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Get Cheaper Flights with this Trick: Beat the Airlines

In this post, you’ll learn how to get cheaper flights by beating the airlines at their own game.
And yes. Cookies are involved.

airlines-cheaper-flights
The airlines are playing a game. An unfair one. And it all comes down to cookies.

How Airlines Use Cookies to Charge You More

All online businesses have tools in place to offer you a better experience.

They use a small file (called a “cookie”) to manage the items in your shopping cart, personalize your experience by offering relevant content, and track the pages visited over a period of time. What is a cookie? A cookie is a small file that is downloaded from a site when you visit it and is stored in your browser while on that specific site. They are also known as an HTTP cookie, browser cookie, or web cookie.

Generally speaking, this isn’t a big deal. The cookies actually improve your experience on the site. Prices on most sites are static – they won’t change regardless of how often you check them.

But airfare is different.

How Airlines Abuse Your Search History

When you search a specific route, the cookie stores the details. It also remembers the dates and number of passengers. What this means is that their server can see if a specific route is in high demand (by you). When something is in demand, the price will increase.

We’ve run tests on tickets that we eventually purchased and it remained true almost each time:

Ticket Warning: The more you search a route, the more the price increases.

Don’t let ticket prices keep you from traveling.

Airline Abuse Case Study

The last time we flew from Cuenca to Miami we casually checked flights over a period of a few days. They started out at around USD$590 each. When we were ready to book, the prices had increased to over USD$740 each. We had been checking them on the same computer.

So we turned on another computer, cleared the internet history (including cookies) and searched the same route.

With all the same details it came out $150 less at $590/ticket. I was happy – and shocked. The difference was $450+ for all three tickets. And the only difference was that we searched on a different computer – preventing the travel site from knowing our search history.

What if I’m not logged in? If you have an account with any of the airlines or travel sites, they also track your details. In fact, you will probably get emails for weeks suggesting dates and routes to the destination you recently searched. Almost everything is tracked online. Even if you are not logged in, the cookie stored on your computer will tell the site the routes, dates and frequency that you have been searching.

Get Cheaper Flights With This Trick

It is always worth checking rates on a new device (with cookies cleared, and not logged into your travel site account) to see what happens with the rates.

We’ve found that often the price is less on a fresh computer. It seem that they incrementally increase the price on routes frequently checked on the same computer.

How to get rid of cookies: each browser has the ability to remove some or all internet history. Check this great post on PCWorld about deleting cookies.

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3 Ways to Beat The Airlines (Get Cheaper Flights)

There are 3 ways to kill the cookies so you can get a normal flight price.

  1. Clear internet history: From what we’ve seen, this only has to be done on a specific browser – not for your whole system. All you need to do is delete the cookies downloaded from a specific site inside of a certain browser.
  2. Use a fresh computer: This accomplishes the same as the first option. Just start fresh without any traceable search history.
  3. Use an “incognito window” in Chrome: I haven’t used this before, but I read that it does the same thing. Google describes this as a way to prevent Chrome “from recording or downloading what you visit”.

What’s the point of all of this? The goal is to make the airline think that you are just starting your search. And that they need to give you their best rate.

My 4 Favorite Sites For Cheap Flights

These are the sites that we have used for many years for all our travels. While prices seldom differ between Priceline, Orbitz and Expedia they will sometimes differ in their flight schedules.

  1. Priceline: What used to be a bidding-only site, has now become a pretty powerful travel booking site. I’ve found that it pulls results faster than most – and it doesn’t have the insane number of ads found on most travel sites. And if you like bidding, you can still “Name Your Own Price” on lots of hotels. My new favorite site.
  2. Orbitz: This is my go-to travel site. I love the flexible dates option that shows a price grid for three days before and after your target dates. I also like the discounts offered for flight/hotel packages.
  3. Expedia: This used to be my favorite but it had just too many ads. To compare, I always check schedules on Expedia to see if there is a better route available.
  4. Google flights: This one is pretty new to me – but it seems very good for finding the best schedule for travel. And it’s addictive!

While I’ve never booked on Kayak, they do have a great search feature – their Android app is the best that I’ve used. They have a great resource for baggage fees and airport info – all inside of their app.

Update: A number of readers have recommended CheapOair. While we haven’t bought from them, we have used their search feature in the past. It’s a good idea to check routes and schedules on a few different sites.

Your Turn

What do you do to get the lowest airfare? Have you played the cookie game with the airlines? Please share your tips and comments below.

Brent

Wednesday 1st of November 2023

I have "ping'ed" Jetstar website in Australia for the same flight 4 times in the last week. Kudos to Jetstar. They must be doing business honestly- the price hasn't budged throughout the week.

Chuck

Monday 2nd of March 2020

I was curious. If the airlines are using cookies to increase your airfare, is there a way to clean out your cookies and then do searches things that will show up in your cookies that will actually decrease your airfare price?

Bryan Haines

Tuesday 3rd of March 2020

Interesting idea. I don't know but might be worth some testing.

Ken

Sunday 29th of December 2019

If you still have an old unused computer/laptop laying around that has a bad hard drive and a working CD/DVD drive, put Linux Mint on a DVD and boot to it. Better yet, just remove the hard drive altogether. If your device has no hard drive and you boot to a linux live disk, there's no place for tracking cookies to be saved! Every time you shut the computer off and fire it back up, it's just like a new machine. No cookies, no tracking, no viruses or malware. Worried about visiting a site with ransomware, no worries. They can encrypt your drive if you have nothing to encrypt.

Ken

Sunday 29th of December 2019

Oops.... meant to say... "They CAN'T encrypt your drive if you have nothing to encrypt."

Ray Catayas

Thursday 26th of December 2019

Great information. Since i already got duped on the cookies. I'll definitely use the information on my next booking. Thank you

Ahmed

Thursday 7th of November 2019

This is the greatest, got to know it now, thks