- 11 Dec 2018

1. When I book flights, I always use Skyscanner to find out which airline offers the best deal. Similar websites exist, for example Google flights, and you'll probably find similar results there.

*Please always select your country, language and currency. When you check out, you are sometimes required to use your credit card which is issued in the country and currency.

Skyscanner

https://www.skyscanner.net

Google Flights

https://www.google.com/flights

2. If your itinerary (destination & travel dates) is already fixed, input these data in the search boxes.

If your itinerary is flexible, you can choose a whole month or "Anytime" for dates and a country or "Anywhere" for destination.

For example, if you plan to go to Japan in February next year and you can start your trip to Japan anytime in February and with any city in Japan, you can choose a month of February for dates and "Japan" for destination.

*In most cases, flights departing on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday are cheaper than weekend flights (from Friday to Monday)

*Usually flights to a major city (mainly the capital city) are cheaper than those to a smaller city. For example, flights to London are usually cheaper than those to Manchester. This is because more flights go to London than Manchester and there are more competitions on that route.

3. Once you get results in Skyscanner, you can filter the results and find your own best flights.

You can filter the results by many factors, such as the number of stops, departure time, airlines or airline alliances. The questions to you are as follows:

- Are you okay with flights with stops or do you want direct flights even if they are more expensive?

- If you choose flights with stops, do you need to obtain visas of the countries you would stop by?

- Are you okay with any departure time? What about flight in the early morning or late night?

- Do you have any preference on airlines? Do you want to fly with your favorite mileage program airline?

4. When you find your perfect flights, you should check which company (travel agency or the airline) offers the deal. Sometimes the cheapest option is offered by a travel agency which I don't know and have bad customer reviews. I don't recommend that you'd book though this kind of travel agencies because

- the ticket often turns out to be already sold out when you check out.

- customer service might be very bad and you cannot reach them when you want to change or cancel your flights.

- a small travel agency might bankrupt in the near future and they might not be able to refund you.

The best option is book flights through the official website of the airline as you can trust the information on the website and you can easily contact their customer center when you want to request services such as advance seat selection or modify your itinerary (change/cancel flights).

However, sometimes the price on the airline website is much more expensive than that of travel agencies. In that case, I book flights with famous travel agencies such as Expedia, Trip.com or Japanese major travel agencies (for example HIS or JTB).

Here's what I do when my itinerary is very flexible.

Let's say I'd like to go back to Tokyo from Toronto in February next year.

First, I search flights from Toronto to Tokyo in February (try different dates) and check the cheapest price.

Then I search flights from an airport in North East america to an airport in East Asia. For example, flights from New york, (Boston, Chicago Washington DC or Montreal) to Osaka, Nagoya, Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai or Hongkong.

Sometimes you can save some money by buying separate tickets. The following is an example:

Toronto - Tokyo: $900 (cheapest return ticket)

New York - Tokyo: $500 (cheapest return ticket) & Toronto - New York: $200 (cheapest return ticket)

This happens especially when you fly during a Canadian holiday season as flights from Canada is very expensive but flights from the US is cheap (not a high price of peak season).

Once you find a cheap combination of departure & arrival airports, you can change dates to find the cheapest dates.

*This method is very useful if your destination isn't fixed: when you want to travel in Asia but you haven't decided yet which countries to visit.

*If your destination is clear (for example if you want to visit only Tokyo), you'd better not change both departure city & arrival city but only one of them. For example, if you want to fly from Toronto to Tokyo, you'd better not search flights from New York to Beijing. In that case, I might search flights of Toronto(original departure city)-Beijing and New York-Tokyo(original arrival city).

*Please remember that having separate bookings is very risky. Even if the first flight is delayed due to an issue of the first airline and you couldn't catch the second flight of another airline, you would be responsible for that. When I have separate bookings, I usually have more than 5 to 6 hours transit time or a stay over there.

2018.12