How to Get Cheap Flights in AustraliaAir travel used to be accessible only to the upper crust, but in recent years, relative prices have come down, democratising the ability for people to explore the world. Airfares are one of the costlier aspects of booking travel, so it is always welcome to spend less on this aspect of your holiday. Low-cost airlines are one option, but there are ways to save money even on airlines which offer a more comfortable flight experience. If you are looking to book your next holiday on a budget, here are some travel tips and tricks so you can save $$ on flight bookings and have more to spend on the more exciting parts of your adventure.
You don't have to pay full price for airfares with these tips and tricks. Image: Jan Vasek via Pixabay.
is a nifty little app which uses data from previous years to predict your flight prices for dates and destinations that you select, determining if prices will go up or down closer to the travel date. This allows you to identify the optimal time to book your flight - sometimes it is better to wait until prices are predicted to come down. The Hopper interface is intuitive, with flight dates colour-coded for expense and clear instructions provided on if you should book now or bide your time. If your travel dates are flexible, you can also use Hopper to identify when is cheaper for flights to your destination. There are several other sites, such as
Adioso, which similarly allow you to identify the best possible prices.
Use price prediction tools to ensure you are getting the lowest airfares. Image: Free-Photos from Pixabay.
Some airlines have weekly airfare deals, allowing you to snap up cheap tickets.
Jetstar's Friday Fare Frenzy has special deals from 12pm until 8pm every Friday, while
Tiger runs a weekly Tigerair Tuesday sale event (with deals available until 12pm the next day).
Virgin runs a weekly Thursday night shopping event. All encourage newsletter sign-ups so you can get a weekly email containing their deals, but be warned that the newsletter may have you impulse-buying insanely cheap flights!
If Qantas is your preferred airline, while they do not have a weekly sale, they do regularly have online sale events. You can download the Qantas mobile app to keep track of deals on offer.
Keep an eye on weekly flight deals for your next adventure. Image: Ales Krivec from Pixabay.
You can save hundreds of dollars on domestic travel simply by booking your flight and accommodation together on a package deal site. Sites such as
Expedia can automatically put together package deals for your destination and dates, telling you the amount you save (you can cross-reference the deal price to published rates on airline websites if you do not trust the claims of the package deal site). However, there are some drawbacks to booking through package deal sites - in my experience, sometimes booking details get lost on their way to the hotel! However, there is another nifty trick you can try to reduce your accommodation costs. Hotels tend to prefer when you book directly (so they don't have to pay commission to the deals site), so if you see a great deal online, you can call the hotel directly and ask if they will price-match the online rate.
Set fare alertsIt is simple to set up email fare alerts for your destinations of choice. Google Flights is the best starting point as they aggregate flight information from different airlines, and can automatically send you an email when a flight you are monitoring drops below a certain price.
Dollar Flight Club is another great service to sign up to in order to identify gobsmackingly cheap airfares. You can also set up fare alerts on some individual airline websites, for example, the Qantas mobile app has a Fare Watch facility in which you are alerted when flights come up for your destination and dates.
Fare alerts bring the lowest airfares to your attention for your destinations of choice. Image: Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay.
Jetstar offers a
Price Beat Guarantee, beating any comparable lower-priced flight by 10%. Jetstar is already a low-cost airline so you would be hard-pressed to take them up on this most of the time, but Tiger tends to be marginally cheaper so keep an eye out for similar Tiger flights before you decide to book your Jetstar flight. The competitor flight must be within an hour of the Jetstar flight and travel the same route. Once you have identified a flight eligible for the discount, the process for claiming your discounted flight is simple and wholly online.
Price-matching can be used to your advantage to buy cheap plane tickets. Image: Adrian Lang from Pixabay.
