what's up guys? in this video I'm going to talk about how you can find the
cheapest flights to anywhere you need to go. Now if you're a returning subscriber, this
content is a little bit different from what I usually make with the travel
vlogs and travel cinematography but I figured I should post this on this
channel anyways because if you're interested in travel in any form
whatsoever this will probably be valuable to you
Now for those of you who are new to this channel, my name is Nadir and I have had
the incredible privilege of travelling to hundreds and hundreds of cities and
something like 60 or 70 countries, and most of that has been in the last three
to four years. A big part of the reason why I've been able to travel so much
recently is because I am a massive nerd, not just when it comes to history as you
might know if you watched my other videos, but also when it comes to
learning about travel hacking and finding the cheapest way to get
somewhere. I have spent years doing research on how to find the cheapest
flights done a lot of trial and error and learned from my mistakes, and I'm proud
to say that I have got the methodology for finding the cheapest flights down to
an exact science. And the good news for you is that you don't have to spend
years figuring this out because I'm gonna break it down for you in the next
5 and 10 minutes and tell you exactly what you need to do. So without further
ado let's get into it so at first I'm gonna go over how to
find the cheapest flights if you have specific dates in mind and if you don't
really have a flexible travel schedule which is the case for a lot of people
like me. I only get to travel when I have breaks from grad school because I
have to teach and be here for the academic school year. So the first website that
I'm gonna go to for this is Google flights which is one of my favorite
websites for finding the cheapest flights. now let's say you have some
specific dates in mind. I'm gonna set that to March 13th to 22nd
because that's when my Spring Break is for my upcoming semester of grad school
and you have to pick your home airport which for me is Los Angeles and then
you just hit the search button and this is the best part. you get this really
nice little map on Google Maps and it shows you all the prices for those dates
that you selected and let's zoom out a little bit let's say you want to go
abroad.. this is not cheap at all.. but I bet if you go to Europe.. yeah
that's pretty cheap $361 and green means it's cheaper than usual that's something
to keep in mind. now even if you have a specific place where you want to go this
is still good to pull this out. so for example I really want to go to Nicaragua
if I can make that happen around March but even then I usually pull out a map
and see all the prices to the places around Nicaragua. So in this case I can
see.. just give it a second to pop up.. yeah. in this case you can see that the flight
to Nicaragua or Managua is $543 but there's a flight to San Jose nearby and
there's a flight to San Salvador for $348 that's almost $200 cheaper. last
time I was in El Salvador the hostel I was at was like six dollars a night so
that's I think like a month of accommodation in El Salvador so you could
technically fly to San Salvador, take a shuttle from there to Nicaragua to
probably take like six to ten hours and then come back with another shuttle see
both countries and still not spend 200 bucks doing that. now let's say you've
found a place where you want to go. in this case let's say I'm just gonna stick
with managua. Let's say I really want to fly direct to Managua. the next step is
after you do this after you pick this place is to go over to another website
and it's called skyscanner. cool thing is that if I go to sky scanner and I'll
put in the exact date so Los Angeles to Managua. right. so here's the really cool
part. this whole trip, the cheapest that Google flights could find was
$545. you go over the skyscanner you see $475
and that is almost always the case when I look at sky scanner after looking
up some flights on Google flights. now let's try this for something else. let's
try a more popular route from New York to reach Paris and I'm gonna use the
same dates again March 22nd.. here you go and I'm gonna do the same thing
on Skyscanner. once again you'll see the cheapest flights that Google flights
have shown me is $296 if I go over to Skyscanner it shows me something that's
$284. now you got to be careful about connections like this one so in
this case you see there's like a 32 hour flight which means there's like
long layover in Helsinki that you want to avoid, but it's usually not the case.
a more extreme example would be this trip to Indonesia that I'm eyeing for next
summer. so Google flights the cheapest it shows me for a roundtrip to Jakarta next
summer is 704 bucks. if I go over to Skyscanner to see the same thing same
dates exact same dates May 14th to Saturday August 22nd $583 that's 120
bucks Indonesia is another one of those
countries where I've stayed in hostels there are five dollars a night so this
is.. yeah this is almost a month's accommodation right there. it's always
worth checking if the prices for your flights change if you go a day before or
a day after because in most cases you can afford to lose a day or two and
sometimes it makes a big difference. okay. so let's go back to that example of New
York to Paris so I had the dates from Friday to Sunday and flights are often
more expensive on the weekends. okay. so if I switch the date from Friday to
Thursday the cheapest on Google flights is 290 bucks on Skyscanner its 281 bucks
which is ridiculously cheap for a transatlantic round-trip. so let's say
you have your decision narrowed down to exactly what day you want to fly but
before you book it I would recommend going back to Google flights to check
something. and it has this really cool feature.. let's say go back to
my Nicaragua round trip in March if I select the flights so I go for this one
you can scroll down and you can actually see how this price that you see right
now compares to how much it usually costs so over here you'll see that five
$543 for a round-trip and March is typical now if this is somewhere in the
green area and you know you're flying there for sure, my recommendation is to
just go ahead and book that flight if you know you're flying for sure. now if
this bar slider is over in the red area or maybe in the yellow
it's probably a good idea to wait a week and see if it drops Google Flights also
makes this really easy for you to track that. all you have to do is go over here
to the top and click on this button that says track prices
what is this gonna do? I'll show you. you will get an email from time to time
every time the flight (price) changes. so for example I have already been tracking
this particular flight and I got an email a couple of days ago saying that
oh look the price dropped from 597 to 557 but I still haven't bought this
flight because you noticed that the slider is kinda in the middle. if it
dropped to like 300 I'd probably have bought it by now. if you don't have
a specific day when you have to fly out or fly back in that opens up a whole new
world of opportunities for you and I'm gonna show you exactly how to make the
most out of that so we'll start with Google flights again and I'll just do
the same thing that I did before what I'm gonna do this time is that instead
of picking specific dates I'm gonna say flexible dates and Google flights gives
you these amazing options like it will show you a one week trip in the next six
months two week weekend although but the weekend I'll be a little bit careful
sometimes it shows me trips that are from like Saturday night to Monday
evening and calls it a weekend trip if you have a flexible schedule Skyscanner
actually also has a Maps feature that will be good for you the reason I didn't
mention this earlier because to the best of my knowledge it doesn't let you pick
specific dates it just lets you pick a month which is less options than Google
flights. but remember Skyscanner almost always shows you cheaper prices
than Google flights does so even if you're using any other website like
Google flights to find your prices it's always worth double checking on
Skyscanner after you pick that specific flight to make sure there's not a better
deal out there. so far we've covered the very basic steps of finding the cheapest
flights. now there are a few more things that are a little more complicated that
can save you even more money and good news for you is I'm gonna go over that
as well. so let's go over to my third favorite website which is skiplagged
before I go over what skiplagged is I have to explain to you how airline flights or
how flight prices often work. sometimes you'll notice you can go from Los
Angeles to Chicago for like 120 bucks and that involves a layover in Denver
but with the same airlines you'll find that a direct flight from Los Angeles to
Denver will cost you like 150 bucks. now why does this happen? why is it cheaper
to go to Denver and then go somewhere else than going exactly to Denver? the
exact algorithm is beyond the scope of this video but the the bottom line is
that because companies (airlines) figured out that that is a more profitable way to do
things and what you need to know is that you can make the most of this
opportunity using services like skiplagged so the easiest way for me to explain to
you what skiplagged does is just to go over the website and show you so let's
say I am going somewhere from Los Angeles put that in here search deals so
look at that it shows me the cheapest direct flight from LA to New York on
this day May 30th is 131 bucks but but if I booked a
flight for United that was going to Orlando and then I just got off during
my layover at New York I could get that for a hundred two dollars and I think
that's a better deal than $131 there are some concerns about using skiplagged I'll
actually link an article in the description of this video that talks
about things you need to be careful about when doing this so I want you to
read that and make your best informed decision. but there are two things that
I'm gonna tell you in this video that you particularly need to be careful
about. so the first thing you need to be careful about is no checked luggage. like
the example I mentioned if you booked a flight from LA to Orlando and if you
check luggage and you get off in New York you're not gonna be able to take
your luggage in New York. your luggage is going to Orlando. the second
one is if you have a account with the airlines that you're booking with it's
best to not book your flight through that account
now obviously airline companies are not very happy if you're hacking their
system. to the best of my knowledge there's nothing they can actually do
about it but if they find out if they figure out that you're doing this
constantly and if you have an account with them, the worst I've heard is that
they can revoke your miles. they can take away airline miles and other perks that
you have and the least I feel like they could do is stop giving you new perks
for traveling with them if you're hacking their system constantly and they
figure it out. Again read the article that I've posted in my description and make your
own decision do what you think is best. talking about
miles it makes for a very nice transition into the next segment which
I'm going to touch briefly on which is airline miles and credit card points.
if you know how to make the most out of credit card points you can travel for
pretty much free. now this applies in America I know this applies in a couple
of other countries like Canada and Australia but this doesn't apply to every country
so check to make sure it actually is valid to you before you watch this whole
segment. the thing with airline miles is that you can literally travel for free
so I did a trip last summer from Los Angeles to Rome using American Airlines
miles that I got as a signup bonus for a credit card and that trip cost me five
dollars and sixty cents. five point six zero. direct flight Los Angeles to Rome. I did
another flight last... 2018 December from LA to Marseilles in
southern France. that one cost me something like $12 or something like $13
so I want to say. flight from LA to London to Marseille $12 for all of that that
I booked another flight this summer in summer 2019 from LA to Stockholm with a
short layover in Helsinki. this time it cost me relatively a lot like 85 bucks
well the reason for that was because I booked my flights 10 days before my
actual trip and I didn't know American Airlines has a $75 fee that it charges
you if you booked your flight too close to the day of travel. these 3 trips
combined I spent like a hundred bucks. if you take out that $75 late fee that I
was charged I would spend like 30 bucks that's $30 for three trips from the west
coast of America to Europe. I am not kidding when I say I've spent more for
an uber from the LA Airport to my place on multiple occasions, so how is this
possible? how exactly airline miles and credit card points work is beyond the
scope of this video. there are great websites out there like the points guy
and nerd wallet where they can explain to you in great detail what to do and
what not to do so what I'm gonna tell you: take your time doing the research
before you start trying these things and if you don't understand what you're
doing don't do it. don't get yourself in credit card debt, miss payments, screw
up your credit score and then blame me because I told you to do this. make sure
you know what you're doing before you do it but if you can figure this thing
out like I have and a lot of other people have you can essentially travel
for free and this is what a lot of long-term travellers like me do. the best
part is if you can figure this out you can come out of it with a better credit
score than you had before like I know I have a better credit score than 90% of
people my age in the u.s. so I think I've gone over pretty much everything I
wanted to on this video and that should give you a great place to start to find
the cheapest flights to wherever you want to go. what I'm saying right now is
very relevant right now. it's gonna be very relevant in all of 2020 maybe 2021
it has been relevant for the last couple of years but it's probably not gonna be
the case in five years or ten years so what you should do after you watch this
video is see the description and see any comments that I've pinned because it is
possible that the information that I provided you needs to be updated and I'll
definitely mention that in the comments and the description as things need to be
updated. if you like this video hit that like button and do let me know. I know
that I say this for every video but for this one I really need you to let me
know because this is not the content that I usually produce on this channel
but if it is really helpful I can produce more helpful stuff like this
because this is already information that I know and it really doesn't take a lot
of effort to create these videos. if you have any questions about any of the
things I said please post them in the comments and I will try to get back to
you as soon as I can and finally if you thought this was helpful feel free to
subscribe to my channel to get more helpful tips or watch more of my travel
videos. even when I make normal videos or travel vlogs by going to different
places I do talk a bit about how to get the best deals where you're going what
to do what not to do and how to get the best bang for your buck essentially
that's it for this one. thank you for watching now go out there and book those
cheap flights and thank me later take care