Editor: Irina
A very short and banal history of acquaintance with aggregators. Me: “I don’t understand, where is my inexpensive air ticket? Does Aeroflot have any sales at all? " Me: “Are you serious? Go to the word unknown to my ears. "
I went in ... So I found out about the best flight search engine - Skyscanner. And a little later, and about another, no worse - Aviasales. I will keep a story about them (and prove why the best :)) But for objectivity I will also mention a couple of others.
My article is over a year old! It is updated in a timely manner, and I managed to fly inexpensively with the help of aggregators:
Everything - there and back. |
Where to find cheap flights?
Official airline websites vs airline ticket aggregators - who wins in monitoring the cheapest things to get on board? In the first case, of course, you see tickets from one specific carrier, and in the other:
- Tickets from 1200+ airlines - incl. and low-cost airlines in Europe and small-town African / Polynesian airlines (if you need to go there)
- Comparison, where it is more profitable - the services work both with the websites of air carriers and with intermediaries. A big plus, because the ticket price, for example, from Turkish Airlines is lower for the second
- Huge selection of direct and connecting flights. Moreover, for a flight with a transfer, aggregators can combine different airlines, which will play into your hands. Our route Moscow-Los Angeles was carried out first by Aeroflot to Warsaw and then by the Polish LOT. It was a single ticket, and it cost only 15,000 rubles.
Another question arises: which search engines surely reliable? Where does the ticket not turn into a pumpkin at midnight after purchase?
Top flight aggregators:
- Skyscanner (1st place)
- Aviasales (1st place)
- Onetwotrip
- Momondo
- Kayak
- Anywayanyday
The most popular of all the first two are like Yandex and Google. You use whatever is more convenient, but for complete information you check on each one. If you want to find the cheapest flight ticket, I advise you to ALWAYS study both aggregators!
Skyscanner
If you are in Bali, look for this plane in Bukit (you can check with the locals)
Good old Skyscanner that kicked off my budget travel. The main advantages for which it is still the best flight search engine:
+ Non-fixed dates. Let's say you choose the whole of May. Or December. You can notice the "sagging" days and adjust the scope of the vacation 🙂
+ Non-fixed directions. Well, I want to go to Japan from Moscow and more economical. So I drive into "where" - Japan, and even in Tokyo, arrival is more profitable or in Osaka / Nagoya - Skyscanner will tell you himself. Works in other variations when a flight is required from country to city (Thailand-St. Petersburg) or from country to country (Portugal-Brazil)
+ The cheapest month. Function - ♥, if you need to appease the little Jew inside as much as possible. The service will process the request in no time, and all you have to do is correlate the result with the plans - a plane ticket "for free" may fall out both this month and in a year
+ International site. Yes, you can switch to French Skyscanner, Australian and 19 more "subspecies". What for? Specifically, this aggregator of prices for air tickets with a change of country also updates the currency. In terms of rubles, the amount is not always equal, it happens that the flight is cheaper for a Spaniard / Dane / American. I did not buy foreign air tickets in non-rubles, but maybe you will be bolder than me 🙂
However, I regretfully conclude that Skyscanner is giving up a little. His feature number 1 - the issuance of the most budgetary destinations for departure (in a simple search for "everywhere") - borrowed this ↓ aggregator of air tickets. And in combination with ...
- outdated design
- misunderstandings with pricing (SkyScanner, you were different for the better, why do I have to double-check?)
... more and more often I find myself typing Aviasales in the browser line.
Mini guide instruction
In order not to get confused 🙂
- We go to the Skyscanner website, drive in from where and where, dates, number of people and class of service
- If necessary, click on "Add nearby airports" and "Direct flights only". I advise the first button, so you can fly farther, but cheaper. The second - no, since self-docking helps to save money
- If you need to make a difficult route (several countries in one trip), this can also be done on the main page
- We click "Find"; a list of all possible tickets opens
- We choose the most optimal → "View" → we choose again, but this time from intermediary sites (or officials), where the main difference is the price. Push, go, buy, and voila, it's time to pack!
Aviasales
On the first night in Las Vegas we won $ 50, on the second - right there
they lost and decided to fly away 🙂
"Good" Aviasales are:
+ Timely cost indication - on the main page when entering dates
+ Aggregator of charter air tickets. It is not so easy to find them, but in this article >> you can find out the algorithm
+ Filter tickets with or without luggage. If you leave a checkmark on "Baggage and carry-on luggage" on the left, get rid of thoughts of additional payment (subject to the principle of the question)
+ TOP-100 cheap flights and bot of abnormal prices ⬇ It's so cool that you need to get started right now!
+ Convenience at the level. On the issue page there is a line showing prices for tickets departing within ± 2 days from your date, and in the same place - a drop-down table of summary prices for the entire month
+ "Night" theme. Aviasales takes care of the user's vision, and the color scheme changes depending on the time of day
+ CIS-shny site. What if you are a patriot? 🙂
And, of course, the options "Anywhere", "Anytime" - in general, Skyscanner-style.
"Not so good" Aviasales are:
- The inability to put the country in the "from where" window (only the city)
- If you are flying to a specific city, you cannot initially specify the search for tickets for the whole month (but you can for the country)
Mini guide instruction
- We go to the Aviasales website, enter the direction, dates, number of people, economy / business → and "find tickets"
- Click on "Create a difficult route" if necessary
- Examining the search results, paying attention to the bar with prices on top
- We decide on a ticket and a website (where to buy) from the proposed
- We decide!
OneTwoTrip
A relatively new site-aggregator of air tickets, where you can also buy train tickets and buses. Interestingly, OneTwoTrip is aggregated by Skyscanner and Aviasales (i.e. they display it as an intermediary). A huge drawback is the overpriced (promo code will not save either).
OneTwoTrip can be justified with 24/7 help. If you have any questions, you can contact us through any messenger.
By the way, at the very moment when profitable tickets appeared on OneTuTrip for once, I discovered an interesting feature of the aggregator ↓. Namely - providing statistics on the flight, up to such details as the age of the aircraft and the number of available cm for the legs.
A few more aggregators
For example, Momondo, Anywayanyday, Kayak, Biletix are similar search engine sites that are inferior in popularity in Russia. This does not mean that they are better or worse. Just ... less in demand.
Choose your flight aggregator and start booking flights around the world quickly and online from the comfort of your home. But don't forget to compare prices on at least two sites.
How to find cheap flights?
You can fly to Hong Kong for 9,500 rubles, and to Norway for 3,500.
Important: look for tickets very early.
First of all, patience! Monitoring can take a week or two - and there is some luck in this process.
- Are the places of departure and arrival the same? Take tickets immediately there and back. If you think that you will outsmart the search engine by buying in parts (you see that it is cheaper in total) - no, this is a trick, the return ticket will rise in price.
- Try flights from different cities (where, besides the local airport, is it convenient for you to fly from?). And not Moscow alone! My case: Kazan-Hong Kong - 18,000 rubles, but Samara-Hong Kong - 9,500 rubles (sale).
- Do not be afraid of air tickets from low-cost airlines and fly, if possible, without luggage (you can take a 55x40x20 suitcase in hand luggage - the standard minimum size).
- The days of the week and ... the exchange rate affect. There is an unspoken rule (which I will tell you more about sometime): the ruble weakens → buy tickets on Tuesday; the ruble is getting stronger → on Wednesday.
- Look for promotions and discounts! Maybe in our VK group? 🙂
- If it doesn't matter where, but, most importantly, it's cheap - use the “everywhere” / “anywhere” function on Skyscanner and Aviasales. Flight search engines will give you a list / map with the coolest prices.
- Not exactly at the box office, but: Benefit from connecting flights. Check out the flight with a longer connection, most often the ticket price does not change. I stayed in Munich, Istanbul and Dubai for 24 hours - a great chance to see new countries and cities (if you have a visa).
With a stopover for 16 hours in Dubai, we managed to watch the fountain show and walk around the Dubai Mall
Where to find charters and low-cost airlines?
Inexpensive flights, it happens, are made by charters, especially if they go separately from the tour and "last minute". It will be possible to snatch such ones 1-3 days before departure, and Aviasales is still capable of this from the mentioned sites.
And about lowcosters: any airline aggregator is an aggregator of low-cost airlines. So ↑
In Asia, you can always catch cheap tickets, such as
from Hong Kong to Tokyo for 5000 rubles!
Have you learned the material "Where to find cheap flights"? 🙂 You still have questions - ask in the comments!
