How to find the perfect flight for your vacation? What are the most reliable sites? Here's how to use the best search engines.
In the post, some useful tips for find low cost flights (and not only).
Looking for flights (low cost or not) is not always easy, especially for those who know little or nothing about the matter. Which sites are trustworthy? Where can I find the best price? What if my dates are flexible?
Look for low cost flights
There are many search engines that help and guide you to your booking and these are my favorites. They are the ones I use to find the lowest rates and the cheapest dates. However, keep in mind that the actual booking does not take place on these sites but on external portals such as Expedia e lastminute.com.
My advice? Once you have found the flight on one of these search engines, if the price is the same or a little more expensive, always try to book on the airline's website.
Google Flights
Google Flights has recently become my favorite (it has overtaken Skyscanner) due to the latest improvements. It is in fact a complete search engine and very simple to use, both for those who are novice in the search for flights, and for those looking to create multi-route or needs to land and depart from different cities.
For example, what I often do is search for flights at airports close to the city I want to go to to see if I can get the price down and create different travel itineraries accordingly.
The same goes for the cities of departure: if you live in Milan it will not be very difficult for you to reach Turin or Bologna by car.
You want to go to Los Angeles? Write MXP, LIN, BLQ, TRN in the start field and LAX in the return field; choose the cheapest dates (in green) by clicking and the list of flights will appear at the bottom.
And if you need inspiration, use the map that will show you the main capitals with their price at a glance.
Pros: ease of use, navigable map, ability to see the rates on the calendar before selecting the date.
Cons: few sites to book.
Skyscanner
First love is never forgotten. Skyscanner was the first site to introduce the search for flights to "anywhere"! I love this feature because I often have a limited budget but want to start anyway (no matter where).
Just select the city of departure and in the destination field you can click on everywhere. All flights from the cheapest to the most expensive will be shown. It's a great way to seek inspiration.
If your dates are flexible, Skyscanner is ideal because it allows you to select the whole month or even the most convenient month.
Pros: “everywhere” function, many sites to book, “the most convenient month” function.
Cons: the prices of the second screen (if you see the whole month) do not always correspond to the final price.
Kayak
Kayak is very similar to other search engines but adds two filters that should not be underestimated: payment method and luggage.
In fact, you often get to the booking page by finding yourself unclear taxes (hence the fines) based on which credit, debit or prepaid card we choose to use.
Kayak solves the problem upstream by giving us the option to select our payment method from the left column.
In addition, the departure and return dates can extend to +/- 3 days. Just click on "exact" in the calendar and a drop-down menu will open.
Pros: possibility to select the type of card and to immediately understand the costs associated with it and to select the number of bags.
Cons: few sites to book.
Momondo
momondo (lowercase is desired) recently added the “take me anywhere” feature, so it stands up to Skyscanner for the undecided who don't know where to go.
The option of choose according to continents; clicking on one of them will open a screen with a map or a list of cities and prices, very similar to the Google Flights map.
You can also choose to search for your flights based on the theme of your trip thanks to Trip Finder, able to filter the results by destinations on the beach, in the city, in nature etc.
Pros: Ability to select continents, fun to use with the Trip Finder option.
Cons: not immediate for everyone, the selection of sites to book is slightly confusing.
