Finding cheap flights online - be secretive!

By flashpackingfamily | Sep 19, 2019

We’ve spent a great deal of time researching and testing ways to get the best airfares to enable us to travel as much as we do, and we’d like to pass on some of our tips for seeking out these cheaper fares, as well as other ways to save on flights.

When searching for flights, it pays to be secretive. Some companies use your own search history data against you. Ed and I have often done exactly the same search for airfares at the same time using different devices and got completely different results. Some airlines, online travel agencies and metasearch sites change prices based on your previous searches, mostly increasing them, so we recommend using incognito or private browsing for your searches.

In Chrome and Safari, you can go incognito by clicking Control, Shift and “N”. For Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, click Control, Shift and “P”. This will open a new browser window where your device and information are not tracked, so you will not be shown inflated prices as a result of your previous searches. If you want to start with a clean slate for each flight search, close all your incognito windows, open a new one, and then start your flight search.

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Written by flashpackingfamily
Hi! We’re an ordinary family travelling of four, part-time now that the kids are in school. We’ve visited 85 countries between us, and plan to visit a whole lot more amazing places as a family before the kids fly the nest. We love sharing our experiences and providing helpful tips and practical information...

There is 1 comment

theexpatchronicle
Sep 20, 2019 at 10:04

Ummm this is pretty amazing advice and quite alarming the games that airlines play!! Thanks for sharing, I'm passing this along for sure...


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