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The Best Way to Book Flights
At the very least you’ll need to buy a ticket to your first destination. Depending on the length of your trip and your flexibility enroute, you may either want to buy tickets for additional destinations up front, or get them along the way.
My general suggestion is that if you’re traveling for less than a month, then go ahead and buy all your tickets, for both to and within your destination, before you leave. Why? Buying or changing tickets on the road can take a surprising amount of time, detracting from your ability to spend your time enjoying the trip. The other consideration is that you can get in a situation where the flights you had intended to get aren’t available when you want them, which can force you to stay when you don’t want, or skip a place you did want.
If you’re traveling for more than a month, then you probably have sufficient time and flexibility to deal with making flight arrangements while on the road. A good approach is to buy tickets that get you in and out of the countries you know you want to visit, and then deal with getting internal flights once you’re in-country. There are some amazing deals on multi-country and round-the-world tickets, and you can certainly save money by getting these tickets up-front instead of along the way. This locks you in to a specific general routing, but you’ll of course still have the flexibility to add side-trips along the way.
The web is continually making it easier to get tickets to more exotic destinations, and also to get tickets within a country. On my last trip to Myanmar, I was able to book internal flights in advance via the websites of the Myanmar airlines.
There are many, many places online to buy tickets, but I'd suggest that you need no more than the following:
- Cheapo Air (top of page): An online consolidator with some amazing prices to international destinations. Beware, though, that tickets bought through online consolidators are often very restricted. Assume that your ticket is non-changeable and non-refundable. If that works for you, then the prices are great!
- Kayak
: Searches multiple booking sites and presents best deals. Good for conventional round-trip tickets to and from a particular destination. My price comparisons indicate their fares tend to be very good.
- Mobissimo: Also searches multiple booking sites, but is particularly strong for flights between two international destinations (i.e., for trips which don’t start or end in the US).
- Airtreks: I haven't yet used this, but it's a great-looking new site with great prices for complex multi-country and around-the-world trips.
- Budget airline directory: Lists numerous international airlines that may be worth considering for internal flights within a particular country.
If you’re doing a longer trip to cover an entire continent, or are doing an around-the-world trip, then I can suggest some possible routes you may want to consider.
With flights booked, you should give some thought as to whether you want to book places to stay.
