How To Search Discount Airlines (and Tools)

We’ve taken flights from one island to another in SE Asia for as cheap as $10. We’ve taken a flight across multiple countries in Europe for $20.

There’s no doubt that discount airlines can be a huge way to save money on flights. It’s a good way to see multiple places, or fill in an open-jaw. We use them quite often.

Yet, if you just go to Expedia.com, you’ll never find these $10 flights. For whatever reason, most sites that sell tickets don’t actually search the discount airlines, especially with the sites we use in North America. But if you’re traveling to Asia or Europe, you may want some tips on which sites to use. Or perhaps you’re just looking for some new tools and sites to find cheap flights with in general.

SkyScanner.com

One of my favorite tools is SkyScanner’s ability to use a calendar and search “Everywhere” or country/region specific searches.

Searching Flights to Countries

Let’s say we’re starting in Budapest and want to go to Tunisia. Just put in “Budapest” as your starting point and then “Tunisia” as your destination. This will find the cheapest ticket from Budapest to any airport in Tunisia.

 

Everywhere

But let’s say you’re like me and have a number of destinations you’d like to go to in Europe but since you’re going to be traveling to a number of cities you don’t care which airport you go to. You could leave the first box “Budapest” and leave the second box blank – this will search flights from Budapest to “Everywhere”, and show the cheapest flights first, by country.

 

Flexible dates

Now if you are flexible on days, from the date we’re on, we can select many flexible options: “In a week”, “Whole month”, and “Cheapest month”. 

 

I almost always use “Whole month” as I’m often flexible to some degree. But despite almost always being flexible, this is sometimes deceiving for me as it shows the lowest price of the entire month. If I’m looking for early June flights, it’s going to show prices from late June, as flights further out are almost always cheaper on discount airlines.

 

Cheapest Month

I’ve never actually used cheapest month, but wanted to test it out. So I looked for New York to Oslo with “Cheapest Month” and it pulled up this.

 

Which eventually showed this flight:

The downside in the example of the “Cheapest Month” search is that I doubt you could pay me to fly to Oslo in the middle of January. No way. And realistically I’m not searching for specific flights for random dates. But it you’re just dying to go to a specific warm country and don’t care when, it could be a cool search for you.

 

 

momondo.com

Momondo is the site for most people in terms of searching discount airlines, particularly in Europe.

Trip Finder

Momondo has a region version of the flexible search. This technically isn’t as good in search options as Kayak’s explore, but I’m putting it up higher because it searches more airlines. The fact that Momondo searches more discount airliners makes it better.

You can search by continent (or leave it “anywhere”).

 

Then you can search by month (or leave it “anytime”).

 

The Bad

The reason this tool is absoutely worthless to me, is that the only time I look for paid flights is when I need short flights like within Europe. And this only lets you search from a few specific countries to select your starting city. I want to start in Budapest and look for cheap flights from there… but I don’t get the option. I have to choose USA, UK, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. What the heck?

But in terms of just looking for flights from point A to point B, within Europe, the site is great. I just personally prefer SkyScanner. The option to be flexible, and to do it within the same search field… is priceless.

 

kayak.com/explore

• Put in your starting city
• Cap the price limit
• set the month or time of year… or leave it on “any month”

Here’s a search from New York, searching any roundtrip flight for less than $750, and searching any month.

The plus side is a visual map of cheap places. The downside is that it’s roundtrip only and I tend to book discount airliners oneway. Actually, it doesn’t actually search as many discount airlines as SkyScanner or Momondo.

 

google.com/flights

google.com/flights does a lot of the things kayak.com/explore doesn’t do. Like it searches oneways, and specific dates. But the really cool thing with google flights is that they let you click airline and choose what alliance you want to fly with (OneWorld, StarAlliance, or SkyTeam). Seems like a good tool to use for mileage runs.

I never actually use google flights because it isn’t user friendly. I can barely see the prices on the map, no flexible dates, and it’s loading a ton of annoying images instead of letting me see the map. But I bring it up because I don’t actually mileage run.

 

Airlines you have to search yourself

For example, you can’t search for Southwest on any other website except southwest.com. Similarly, I believe the only place to search for “WOW” flights is on wowair.com.

I’ve tried to look for a list of discount airliners and test them all. But the task was becoming tedious and fruitless (maybe it will be an entire post as a chart). There are seemingly a billion “discount” airlines, and most of them show up on SkyScanner. If you know of some off hand that can’t be searched on an OTA, please comment.

 

Don’t Forget Avios

British Airways Avios are the cheapest miles to use for short flights, so cheap I feel obligated to mention them as an option for getting around Europe using Nikki out of many airports in Germany and Austria. Plus, Iberia and flights out of Spain. Plus, Avios can transfer 1:1 from Chase UR points and Amex MR points.

I’ve mentioned Wandr.me’s Avios Calculator many times, but don’t think I’ve mentioned his map. Check out the Avios Map, which shows you all the direct flights from that airport visually and color coded by price. From Vienna all the green tabs are flights available for 4,500 Avios!

 

AirAsia Pass

I love discount airlines in Asia, and I actually really like Air Asia. Always had a good experience for super cheap. Flights as cheap as $10 before. But recently they came out with a pass that has kind of been advertised as “unlimited travel” but it’s hardly true. I did a post breaking down the AirAsia Pass and I encourage you to look into it.

Basically you can buy 10 or 20 points. And you can redeem those flights from points. Flights cost 1 to 3 points. The most you can do, practically is 8 flights with 10 points.

I tried to break down the AirAsia Pass into its best uses and even with the best uses or 10 points you buy… you’re not saving that much money from buying the flights in advance.

But if you’re familiar with the rules, and want to see a lot of SEAsia, it could be a good deal.

 

Conclusion

One annoying thing about discount airlines is that they often charge for bags. Almost always charge for checked bags, and often even charge for carry on bags. We have just walked on with a bag in some cases, and in some cases it just didn’t work.

In other words, know your full costs!

Just like the AirAsia Pass, I imagine a lot of people think they’ll get unlimited flights (more like 3 to 8) and that the only costs would be the $200 upfront. I bet a lot of em will be surprised when they book and get $30+ per flight in airport taxes.

But with airlines like Spirit or RyanAir, you may even have to pay for a carryon.

Actually, RyanAir should come with a word of warning. I’ve had good experiences with them but a lot of people don’t know the rules and get stung by huge hidden fees. I think it’s something like $75 to print your boarding pass at the airport. About the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, but I sure didn’t forget to print my boarding pass. Basically, their business model is to be as annoying as possible.

That being said, most discount airliners are just cheap airlines who upsell on bags and meals.

Hopefully some of these tools will come in handy for anyone looking to try out a discount airliner in the upcoming future.