5 Tips to Find Cheap International Flights

I've booked (most of) my plane tickets for my upcoming trip to East Africa. Still have to figure out how to get to Zanzibar. I'm debating between a Kilimanjaro-Zanzibar flight, or traveling overland to Dar es Salaam followed by a ferry ride. In the meantime, a few tips for cheap international air travel.

Tips to Find Cheap International Flights

#1. Be flexible

Nearby airports may have cheaper or more flights available than your home (or destination) airport (Oakland and San Jose instead of SFO in the Bay Area, for example).

In general, flying to big hub airports will be cheaper, for example SFO, LAX, JFK, London, Amsterdam, Bangkok, Sydney, Nairobi and Buenos Aires. Don't confuse these with airline hubs, i.e. airports controlled by one airline and which therefore have less competition.

#2. Pick the best time to travel

Cheapest days to travel are typically Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday. Traveling early in the day is also usually cheaper, and so are red eye flights. Use farecompare.com to find the best date to travel to your destination.

#3. Buy your tickets early

It pays to buy your ticket early, especially 21 and 14 days before departure. Then again, sometimes you can get lucky and find some last minute discounted fare.

Be aware that fares fluctuate. You can setup an alert to be notified when the price changes. Buy if you see it trending up, or if it goes down to a bargain price. You can try farecast to predict if your planned trip will go up or down from its current fare. Use airfarewatchdog.com to get notified when the fare changes. Travelocity and Orbitz also offer a notification service.

#4. Consider low-cost carriers

These low-cost carriers have a lower business cost structure and tend to forego assigned seats, pretzels, pillows and in-flight movies. You also may not get the benefits of accumulating frequent flyer miles with them, but then who cares if you're actually flying cheaper. In the US, these are Southwest, JetBlue, Virgin America, Frontier and others. In Europe, Ryanair and easyJet are the two big ones.

For some of them, their fare may only be available directly from their websites, and not from internet travel sites.

#5. Use consolidators for international flights

Aggregator and travel sites such as Kayak, Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity only provide the airlines official published fares. But if you are looking for cheaper fares, or more exotic itinerary, a consolidator may be the way to go.

A consolidator (or "bucket shop") is an independent company that has special discount agreements with the airlines. Consolidators sell discounted tickets from their contracted inventory. As a result you may end up with a better fare than working with travel agents or the airlines directly.

Airlines contract the consolidators to fill otherwise empty seats. Because the airlines would prefer to sell the official (higher) fare, consolidators are often prohibited from advertising the name of the airlines. There may also be other restrictions on the tickets, such as restrictions on changing flights and cancellation penalties.

#6. (bonus tip) Pick the right seat

When given the choice, pick the right seat. Nobody wants the seat next to the toilets, but exit row seats usually have more legroom. How to find out which is which? Use SeatGuru to find out the configuration based on the airline and airplane. Each seat is rated and you can get a sense of exactly what you'll get. Highly recommended.

My Itinerary

I used AirTreks, a San Francisco-based consolidator that specializes in round-the-world airline packages, to book my airline tickets.

I'm flying to Amsterdam to catch a direct KLM flight to Kilimanjaro airport, as I've heard horror stories of baggage getting lost in transit via Nairobi. After that, Zanzibar and Dubai, before hoping back to Europe:

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• Oct 2: SFO to Amsterdam (via Memphis, TN)
• Oct 6: Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro
• Oct 7-13 Kilimanjaro climb
• Oct 14-17 Safari (Lake Manyara, Lake Eyasi, Ngorongoro crater)
• Oct 18-25: Zanzibar
• Oct 28: Dar es Salaam to Dubai
• Oct 31: Dubai to Nice (via Rome)
• Nov 5: Barcelona to San Francisco (via Amsterdam)

I'm also in the process of finalizing hotel reservations and booking with TeamKilimanjaro for the climb. Next steps: the consulates to get the travel visas and the travel clinic to get all the necessary inoculations.