Trick for finding last-minute flight deals?

Prayer, or get really lucky.

On a more serious note, if you are flexible on the destination your odds of finding something are at least marginally better.

Happy travels

I get these notices every Tuesday from Norse Airline
https://flynorse.com/en-US?utm_source=brevo&utm_campaign=2025-40-TUE-TAKEOFF&utm_medium=email&utm_id=167

I have bought one way tickets and used airline miles they I accrued from my BA Chase credit card to get back

Be open to destinations and use flexible dates to find tickets. There is a Delta sub reddit that often has deals. Maintain a list of potential destinations of interest and sights you'd like to see. Play with airline websites occasionally to familiarize yourself to typical prices. I think good rates on flights are more likely shoulder season, which is shrinking for many destinations. But, October and April, maybe May. January and February can be slow times, and if you go to big cities, weather has less of an impact.

Start with Google Flights and drill down.

For example, let's say I want to fly from my home airport to Europe in November for a one week trip.

I start with Chicago to Europe and tap Explore. Don't put in any dates yet.

I can change from 1 to 2 weeks and choose a month. Then filter the results by number of connections, price, airlines or airline alliances and more.

So my results for 1 stop or less for under $500 roundtrip and maximum of 12 hours travel time includes the following:

• Paris $459 departing Nov 14
• Prague $474 departing Nov 15
• Stockholm $386 departing Nov 16

From here I'll go to the airline's website and play with the dates.

I feel like there are no hacks anymore. The internet is too smart and prices are all based off supply and demand. Travel during low season?

Delta has a page for flight deals by destination: https://www.delta.com/us/en/flight-deals/current-flight-deals. It‘s weird but on my phone, I have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and then scroll back up to be able to enter the airport for which I‘m looking for deals.

Most airlines have a page like this and most have periodic e-mails they send out with deals — essentially flights with lots of empty seats that the airline would rather sell cheaply than not at all.

Wow, Dave! I had no idea. Folks that go and take a peek at the page should not just take a quick glance. Initially, I didn't see what I'd consider deals, further down, there were deals to Hawaii and Europe that were quite good

I admit as a long-time Delta flyer (we live at one of their hubs with direct flights to Europe) I feel like an idiot for not knowing about that bargains page. Thanks!

Dave, thanks for sharing this Delta page! It gives me so many travel ideas for this winter.

There have already been lots of great tips - traveling in the shoulder or off seasons, being flexible with destinations and dates, searching aggregate sites. Using these strategies, I've booked good airfare to Europe about a month out.

I also recommend downloading airline apps. I have American, Delta, United, and Southwest on my phone. When they have sales, I get push notifications. Southwest has them quite regularly. (Last year, my husband and I flew roundtrip to New Orleans for just $89 per person!) In September, American had European flights on sale.

If you see a fligth deal, don't wait to book it. Websites love to change prices quickly. You have 24 hours after booking a flight to cancel, so you have time to change your mind and get a full refund.

Another option is bundling your trip. In the US, we use Expedia. For European travel, we prefer Trip Masters. By bundling your hotel(s) with your flights, you can save some extra money. (However, watch out for non-refundable hotel rooms, which can complicate cancellations.) Before booking, we price out the packages by looking directly at the hotel and airline websites. A couple years ago, we saved $1,000 on a week long trip to Lisbon and Porto by bundling the hotels and flights.

I've signed up for several sites over the years and they push out deals pretty often, you have to be flexible and ready to fly on pretty short notice.

My favorite hobby as mentioned above is to just put Europe into Google flights and see what the cat coughs up.

Re Expedia, as soon as you put another party between you and the actual service provider you've complicated things. If something goes wrong, everyone will point at everyone else and no one is likely to step up to fix it. Most hotel sites now say we will meet anyone else's pricing, so just buy direct.

I've only used Expedia to book a flight once. It was a short notice emergency return flight from Jordan and their site was easier to navigate in a hotel, under pressure, on a phone, than the Jordanian airline's site. But in general I only book flights directly. For hotels on the other hand, I use Expedia unless I'm in the hotel's loyalty program. Expedia's web site always makes it very clear what you're getting (refundable, breakfast included, etc.), you get Expedia points, and on two occasions I've had to call them and actually got a helpful human being on the phone with little waiting (I was pleasantly surprised).

I wound up booking a flight on Expedia yesterday because I got an alert on my phone that British Airways had a round-trip business class mistake fair from JFK to London for $1300 and I couldn’t get it to book on the airline website for some reason so Selected Expedia and booked it right away. I’ve only done this one other time I didn’t have any problems I don’t expect problems this time. I do know that if something always makes a change I will be on the phone with Expedia dealing with that, but I can live with that