For purchasing tickets with minimal impact on your budget, it’s worth following a couple of rules – flexibility in place and dates (and ideally in direction) and booking as early as possible.
Of course, you can find “last-minute” tickets a few days before the trip, but the risks are significantly higher.
I usually define preliminary parameters for myself – for instance, June, the Balkans.
I start searching a year before the trip, but you need to consider where and with which airline you are flying. There are companies that open their lines a year in advance, usually Wizz, Austrian, Air Europa, and others. Some companies keep only certain routes open for a year, like Vienna in Ryanair. For the rest, you have to rely on experience, which doesn’t always work. EasyJet publishes flight opening dates on Facebook, and Ryanair “surprises” about six months in advance.
OTA (online traval agents) I use from time to time help in the search:
Kiwi
Skiplagged
Drungli
Rome2Rio
Skyscanner
ITA Matrix
Google Flights
Momondo
In principle, all these aggregators do the same thing, with slight differences in functionality.
In Momondo, I always choose “Fly to any place and any date”. In Matrix, you can select a list of desired airports. In Rome2Rio, you can view not only flights but also trains and taxis, approximately estimate the route and cost – very convenient as well.
Each of these aggregators has its own pros and cons, you just need to find the one that suits you or check them all to find the best deal.
This search gives an idea of which destinations are open and what the current price range is.
Most of the time, I use Skyscanner and Momondo precisely because of the flexibility in search options. I usually enter the entire desired month and leave the destination open. I then sort the results by price if it’s important and mark “direct flights only”. After that, I check each suitable country and see which cities have flights.
If I find what I need, I go directly to the airline’s website and always search for the selected dates for one person first. The thing is, most companies raise ticket prices as more tickets are purchased, with jumps at certain quantities. So, sometimes it’s worth splitting the booking of multiple tickets into two parts.
Of course, once you’re on the airline’s website, it’s a good idea to play around with the dates and choose the optimal option for your preferred days and flight times. Some websites offer the option to view a price chart by date – don’t overlook this feature.
On the screenshots, Skyscanner is set to search for any destination in August. The search shows the cheapest option is Romania, specifically Bucharest. The cheapest dates are August 19-31, with TAROM airlines. The flight times are, of course, not great, but the price for August is quite reasonable, 131 euros.
I go to TAROM’s website, enter the dates, and get the prices. Their search automatically shows prices for two days before and after the selected dates, which is very convenient.
I’ve attached some screenshots from Wizz with the option selection button. The whole process takes just a few minutes but can save a lot, especially when flying with family.
For example, last summer we flew to Treviso with Ryanair, tickets bought 9 months in advance, for two weeks at the end of August, daytime flights. The cost for five people, with seats, 2 suitcases, and 2 priority services with trolleys, was around 1,500 euros. By June, similar tickets cost 3,000 euros, by July more than 4,000, and by early August, tickets for that flight were no longer available.
Happy travels to everyone!
More reports and other useful information can be found in the group Tourist Assistant
