International Flights Too Expensive? Here's What To Do!

Leaving the country and traveling somewhere unknown is something that many often fantasize about, but not as many act upon. I'm sure this situation is very familiar to you: you've finally accrued enough PTO that will allow you to take a decently long vacation. Or maybe you're in school and Spring Break is coming up, and you just don't want to do another trip down to Florida or Cancun like usual. You want to engage in an experience rich with culture, unfamiliarity, and new perspectives. You want to take an international trip. However, there's just one problem:

Flight tickets are just too damn expensive.

Or are they? 🤔 What if I told you that flight tickets abroad could potentially cost less than flight tickets from one state in the U.S. to another?

The truth is that there are many ways to cut costs when it comes to purchasing an international flight ticket. If you can lock down a cheap flight ticket, you can budget more for actually enjoying yourself at your destination. So without further ado, here are five different hacks that I have personally used, that you can also try out in order to cut costs and lock in a great deal for your flight tickets!

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Check Prices Across Multiple Fare Aggregators

If you've ever used Google Flights before, you'll often notice that it's able to provide you with a number of different flight options in just a matter of seconds, across a variety of different airlines. Google Flights is what is known as a fare aggregator, and similar to it, there are many other fare aggregators as well out there, like Skyscanner and Kayak. These different fare aggregators will look into thousands of different route and carrier options that are available around the world to provide you with the lowest possible fare.

Make sure you compare prices across different fare aggregators to ensure you're getting the best price. I'm going on a trip to Spain soon, and while I was booking my trip, I did just this. When I first checked Google Flights, the cheapest price I could find for a round trip ticket to and from Madrid was around $750. After researching across multiple fare aggregators, I found a steal on Skyscanner: $425 round trip flight tickets.

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Experiment With Different Dates

The idea behind this tip is based on simple economics: the concept of supply and demand. When there is a peak time in which people will be traveling, such as during the holidays, or if people are all trying to return on the Sunday before the school semester starts, airline companies know. They will spike up the prices to accommodate the high traffic of people traveling on that day.

If your schedule permits you to travel and take a vacation at any point in the year, and you also don't mind traveling during very arbitrary times, test out different dates and lengths of stay throughout the year. For example, if you're planning to fly from Chicago to Beijing during the Holiday season, you'll notice the price on Google Flights is probably in the high thousands. But if you choose to travel during a typically uncommon travel month, like April or September, you'll see that the flight ticket prices can be as little as 1/3 of the price.

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Consider Flying Into a Neighboring City

What's extremely peculiar regarding flight prices, is that a flight from one place of origin to a particular destination can be drastically different from another place of origin to the same destination, even if both of those origins are very close to each other. For context, I live in Columbus, OH, and when I was booking flight tickets to Iceland for a trip I took this past October, I realized that if I were to fly out of Cleveland, OH, just a 1.5 hour drive away from Columbus, I could turn my $585 round-trip journey into a $230 one.

Definitely play around by checking prices from neighboring cities. I live in Columbus, so I check prices around many Midwestern cities, including Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, etc. I'm not exactly sure what causes these disparities in the flight prices, but there definitely seems to be a strong correlation between high airport traffic and cheaper flight prices. So if you live in a small town, definitely invest in making a trip to a neighboring city, because it truly will save you plenty of money. But what if you can't get to a neighboring city because you either don't have a car, can't get a ride from someone for that day, or simply don't want to leave your car in the airport lot for days on end? No fear! That's where the next tip applies.

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Make Use of Buses To Get Between Cities

Ideally, if you're deciding to fly into a neighboring city, you'd have a friend or family member who was kind enough to give you a ride there. However, if that doesn't end up working out, no sweat! Because there is a great solution that is way cheaper and less of a hassle than parking your car in the airport lot, leaving a hole in your wallet: taking a bus to the neighboring city.

Many of these buses are very reasonably priced. Whether you book through an actual transport company, like Greyhound, or through ground travel search platforms, like Wanderu or BusBud, a round-trip ticket between neighboring cities can be as little as $20 each way, which is much better than paying $300 just to fly out of your home origin. Furthermore, GoToBus is a very cool platform that offers $1 specials between close-by cities if you travel during the week, and book up to 2 weeks in advance. For example, I only had to pay $2 + a $1.50 booking fee for round trip transport to and from Chicago, because that's where my flight to Spain is flying in and out of. Quite a steal, if you ask me.

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The bottom line here is, the costs associated with flying to and from your destination shouldn't be the reason you're not going on that trip you've always dreamed of. So follow these tips and cut costs on flight tickets so that you can splurge on the activities and experiences that are actually going to matter to you. Good luck!