights, and found that in the three tests I ran, Google flights was able to find a cheaper flight. I also had trouble clicking through to get flight details.

Other search engines

We use Skyscanner and sometimes Google Flights almost exclusively to search for flights from a specific destination to anywhere.

That said, there are a few other flight search engines that do a similar job (though not nowhere near as well). We’ve included them here just for the sake of completeness.

Kiwi.com

Kiwi.com is an unfamiliar name to most. That said, it has a decent map-based search function, and we find it somewhat useful for an “I’ll go anywhere flight search” moment. You can select a Departure airport, and select Anywhere in the To: field. You can put in a custom date range, which will let you search a week, month, or really any range of dates.  You can also select Anytime to find the cheapest flight on any date. You can search return or one way flights. This is helpful to find cheap flights to anywhere from your city.

Click here to search with Kiwi.com.

The airfares it give generally seem to be accurate, though you’ll almost always find more accurate rates on Google Flights or the airline directly.

What we don’t like: We found the speed of the map display to vary a lot. Some days results appeared to be lightning fast, and some days they were frustratingly slow, despite our Internet speed being consistently fast.

Our take:  Not bad. Not quite good enough to move away from Skyscanner or Google Flights.

FareCompare – A Kayak Explore alternative

Like Kayak Explore, FareCompare lets you search for fares to anywhere from a specific departure city.

The problem is that we found FareCompare to be slower, and have less features, than Kayak Explore or Skyscanner.

What we don’t like: We find the FareCompare search to be slow, and don’t love that you can only search from specific cities, as it won’t let you search to, or from, specific countries or regions. Once you select the airfare that interests you, finding that flight can be awkward as it opens a half dozen windows to other popular sites like Expedia.

Our take: Too limited and just another front end to more popular search sites.

Momondo

Momondo has long been a favorite of travel hackers and bloggers, since it seems to be able to search more budget airlines.

They now have an Anywhere search, but you need to enter a departure date. You can see results in a list, but there aren’t a lot of filters or options. It’s fine, but there’s no reason to choose it over Skyscanner or Google flights.

What we don’t like: The big drawback is that you must give a departure date, meaning you can’t search for the cheapest fare for an entire month or year.

Whichbudget

Whichbudget lets you search for cheap random flights from a city or country to anywhere for the cheapest airfare. It’s fast, and it also lets you search from a good range of international destinations, and was the only search engine that would let us specify Anywhere in the departure field, which is helpful if your departure city or country is flexible, but you know your destination.

What we don’t like: Unfortunately, the results are clunky, the text is hard to read, and you can’t sort the results to show the lowest price first. We didn’t find it user friendly at all.

Our take: It’s ugly too look at, with poor sorting of results, small text and worse than average results. Not our favorite way to search flights by date not destination, or well, any other way.

Airfarewatchdog

Airfarewatchdog is probably the most bare bones of all the search engines that let you find a flight to any destination. It will only let you search from a specific airport (not even a city, but a specific airport), and doesn’t offer many useful filters.

What we don’t like: Limited functionality, and it’s annoying in that it keeps asking for your name and email to sign up and get low price alerts.

Our take: Not bad for basic searches where you have a destination, but not good for finding a flight if you don’t know your final destination. Might be good for email alerts if you want to go to specific place and are just waiting for a good deal.

Drungli

Back in the day, the Drungli website used to have a Drungli take me wherever search. Sadly, it’s not working anymore, so it just acts like a normal search engine.

To sum it up

Skyscanner and Google Flights Map search, are helpful for getting a general idea of flight costs to different places around the world. If you’re coming up dry with those three, and have a bit of time, then check out the others for cheap flights to any destination.

Click here to search on Skyscanner.

However, once you’ve used any of them to pick out affordable destinations (and dates), it’s worth it to compare those flights to some of the budget airlines that don’t appear in a lot of search engines. You also need to compare hidden airline surcharges like baggage fees and specialty taxes.

Different airlines charge baggage and seating fees differently and a lot of these search tools don’t always factor those costs in.

Business Class Consolidator offers discounted business class tickets to all global destinations and on all major airlines. Cheap business class flights – save up to 72% on premium travel. Contact our travel experts today and get access to discounted airfare deals.

Are you ready to say “fly me anywhere“?

For more tips on finding a great deal, check out our Six Quick Steps to Nailing the Cheapest Flight.

Did you like this article? Check out Advanced Flight Hacking: How to Save Money if Your Departure City is Flexible. We’re working on others articles to save you money – sign up to get our new blog posts by email so you don’t miss it.

Did you imagine them slaving over their computer late at night, every night, obsessively checking and re-checking airline deals?

Well, I used to be that person. Most days, I had Google Flights open in one tab, a Twitter feed for the best deals open in another, and half a dozen airline websites in the rest. Even with all that work, I’d still miss a deal or two.

Eventually, I figured out a better way: Let someone else do all that work! Even better, let a real, tried and true, cheap flights obsessed someone else do it.

These days, I live my life away from my computer (gasp!), check my email a few times a day, and let the cheap flight deals come to me instead.

What’s the secret? I signed up for Cheap Fly Club, run by a super nice fellow named Josh, who’s a flight finding travel expert. I imagine him and his team hunched over their computers 24 hours a day, finding me the best deals.

How to find cheap international flights for 50% off or more

New York to Christchurch, New Zealand for $245?

Fort Lauderdale to San Jose, Costa Rica from $199?

Chicago to Paris for $392?

Any of these deals sound good? They’re just a few of the prices I’ve seen in my inbox since I joined the completely free Cheap Fly Club last month.

I’ve even clicked on dozens of deals in numerous emails I’ve received and have verified for myself that they’re legit and real.

How to get cheap airfare: Sign Up For Emails From Cheap Fly Club

Getting flight deals by email is a great time saver. Subscription services watch for sales, prices errors and fare drops to destinations all over the world. It’s so easy! When they find a great deal, they send you an email. That’s it.

Even better, it’s completely free to sign up for emails from Josh and the team at Cheap Fly Club. If you want to get even more deals, there’s also a paid Premium membership that starts at $3 a month however I’ll talk about that more, later in this post.

All of the deals Cheap Fly Club sends are for flights that are at least 50% off, but often they’re an even bigger discount. That means you won’t be swamped with emails with small dips in the prices. Everything they send means you’re paying half or less!

FYI: All the deals that they send are for international flights only, and they’re primarily for USA residents, though you’ll see deals from Canada’s largest cities as well. Now don’t despair if you’re from outside North America since there’s a good chance you can go the other way for a similar price as well!
Click here for more information or to sign up.

Sample email from Cheap Fly Club

Curious to know what the emails from Cheap Fly Club look like? Here’s one of those mistake airfare deals that landed in my inbox earlier this week.

What’s up with the premium membership?

The paid Premium Membership at Cheap Fly Club gives access to all the deals, which occur about four times more than the free subscription. It starts at $3 a month.

The biggest bonus is you can also choose your departure airport with a premium membership.

Will I get spammed with email?

No, since on the free plan, I’ve been getting about seven emails a week, or one a day. They were all great deals, so I was glad to see them in my inbox!

Do I need to fly last minute?

No, most of the Cheap Fly Club deals are between 3 to 10 months away. There are some last minute deals, but I’ve found that the best deals tend to be for a few months out.

What’s the catch?

There really isn’t one. The basic subscription is free. Try it, and if you don’t like it, all you have to do is hit unsubscribe. Worst case, they provide you with a bit of wanderlust. Best case, a very cheap flight.

Hankering for some more sweet tips on how to find cheap airline tickets?

Check out our articles on how to find the cheapest flight to anywhere and our six quick steps to nailing the cheapest flight.

This post can help with finding the most affordable destination, packing for travel, finding the best area to stay, avoiding cell roaming charges, and much much more.

So here are our top hacks and tips, all together in one simple trip planning guide, to make your next trip a breeze!

So what are travel hacks? They’re tips, tricks or tools to help fellow travelers ultimately make the planning process easier. That can mean saving time, saving money or saving you from making the same mistake others have made beforehand.

Planning For A Trip: 10 Practical Tips

So let’s get started: our first tip is to start by picking your destination.

Pick your destination

The first step in planning for a trip is to choose your destination based on your budget, your interests, the time you have available, and your travel partners.

Like most people, we start narrowing down our destinations based on cost. For us, especially since we’re in Canada, and since we travel as a family of four, airfare is the biggest part of our trip cost.

Pick your dates

Depending on how flexible your schedule is, your dates may be ironclad. If you’re fortunate enough, you may have a lot of flexibility and that’s when you’ll really save on flights.

Tip! If you only have a week or so to travel, I’d suggest staying closer to home, so your precious vacation time isn’t eaten up by travel time and jet lag.

Before you book! Quickly research costs, availability and paperwork

We do the core of our trip planning even before booking our flight or hotel, because we’ve occasionally found that hotel rooms can cost a fortune during conferences or holidays, eating up any savings we made on our cheap flight. Even worse, we’ve occasionally found an affordable and convenient flight, but found out that hotel rooms are completely booked out for that time frame.

You only need to spend a few minutes doing this – you’re not booking your hotel yet – you’re just doing a five minute check to make sure that you can get a place to stay in your budget.

We’ve also had friends book tickets only to find out that they need a visa for their trip that would take longer to process than their departure date allowed.

A list of things to quickly check before you book your hotel and flight.

• accommodation costs and availability
• car rental costs and availability
• any must-do activity costs and availability
• if you need a visa
• if you need vaccinations. Depending on the vaccination, you may need multiple shots, so make sure you have enough time for these before you leave.
• if your passport is valid

Book your flight

Unless it’s a quick unplanned trip, we usually have a baseline airline price for where we’re heading. It’s always nice to know it’s an actual deal and not just the lowest price you’ll see today. If it is, now that you’ve quickly scouted out your costs, book your flight quickly before prices jump!

Get your passport, visa, and vaccinations in order

As soon as your flights are sorted, make arrangements to make sure your passport is valid, apply for your visa (if you need one), and arrange for any vaccinations.

Choose things to do and see

We always choose the activities we want to do, and the places we want to see most, before we book our accommodation. That way, we can base our accommodation based on how close it is to the airport, restaurants, activities, and any attractions we want to go to. If you’re not sure where everything is at your new destination, now’s the time to look them up!

Book your accommodation

So now that your flight is booked, you’ve got your paperwork in order, and chosen what you want to do, see and eat, the next step in planning a trip is to book your accommodation.

Get travel insurance

After one too many accidents and health scares overseas, we’re huge fans of getting travel insurance. Even if you’re healthy, it’s so easy to have a car accident or hurt yourself on your vacation. You can pick up good medical travel insurance from just a few dollars a day and we believe this is an essential step in vacation trip planning! If you’re from Canada, take a look at our Canadian Travel Insurance post that we update every year.

Pack smart!

We often stress far too much over packing when in reality all you absolutely need is a smartphone, wallet and passport. You can buy everything else at your destination if you really need it so those are really our only essentials.

As you can guess, we’re big fans of traveling as light as we can. We find it’s a lot less stressful to travel with carry-ons only, as you never have to worry about misplaced luggage, and you don’t have to lug around big bags. We even managed to travel carry-on only as a family of four for over three months last year!

Here are a few tips that will help you pack lighter:

• Check the weather for the time you’ll be there, and pack accordingly.
• Put everything you want to bring on your bed next to your luggage, and only pack the items that fit and that you need. Put everything else back.
• If you travel with checked luggage, fly with one change of clothing (or a change of underwear at the minimum) in your carry-on, just in case your checked baggage is lost.
• Pack clothing and shoes for activities like hiking or swimming.

Sort out cellphone and Internet access before leaving

Make sure you take a minute in your vacation planning to sort out cell phone coverage and Internet access before you leave.

Depending on your home cellphone plan, and where you’re going, you may be able to get a good data roaming rate with your local phone company. Check with your cell provider to see if they have any roaming deals and that they can provide roaming services where you’re heading.

Tip! Don’t think that your monthly plan includes automatic coverage for a reasonable price if you don’t have confirmation. We’ve seen people rack up hundreds of dollars in costs because they didn’t realize how much checking their Facebook page cost overseas or how much that phone call back to family cost them.

Because our cell roaming plan is pretty much non-existent away from home, we always travel with an international WiFi hotspot, which costs us less than $10 a day. Even better, we can connect up to six devices, which is perfect for our family of four. We could rely solely on hotel and public WiFi, but we find that sometimes hotel WiFi can be dodgy, and it can be surprisingly hard to find public WiFi in some destinations.

The nice part is that if you own an international WiFi device like we do, you can connect for only a day or two as needed while you travel so you’re not paying for it when you don’t need it.

Check local currencies

These days, we rarely buy currency ahead of time, with the exception of US dollars. We always carry enough in US dollars to get us local transportation, a hotel room and food for a day or two in case our debit cards are lost or stolen, or there’s a rare problem accessing credit car machines.

Generally we like to live a little dangerously and grab some local currency at an airport ATM after we land (not usually the best rate) and then some more from a local ATM via a bank machine. We also tend to use use our credit cards for bigger purchases like hotel rooms, meals in nicer restaurants and higher priced attractions.

If you like to plan more ahead, your best currency conversion is probably going to be from your bank at home. You can get almost any currency from your local branch however some currencies could take a few weeks to get in so make sure you give yourself enough time before you leave.

Do you have any travel planning tips? Let us know what works for you!

First as a couple, and now as a family of four, Charles and I have travelled together since 2002. In those 15 years, we’ve managed to learn a few things about holiday travel. Some were tougher lessons than others.

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. – John Powell

Sometimes, we’re the ones who’ve made the mistake, like the time we were stuck in a small Thai town for 3 days because we forgot to check if local transportation shut down for the holidays. Other times, we’ve learned from the mistakes of our Barefoot Nomad community, as well as friends and family. Either way, those mistakes have taught us plenty.

Here are our best, hard-learned travel hacks and tips for holiday travel to help you save money and travel more smoothly this holiday season.

So what are travel hacks? They’re tips, tricks or tools to help fellow travellers get the most from their travels. That can mean saving time, saving money or saving them from making the same mistake others have made beforehand.

Don’t wrap gifts before you fly

We’ve been guilty of this one. Wrapping gifts before your flight sounds like a great way to save time when you’re flying, right? Unfortunately, no. Airport security can ask you to unwrap gifts to see inside, meaning you may have to wrap them twice. We’ve also found that gifts often get little tears and rips in transit, anyway.

Instead of pre-wrapping our gifts, we now bring tape and wrapping paper and child safe scissors for this reason. Gift bags are also a great solution, as you can easily pop the gifts into the bags at your destination.

Even better, consider shipping your presents to your destination ahead of time. You can also have presents shipped directly to relatives through Amazon as a gift. Just be sure to tell your recipients not to open them before you get there!

Sign up for price alerts

Price alerts have saved us a lot of money over the years. Last year, we needed to fly over the Christmas Holidays in late December from Calgary to Cancun, Mexico. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I first saw the high prices. Even worse, almost all of the flights had a long connection somewhere in the USA. Luckily, we had over a month to find a better price, so I set up a flight alert.

Boom! A few days later I got a flight alert saying that there was a sale on direct flights on one of our favorite Canadian airlines. Taking two minutes to set up a flight alert saved us hundreds of dollars, and also a lot of time.

Take advantage of cancellation policies

We’ve rarely seen this tip anywhere else, but it could save you a lot of money.

Book in advance to lock in a good price, but make sure that your hotel or flight has a clear, no cost cancellation policy. Then, mark the last day you can cancel by on your calendar, and set a reminder for a day or two before.

If your plans change, or if you find a better deal before the cancellation date, you can cancel without penalty. If your plans don’t change, you’ll have grabbed a good early booking discount.

Stay flexible

It’s hard to have a lot of flexibility during the holidays, but if you can use an alternative airport, or fly on alternative days, you can save a lot of money.

Even managing to move your flight or hotel reservation a day or two can be a big money saver.

Consider Christmas in early December

Even if you’re incredibly flexible on dates, travel during holiday peak season costs more, and attractions are almost guaranteed to be more crowded.

If you can reschedule your trip, consider travelling during low season. Not only do prices drop, there are also fewer people around, and you’ll have a better choice of accommodation.

In North America, low season is usually mid-September to early December, and then mid-January to the end of February, and finally April to May.

Be prepared for delays

Unfortunately, since the holidays often bring poor winter weather and busier airports, delays become more common. You may end up having an extended wait at your gate, or even a delayed flight.

Be prepared by having a movie on your phone or laptop (Netflix now lets you download many shows for offline mode!) in case airport WiFi is overwhelmed or spotty.

Strongly consider buying trip cancellation and interruption insurance that covers you for itinerary changes or cancellations.

Choose alternative airports

Want to save even more money or get a more direct flight?

When selecting your destination on a search engine, check the little box that reads Nearby Airports at the top of the drop down menu. You’ll automatically see results for airports close to your original choice, which can help you snag a flight with a chance of fewer connections or at a better price. Miami and Fort Lauderdale are perfect examples of this. We’ve saved hundreds per ticket by flying into one airport and departing from the other.

We’ve also saved by flying into one place and renting a car and driving down to another. The nice part is that we’ve often incorporated the drive into the journey. Like the time we flew into Las Vegas, stayed for a few nights then rented a car and drove to Arizona to visit family. Not only did we get to check out Hoover Dam but we also had the opportunity to see the Grand Canyon and the picturesque town of Sedona. The nicest part was that we saved so much on our tickets by flying into Las Vegas that it paid for the cost of our rental car and a few nights in a hotel.

For Canadian flights, depart from the USA instead

For Canadian departures or arrivals, you can save a fair bit of money choosing an alternative airport at a border city in the United States. It’s common practice for Canadians to do this, but it’s not common practice for other nationalities flying into Canada.

You’ll need to drive, or grab a bus or taxi from Canada, but you can save a lot of money. We did this for a trip to Oahu, Hawaii back in 2012, choosing to depart from Bellingham, Washington instead of Vancouver, Canada (the cities are 56 miles or 89 km apart). We saved hundreds of dollars on that flight, plus we got a better direct flight, and had a chance to do some shopping in Bellingham on the way back.

Common US border cities are:

• Bellingham, USA for Vancouver, Canada
• Grand Forks, North Dakota for Winnipeg, Manitoba
• Detroit, Michigan for Toronto, Ontario
• Burlington, Vermont or Syracuse, New York for Montreal, Quebec

Book two one-way flights

Surprisingly, booking two one way flights with different airlines can save money over a round trip ticket with the same airline.

Warning! Be cautious if you’re booking with two separate airlines in one direction. If your first flight is delayed or cancelled, the second airline isn’t obligated to reschedule your next flight. If you can, allow plenty of time for delays and cancellations and if delays do occur, contact the next airline as early as possible so they can arrange alternative flights.

Fly on the actual holiday

We’ve found some smoking hot airfare deals by being willing to travel on Christmas Day and even New Year’s Day.

Since most flyers want to be at their destination early, tickets for flying on the actual holiday are often more affordable. We’ve flown on Christmas day and New Year’s Day several times over the years when trying to see both sides of our family during the holiday break and have found it to be one the quietest times to fly. As a bonus, companies often include holiday perks like special snacks and holiday themed meals. We even had the president of Canadian airline Westjet join us on our December 31st flight to wish the passengers Happy New Year!

Looking for more travel tips?

• 45 Great Travel Jobs and How to Get Them
• The Best Budget Family Travel Tips
• Healthy Travel Tips

There’s a lot of info out there about how far ahead you should book flights. Some sites say 54 days in advance is the magic time, some say exactly four weeks before travel, while others suggest booking airfare as far in advance as possible.

Unfortunately, most of this advice about when to book doesn’t take holiday travel into consideration.

Any advice we’ve heard about when to book flights for Christmas or US Thanksgiving pretty much comes down to suggesting you should book as early as possible. We’ve even doled out some advice ourselves about booking early for holiday flights before.

But is this true? Do you really need to book early to get the best holiday flight deals?

Happily, Skyscanner’s done the work for us, to get some real, data-driven answers*. They’ve sifted through historical data from Skyscanner’s more than 50 million users, crunched the numbers, and found out exactly the best time to book holiday flights.

Click here to search for low prices on Skyscanner.

Turns out, the best deals can be found four weeks before US Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. There are even some great deals available if you book flights the same week of a holiday.

Tip! Use price alerts to make sure you’re getting the best deal. To sign up for alerts on Skyscanner, just search for a flight, then click Get Price Alerts.

If you’re looking for the best airfare deal this year, we have some specific tips for each holiday season, based on Skyscanner’s data.

Thanksgiving – the best time to buy flights

October’s the best time to get a flight deal, with the very best deals found four weeks before US Thanksgiving, on the week of October 31, with prices averaging about 7.7 percent cheaper. Buying last minute can even save you a bit, with prices almost two percent lower on Thanksgiving week.

When’s the best time to buy Christmas flights?

Thanksgiving week, which is five weeks before Christmas in 2016, is the best time to buy Christmas flights, with deals of 6.41 percent. The week of December 5, which is three weeks before Christmas in 2016, is also a good time, with savings of almost 5 percent (4.93 percent).

Click here to search for low prices on Skyscanner.

Tip! We’ve found some fantastic flight deals by being willing to travel on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day. I think the reason prices stay low is because most people don’t want to fly on these days, keeping demand for tickets down. The bonus is that airlines often do special activities on holidays and you might find yourself with a free meal or a small present for the kids!

New Year’s Day – when to buy airline tickets

Ah, New Years. We’ve honestly found Christmas and New Years the hardest holidays to book flights. Skyscanner’s data says that booking the week of December 5 could save you a whopping 10.57 percent. This one surprised us, but the Skyscanner data also says you can get fabulous last minute savings, with discounts of 6.72 percent one week before New Year’s!

*Methodology: Skyscanner holiday travel data is based on 2015 search and exits during 2015 holiday dates on Skyscanner.com. US to US round-trip travel for one-adult ticket were analyzed.

Looking for some great travel deals? Here are some of the best prices to be found right now. Thanks, Skyscanner!

Labor Day Flight Deals

(Travel dates: September 1-6th)

Philadelphia to Columbus, Ohio
Starting at $58 (Yearly average ticket price is $235)

Cleveland to Atlanta
Starting at $71 (Yearly average ticket price is $123)

Other Cheap Flights

Los Angeles to Chicago

From $87 (Yearly average ticket price: $231)

Houston to Atlanta
Cheapest deal in September, starting at $49 (Yearly average ticket price is $170)

Washington to Miami

From $80 (Yearly average ticket price: $232)

Boston to London

From $361 (Yearly average ticket price: $769)

Are you a Canadian looking for affordable flights for a last minute getaway? If so, this post is for you.

If you’re a Canadian like us, then you know our pain: it’s just way too expensive to fly to anywhere in Canada. It’s even worse if you’re looking to fly somewhere last minute, as flight prices seem to increase exponentially closer to the flight date.

That said, there is hope. As Canadian travel bloggers, we fly a lot, and we’ve discovered Skyscanner.ca’s Search Everywhere feature can help save money on last minute getaway fares.

Click here to search Skyscanner.

In case you missed it, here’s the quick SnapChat tutorial I made, and be sure to follow us on Snapchat @barefootnomads or subscribe on YouTube for more tips.

The easiest way to save money while flying is to be as flexible as possible. Simply put, the more flexible you are with your flight dates and destinations, the more you can save.

First, you need to find when and where the deals are. For this, we use Skyscanner.ca.

We’ve used Skyscanner to search for flight deals for years. It’s scored us some great deals on flights, including a one way flight from Istanbul, Turkey to Toronto, Canada for just $288 CDN, including taxes and fees. Skyscanner’s well known in Europe and the USA, and finally getting popular here in Canada.

Skyscanner’s Everywhere search lets you search for the cheapest flights from your destination city to anywhere in the world. Even better, you can search a month’s worth of fares at a time, which can save you a bundle if your dates are flexible.

Click here to search Skyscanner.

They’re reliable for low prices, since they search through many different aggregators and airlines to find the best fare.

How to use use Skyscanner to save on flights for a last minute getaway

To find cheap flights to everywhere from your departure city, just type Everywhere in the the To field in your Skyscanner search and click Search Flights.

Click here to search Skyscanner.

Tip 1: Skyscanner also lets you type in a country name to find cheap airfares from your departure city only to cities in a specific country.

Then select the dates you want to search. You can search a specific date, but we’re usually flexible on dates, so we chose to search all of September.

Tip 2: If you’re really flexible on dates, just select the Cheapest Month button!

Skyscanner shows a list of the cheapest flights from your departure city to destinations all over the world.

We searched a one way fare from Toronto and found a few great deals (hello, Iceland for $129!), but we’re looking to go somewhere south, so we selected Hamilton, Bermuda (no, not Hamilton Ontario!).

Click the from $ green arrow button to see more price details and exact dates.

Next, Skyscanner shows a list of dates and the cheapest airfare on each date. Click the date you want, and click the Show flights button to see airfare details. Details of the flights on that date are shown.

Note: The prices listed on Skyscanner are based on previous flight search data. When you click the link the initial prices might differ from the actual listed price.

In this instance, we found three flights for $175. To book the flight, you just click the Select button, and Skyscanner whisks you away to the airline’s page to book.

From there, you can book directly on the airline’s site.

Another way to search: the searchable Map

This is really cool as well. You can use Skyscanner to look at a world-wide map of flight deals from any departure city. To see the map of airfare deals, just click the little Map link at the top of the search box.

From there you can click on any of the points to see more information about those flights, change your departure city and dates, and even used the Price option. The price option is great if you’re looking for a getaway for under a specific price point, as the map will only show prices that match your budget.

Free App! We use the Skyscanner iPhone app a lot as well. The app seems to have all of the features of the site, including the ability to search for flights to anywhere, and for a month’s worth at a time. It also features the cool interactive map that lists prices to cities around the globe. It’s also available for Android.

Wondering what to read next?

• Six Steps to Nailing the Cheapest Flight
• How to Find the Cheapest Fight to Anywhere
• Advanced Flight Hacking: How to Save Money if Your Departure City is Flexible
• Where to travel while the Canadian dollar is Weak

In the last article in our flight hacking series, we told you how to find the cheapest flight (to anywhere) out of your departure city (or country). Now it’s time to up the game a little and see how a little extra ingenuity (and to be honest, a little hard work) can save you serious money on airfare.

Here is one of my favorite advanced travel hacking techniques for finding great flight deals.

The problem: Unfortunately, non of our favorite flight search engines will let you find the cheapest flight to a destination from multiple countries or regions. You always need to enter a departure city or country. (The search engine WhichBudget.com does let you search from anywhere as a departure, but we found WhichBudget’s results unreliable enough that we don’t use them).

The workaround:  Reverse the normal airfare search process by first finding the cheap routes leaving your destination city. Logically, some of the cheap routes flying out of a city should also have the cheapest fares flying into the same city.

Important:  This technique only works if your departure city or country is flexible.

Here’s an example of how it works.

We were looking for a cheap flight to Toronto from Spain, but had no luck finding a great deal directly from Spain. Since flights on budget airlines are so cheap throughout Europe and we had another month to spend in the area, we were willing to fly to Toronto from almost anywhere in Europe.

So, we did a search of flights departing from Toronto to Everywhere, using Skyscanner, and found some affordable flights to Istanbul from Toronto. Then, we reversed the direction, searching for flights from Istanbul to Toronto, and stumbled across a great deal with Air Transat for $282 (USD, taxes included) for a one-way direct flight from Istanbul to Toronto.

Click here to search Skyscanner.

If you’re only able to depart from within airports within the same country, you can type your Country of departure in Skyscanner’s From field. However, Skyscanner won’t let you type in Anywhere in this field, so you’re restricted to searching for departures from within one country.

So, how do you find a the cheapest flight if your departure airport could be in another country?

Here’s our step by step how to guide.

Step by step how to:

1. Go to the Skyscanner webpage or the Skyscanner app. Click here to go to the Skyscanner webpage.
2. Type your destination city in the From field. Remember, you’re just looking to find routes that are traditionally cheap for your destination city. So, you’re reversing your normal search by trying to find a cheap flight from your destination.
3. Type Everywhere or a specific country  in the To field. Unfortunately, Skyscanner doesn’t let you type in searches like Europe or North America, so you’ll have to specify a country or everywhere.
4. In the Date field, click the calendar icon, and select the Whole Year button, and click the Search button.
5. Check the results for cheap fares from your intended destination.

Once you find a cheap fare, you’ll now need to check to see if cheap flights are offered in the opposite direction.

1. In Skyscanner, type the country or city where you found a cheap flight in the previous search in the From field. Click here to search Skyscanner.
2. Type your destination city in the To field.
3. Type your flight date in the Date field and click the Search button. You’ll get much better (and cheaper!) results if your flight dates are flexible.

Did you find this helpful? Check out some of our other travel tips:

• 45 Great Jobs You Can Do While Traveling The World And How To Get Them
• Six Steps to Nailing the Cheapest Flight
• How to Find the Cheapest Fight to Anywhere

Do you have any travel hacking tips? We’d love to hear about them in the comments.