There’s no worse feeling than booking your flight, getting excited about your trip, and then having an airline rain on your parade by offering everyone else a better price. It obviously happens all the time, but is it just a matter of luck that the person sitting next to you paid half the price?

Chances are that it could have been luck, but it’s more likely that they knew how to find the best travel deals to save on flights.

Flights are often the biggest expense of a trip, so they shouldn’t be something you book blind. Use our following tips to know that what you’re paying is not overpriced.

Book on a Tuesday

Booking your flights on a Tuesday sounds random enough to be an airline myth, but you will actually find lower fares.

Airlines tend to announce deals on Monday evenings, which means by noon the next day, competing airlines are scrambling to match the lower prices so they can stay in the game. So while you should definitely start looking at flights beforehand to gather a ballpark price, log back on come Tuesday and you might be pleasantly surprised.

Tuesday is also usually the cheapest day to fly as it’s an inconvenient day for those who plan travel around their work week. Fewer people traveling means less demand and a better deal for you!

Look For Error Fares

Ever wished you could fly from Los Angeles to Australia for $200 return? You can if you’re savvy enough to catch an error fare! These are exactly what they sound like – a mistake by the airline or travel agency which results in a shockingly low fare.

These fares are generally hard to pin down, but the easiest way to find them are with sites like Fly4free who are usually the first to publish error fare alerts. This way you can buy amazingly cheap mistakenly priced tickets before they expire or get fixed.

But if you do find an error fare, book it quickly, and don’t go out of your way to tell the airline. Chances are that if an alert has gone out about an error fare, the airline probably knows too, and these are generally fixed immediately. And there is a clause in most terms and conditions which allows an airline to cancel and refund mispriced tickets – so don’t rely on these for important travel, and don’t bring attention to your fare.

Bookmark a Deals Website

Some people really enjoy searching and comparing flights for themselves, but if you’re short on time or don’t care for exhaustive research there are a lot of websites who are already searching for the most amazing flight deals and sharing their findings. The aforementioned Fly4free being one of them.

Using Fly4free as an example, the site is set up blog style, with all recent error fares and deal alerts listed on the homepage, and destination specific filters at the top of the site. So if you’re feeling spontaneous you can scroll through the homepage, or if you’re tracking flights specifically from Australia, filter where you’re flying from.

When you find a site you like, bookmark it, and be sure to follow their social media accounts – twitter and Facebook page. Most deal alerts tend to go out over social media as soon as they are uploaded to the site.

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Megan is an Australian Journalist and award-winning travel writer who has been blogging since 2007. Her husband Mike is the American naturalist and wildlife photographer behind Waking Up Wild; a website dedicated to opening your eyes to the wild & natural world.

Committed to bringing you the best in adventure travel from all around the globe, there is no mountain too high, and no fete too extreme! They haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on their list.

Follow their journey on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram.