My Journey Hunting for Cheap Flights
Okay, so I needed to figure out how to stop getting ripped off on flights. Prices seemed to bounce around like crazy, and honestly, who has time to check ten different websites every single hour? Not me. I just wanted a fair price without spending my whole day clicking refresh.
First, I did what everyone does. Went to the big airline sites directly. Then tried those comparison sites. Spent hours, literally hours, plugging in dates, changing airports, trying Tuesdays instead of Fridays. It was a headache. Sometimes I’d find a decent price, hesitate for an hour, come back, and poof! Gone. Or worse, higher. Super frustrating.
Giving Search Engine Alerts a Shot
Then I noticed on a couple of search engines, there was this little button or switch, something like “Track Prices” or “Get Alerts”. I’d seen it before but never bothered. This time, I figured, what the heck? Can’t be worse than what I’m doing now. So I decided to try it out properly.
Here’s what I actually did:
- Picked my tools: I mostly used Google Flights because it’s easy. Also gave Skyscanner a go, heard good things about their prices. Turns out, Skyscanner often did find some really low fares, sometimes matching the best ones I saw elsewhere.
- Set things up: I put in the trip I was planning. Let’s say, Chicago to Denver.
- Chose dates: Sometimes I knew the exact dates, sometimes I just picked a month and said “flexible dates”. The flexible option seemed to work better for finding real bargains if you weren’t locked in.
- Hit the alert button: Found that toggle switch, clicked it. Had to give my email, obviously.
- Rinsed and repeated: Did this for a couple of different trips I was thinking about. Maybe Chicago to Miami too. Just set up alerts for anything I might want to book down the road.
Waiting for the Magic (and the Emails)
Then, I just waited. My inbox started getting emails. “Price Alert: Chicago to Denver has dropped by $15”. “Price Alert: Chicago to Denver has increased by $30”. At first, it was a bit much. Lots of emails. But I learned to skim them quickly.
The key part was patience. I wasn’t jumping on every small drop. I had a rough idea of what a “good” price looked like for that route based on my earlier painful searching. I was waiting for a significant dip.
Did it Actually Work?
Yeah, it did. After about two weeks of getting these alerts, one popped up for the Denver trip. The price had fallen by like $80 compared to the usual fare I was seeing. Checked the details fast – flight times were okay, airline was fine. I didn’t wait this time. Went straight to book it through the link in the email (well, not a link, but it told me where to look!). Got the ticket at that lower price. Saved myself cash and all that searching time.
So, my takeaway? Using these price alerts is way better than manually searching forever. It takes a few minutes to set up, yeah, and you get some emails. But it does the watching for you. You just need to be ready to pull the trigger when a good deal notification comes through. It’s my standard practice now whenever I’m planning a trip more than a few weeks out.
