How to use Skyscanner to find cheap flights
When dealing with flights, there are so many websites out there, but I must admit that Skyscanner is my best friend! In fact, I do not know how people were living before! 🙂
This is a small but efficient guide on how I use it and hopefully, you can follow these easy steps and organize amazing adventures yourself!
The Research
The best features on Skyscanner have to be the following two: the “cheapest month” option and the “everywhere” option. Let’s have a look!
1.The “Cheapest month” option
Select your departure and arrival airport
Don’t choose a specific date, but click on “Whole month” and then “Cheapest month“.
The website will show you the best available fares within a year. I think this is brilliant, especially for a first approach to a new destination.
Once you have searched flights, the website will provide you with the results like this:
This view is very clever because you can instantly recognize that the GREEN prices are the cheapest, the YELLOW are medium and the RED are the most expensive.
Because of how airline fares work, every time you select a departure date on the left, the return prices will update (some price will change, some will disappear, and some new options will appear).
Do not stop at the first thing you see: if your dates are a bit flexible, click on different departures and see what happens to your total price.
If your dates are not flexible, or you know exactly when you want to travel (for example, for a specific event happening at that time), then this option is not useful, but you can always choose the “month” option to see the cheapest dates within a set period of time.
Even if Skyscanner is showing you a specific month as the cheapest, move with the left and right harrows to check the prices in other months as well (or departure in a month and return in the following one). Maybe traveling two months later would only cost you a few more money, but you might decide it’s worth it because it will be much warmer!
Before booking an extremely cheap flight, try to get INFORMATION about “why” flights are so cheap in that moment? Ask yourself (and Google): is it just luck? Is it an offer from a specific airline because they are launching a new route? Is it merely low season? Or maybe it’s because, for example, it is monsoon/hurricane season in the destination? Or there is an event happening that none want to be close to (like political manifestation or similar)?
Ultimately, the choice is yours and I think that everything needs to be dictated by balance and not only by price. If you have searched all your information and still decide that it is the right time for you to travel, then what are you waiting for? Book it!!!
2. The “Everywhere” option
Select your departure airport (you can also tick the box to include nearby airports, if you do not have a preferred one)
Choose the date/month/cheapest month option
Type “everywhere” in the destination tab, Skyscanner will show you a list of Countries like this:
If you like the idea of a short break in Ireland, you can click on the blue harrow. As you can see, you will be presented with a list of airports to choose from, and the price of the cheapest flight currently available on your chosen date or within the year!
When you select your destination, you will see either the calendar with the dates or directly the list of available flights, if you had already selected a specific date.
Naturally, everything I mentioned above about searching information about the place/time remains valid in this case as well.
Before booking anything (especially a non-refundable flight), make sure you know exactly what you are doing!
For all these options, of course, Skyscanner will only show you fares that are available at that time. It can never be guaranteed that an airline, after 2 weeks, will release some seats on offer on the same route/date you have already booked!
The Booking process
When you are happy with a date and a price, click “Show flights“, to see the full list of available flights.
This is an extremely useful page, where you can play around to find the VERY BEST deal! Let’s have a look at what you can do…
Skyscanner will try to find you all the available combinations of flights, even if this means having the outbound and the return flights with different airlines. The system will let you know in the next page if this is the case and you will have to purchase two separate tickets!
Once chosen the most appealing combination, click “Select” and you will get all the details of your flight (including the stopover time and airport and the duration of the flights):
In any case, it is always extremely important, at this stage, to click “Read Before Booking” and see what the system tell you about this tickets:
And finally, when you are happy with your choice, click “Select” and GO WITH YOUR BOOKING!!!
You will be redirected to the website of the airline or other provider and you can proceed with entering all your personal details and payment information.
REMEMBER to always double-check that all the information is correct before the final confirmation!!!
As you can see, Skyscanner is extremely easy to use, but it is an incredibly valued tool, when it comes to plan a trip!
Try yourself to play around a little bit and let me know how you found it! If you have a question or tips, write it in the comments below!
Please, Like & Share this post if you enjoyed it!
Happy travels!
Daniela
