5. Only looking at one airport or airline

If you're sticking to one airline or airport, you might not be getting the best deal. AFAR reported that using websites that compare many different airlines is the best way to go (though you might still need to visit a few airline websites. Southwest, for example, doesn't list its flights on third party sites). Not only that, but you can often find many different price levels and options for flight times if you look at every airport in the area rather than just the biggest or the one you normally prefer to use.

In most cases, doing this additional research won't even take much more time, because you can use websites that will do both of these things: compare a variety of airlines and search the offerings at a variety of airports in the area.

[Photo via Reshot]

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