How to find cheap flights LAST MINUTE (5 easy tips)

you'd think Airlines would lower their prices at the last second to fill empty seats and to make more money unfortunately that's not the way the world works that said there are still a few ways to find last minute flight deals over the past 7 years of nearly non-stop travel I've bought my fair share of flights and here's how to find cheap flights last minute ever wonder why hotels discount rooms last minute while Airlines jack up the prices it's because they realize the main people that buy flights last minute are business Travelers business Travelers don't think twice about the flight price because it's on the company's dime this incentivizes Airlines to raise the prices at the last minute instead of lower them but since most business Travelers aren't flying on budget Airlines like Spirit or ryion a or Asia air these airlines are less likely to inflate the prices at the last second yes prices can still be a little higher than if you were to buy several months in advance but the price difference isn't as dramatic as some more premium Airlines for example I just ran a search here on Ryan Air for the first two cities that popped into my head Barcelona to Berlin you can see that the prices to fly on the 17th which is tomorrow are in line with what they'd be for most of the rest of the month now the price does cut in half once you're over a month out but in this case buying one day out is not much different than buying one month out now compare this to Lanza whose base price several months out is about the same as a budget carrier's last minute price long story short budget Airlines just want warm butts in those tiny seats just make sure you're aware of all those extra potential fees that budget airlines are famous for to avoid them check out my video on tips for flying spe Airlines which basically apply to all budget Airlines it's no secret that different people pay different prices for the same flight even if they're all in the same class by by the way let me know if you think this is fair in the comments the reason this happens is because Airlines have complex reservation systems and there are buckets of seats at several different price points these reservation systems also make it so that when you buy a group of tickets together they all come from the same price bucket that means if you buy tickets in a group you may be paying more than you need to for example say you need four tickets for your family and so you put in four tickets into your flight search if the only has three seats left in the cheapest price bucket then you're out of look it will automatically bump all four tickets up to the next most expensive price bucket to get around this you need to search for each ticket individually that way you can fill those three lower price seats and only have to pay the more expensive price for one seat the problem is when you're booking your flights you can't actually see how many of the cheap flight seats are left the only way to know for sure is to First search for your flights as a group and then search for the tickets individually another reason it's important to search for your entire group first is to make sure that there's enough seats left on the plane for your whole group in the first place because it would suck to start buying them individually only to realize that you're one seat short next you can find great last minute flight deals by searching for award seats but only if you know how to do it correctly when it comes to award W flights that you buy with points and Miles some Airlines use Dynamic pricing which basically means that the award price adjust with the cash price so if the cash price goes up last minute so will the points price this isn't very helpful but a few Airlines still use Zone award charts or distances to determine the points price of a flight independent of the cash players for example I searched for flights from JFK to London on American Airlines using miles you can see that the cost in miles is almost the same every single day next month it drops slightly but it's still always about the same now compare that to what the cash price would be for the very same flights $653 for a one-way flight tomorrow which is double the cost of what it would be in 1 month from now that's why it's super important to always have a stockpile of points and Miles lying around the easiest way to earn a buttload of points that are worth multiple free flights is to use credit card signup bonuses this is how I've saved tens of thousands of dollars on flights the best points to have in these last minute situations are points with banks that allow you to transfer out to various different airlines I'll link to my two favorite cards that allow you to do this in the description if you don't have any points or miles right now this strategy obviously won't help you buy a last minute flight today but if you're proactive about earning points it will help you buy one the next time around if you want me to make a more in-depth video on how to quickly earn points and find cheap award flights like this video and comment award flights down in the description okay moving on sometimes you need to get a little creative if you want to score cheap last minute flights as a general rule the bigger the airport the cheaper the flights that's because there are more people flying to and from a particular destination which subsidizes the overall cost there's also generally more competition between Airlines so when looking for last minute flights search for big airports in the general vicinity of where you want to travel this works especially well when flying to other continents like Europe or Asia for example my virtual assistant is from Malaysia When She Flies from LA to Malaysia instead of flying directly into koala lur she always flies to Saigon or hoim Min City in Vietnam there are more people traveling to Vietnam than there are traveling to Malaysia so sometimes tickets can be5 or even $600 cheaper from there it's just a cheap $37 AirAsia flight to her home in Malaysia you can use Google's explore feature when booking your tickets to see if there's a significant price difference by flying into a country that's close to your final destination speaking of AirAsia here's an even better example of a Budget Airline whose prices don't Skyrocket at the last second look flying 2 days from now only cost $4 more than the normal Baseline price sometimes finding cheap last minute flights only requires a little bit more digging recently my wife and I flew last minute in Colombia from Cali to metagene we discovered that flying into Rio negro which is a suburb about 45 minutes from metagene was about half the price as flying directly into metagene at least for our dates there was even a convenient shuttle connecting the airport to metagene that cost just a couple bucks sometimes budget Airlines only fly into certain airports in a given destination so if you're searching the wrong airport you may not even see the budget options so before pulling the trigger on a flight do a quick search to see if the city has more than one airport for example New York and Mexico both have three different airports that you can fly into too one way to make sure that you're seeing all of the airports for the city that you're searching for is for example if you're in Google flights and you type in your destination make sure to choose this one here that has the little point on it and not these individual airports because if you choose an individual airport then it'll only show you for that airport but if you choose this point you can see that the flights that show up are going to different airports that are in London if you want to actually see how I search for the cheapest flights step by step check out this video next and don't forget to follow project untethered on Instagram and Tik Tok for our best bite-size travel hacks all right guys byebye

Channel: Project Untethered

Views: 31,224

Keywords: how to find cheap flights last minute, how to find cheap flights last-minute, how to find last minute flights cheap, how to find cheap flights, cheap flights, cheap flight booking tricks, cheap flight hacks, last minute flight deals, last minute flight tickets, last minute flights, last minute flight hacks, last minute flight booking, cheap travel tips, budget travel tips, last-minute flights, buying last minute flights

Id: GfR-xEvwLvU

Length: 8min 12sec (492 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2023