Cheap flight guide
Low fare tips
Seven practical tactics our team uses to find the lowest available fare — when to book, when to fly, which airports to consider, and how to make the search engine work for you instead of against you.
Quick rules of thumb
- Tip 1
Book ahead — but not too far ahead
Last-minute fares are almost always the worst. Aim for 21 or more days out for domestic and short-haul, and 8 to 12 weeks out for long-haul international. Inside two weeks of departure, expect prices to climb day-over-day; inside seven days they can double or triple. Booking too far in advance (more than ~10 months) is rarely cheaper either, since airlines tend to price-test the schedule before optimising it closer in.
- Tip 2
Be flexible with your dates
Shifting departure by a single day often shaves 10–30%. As a rough rule, midweek flights (Tuesday and Wednesday) tend to be the cheapest, while Friday and Sunday departures are the most expensive because of business and weekend travel. Saturday departures can be surprisingly cheap on domestic routes. Search across a date range whenever you can — most search engines (ours included) let you compare neighbouring days side-by-side.
- Tip 3
Fly when other people don’t
The cheapest seats are usually the ones nobody wants. Red-eye (overnight) and early-morning departures are consistently the lowest-priced on leisure routes. On business routes, the opposite is true — mid-day flights are softer because business travellers fly out early and home late. If your trip flexes, target the "boring" departure times to unlock lower fares without changing destination or date.
- Tip 4
Avoid peak seasons
School holidays, public-holiday long weekends, and the Christmas/New Year window are the most expensive periods of the year — domestic fares can be 50–100% higher and international ones 30–60% higher than shoulder-season equivalents. If you can travel in February–March or late October–early December (in the northern hemisphere) you'll find materially cheaper inventory across most destinations. Counter-intuitively, Christmas Day itself is often one of the quietest, cheapest flying days of the year.
- Tip 5
Compare every airline — and every fare class
Airlines price independently and aggressively against each other. Two carriers operating the same route on the same day frequently differ by 25%+ on the headline fare. Our search compares hundreds of airlines and travel sites in one place, so you don't need to check Skyscanner, Google Flights, and the airline's own site separately. Inside a single airline, check the fare ladders too — Economy Light is sometimes only $10 cheaper than Economy with a bag included, which makes the heavier fare the better deal.
- Tip 6
Consider alternative airports
Low-cost carriers often operate from secondary airports with lower landing fees and pass the savings on. Examples: London Luton or Stansted instead of Heathrow; Newark instead of JFK; Oakland or San Jose instead of San Francisco; Avalon instead of Melbourne Tullamarine. Even a 30-minute longer transit from the airport to your final destination can pay for itself in fare savings — especially on short-haul routes where the absolute saving is a large percentage of the ticket.
- Tip 7
Use the search the way it’s designed
Take advantage of the filters: filter by stops, departure time bucket, airline, and maximum trip duration to narrow down to genuinely usable options without manually scrolling through hundreds of offers. If you're seeing only expensive results, widen date range, allow one connection, or toggle "Allow overnight stopovers" before compromising on destination. Save the search and check back over a few days — most airlines reprice inventory at least once every 24 hours, and dropping notifications when a fare cheapens can save you hundreds.
Ready to put these to work?
Run a search across hundreds of airlines, filter by stops and time of day, and watch for fare drops on your saved route. Every tactic above is built into NXT.DEALS — you don't need to keep multiple tabs open.