Top 5 Best Websites To Find Cheap Airfare
Traveling by air does not have to be a chore and a bore. These are my top five picks for locating cheap low cost airfare online. Simply bookmark these sites and come back to them the next time you’re going flight shopping. You won’t always find the deal of the year, but there’s a good chance you’ll save money or find better routing options.
What good is a cheap flight if it adds extra stops to your route, meaning that what you save in cash you simply pay for in extra hassle.
The Top Five Cheap Airfare Providers in 2015
ITA Matrix
1: ITA Matrix. This flight selection software is the driving force behind the business operations of many online travel agencies and online airline websites; it can locate and price travel fares on the majority of airlines, and presents the flight data in a intuitive easy to read way.
To use ITA Matrix customers simply enter the flight origin and the flight destination, and the length of the planned trip. After which ITA Matrix will go and find you the cheapest fare that suits your travel needs.
While you can’t presently purchase airfare directly from ITA Matrix, do understand this, therefore once you find the cheapest flight, you’ll then have to match your travel plans with an preferred online travel agency such as Expedia for example, or an individual airline of personal choice, any of which should be able issue a ticket based on your price research for the airline tickets.
Google Flights
2: Google Flights. Google acquired the licensing rights to use ITA Matrix back in 2011, and now Google uses the flight sourcing technology to drive its own flight search engine. Google Flights is best suited to searches for domestic U.S. flights. While it does cover international travel the results are not as exhaustive.
The Google Flights’ map view allows you to drag and drop your chosen route to another destination to see how the fare changes alongside the route, while a bar graph view lets you see how fares rise or drop over a particular period of time.
Hipmunk
3: Hipmunk. This slick travel search engine was designed by Reddit’s Steve Huffman as a means of illustrating the best fares (as well as the best prices on hotel rooms) and the shortest travel schedules, its time and wallet friendly.
Top 5 Best Websites To Find Cheap Airfare
When searching for flights, Hipmunk will display a timetable with colored bars ranked in descending order of “pain,” a ranking factor devised to incorporate price, flight duration, the anticipated number of stops and departure and arrival times. It can also tell you if a flight uses WiFi or not.
Momondo
4: Momondo. A very colorful web site, Copenhagen based Momondo spiders directly through airline providers (as well as hotel, car rental and vacation package) sites rather than utilizing a third party flight engine like ITA Matrix. In its single minded (and multi-lingual) quest to find the cheapest flights.
Momondo often displays flight itineraries that suggest a different airline for outbound and return flights, saving you the hassle of trying to do this yourself. Keep an eye on the site’s airfare calendar, as it will clearly show you when pushing your trip forward or back a few days will save any cash or not.
Flightfox
5: Flightfox. Flightfox is a flight engine by the developers of Globetrooper. When you post your desired travel and flight plans on this 21st century version of a travel agency, its crowd sourced group collective mind of experts begin competing and searching to find you the cheapest and or the very best air line routes presently available.
You’ll pay an upfront fee that starts at $49 (rising with the complexity of the challenge), and the winning expert takes home 75% of that amount, while you follow the expert’s booking instructions and save yourself a bundle.
