Get the best flight deals with an assist from these apps

The art, science and apps of ‘farecasting’ the best flight deals

What’s the easiest way to get the lowest airfare? A handful of new and updated websites and apps are trying to perfect the art of what’s known as farecasting — predicting the best date to buy a ticket. Distinct from flightbooking sites like Hotwire, farecasting tools such as Flyr, Skypicker, Hopper, and Kayak advise travellers on whether to buy now or later. I’m also including Google Flights, which allows travellers to see if they can save money by departing days or weeks later, or by flying into or out of a different airport.

The sites and apps are free. And in most cases, users are instructed to book through the airline, or airlines if they decide to buy a “hacker fare” (more on that shortly).

My go-to tool is Google Flights. It’s swift yet comprehensive. And it has the essential filters (like fare class and stops) but requires few keystrokes to unearth all that information. Plug your travel dates into the search box and monthly calendars pop up with fares on each day (green fares are lowest), so you’ll instantly know if you should tweak your arrival or departure to score a better deal.

Google Flights is also my top pick because it makes searching for premium economy, business and first class fares simpler than most of its competitors, thanks to a drop-down menu on its landing page. Enter your dates, click on the fare class menu, and you’ll see the lowest price for each class. A recent search for an October flight from New York to San Francisco showed the lowest economy fare as US$337. For premium economy it was $737, and for business and first class it was $982. A “tip” at the top of the page said I could knock $208 off the business-class fare by leaving a day later and returning two days later.

The site works smoothly on smartphones as well, but if you often browse flights on your phone, you may also want to try Hopper, which introduced an Android version of its iOS app last month

A few caveats: Hopper doesn’t turn up flights by American Airlines and US Airways (they don’t share flight data with Hopper), so you can’t one-stop shop. And because the app is focused on the lowest price, it’s not ideal if you primarily search for premium economy, business or first class seats.

That said, the app is intuitive to use. I selected my departure and arrival airports and up popped colour-coded fare calendars. Green dates had the best deals from New York to San Francisco ($325) and red dates had the most costly fares ($750). A summary noted that good deals for non-stop flights started around $350; flights with stops averaged about $50 less.

When I selected my October dates, the app said the lowest round-trip fare was $341. “This isn’t a great price,” the app noted, “but you will likely pay more if you wait.” (A price prediction scale said fares were expected to climb at least $195 after Oct. 4.) Under “tips,” the app said that if I changed my return date by one day, I could save $31; or $20 if I flew into Oakland instead of San Francisco International.

If you’re not ready to buy, or if the app says the fare is likely to fall, click “watch this trip” to receive fare alerts. Last month Hopper introduced QuickTap Booking, which allows travellers who use the “watch this trip” feature to book their flight within the app, something most competitors do not offer. Book this way and you receive a confirmation number to use on the airline’s website or app to manage your frequent flyer status, select your seat and purchase upgrades and priority access. If, however, you want to know where you’re sitting before you buy (I do), book directly with the airline.

For those who like to get creative, some farecasting tools encourage users to combine flights from different airlines.

Kayak (which analyzes historical price changes to predict if fares will rise or fall) refers to these as “hacker fares,” and while it has offered them for years, this will be news to some travellers. Shopping here is the most fun when you use filters such as “flight quality,” which allows you to see, say, flights with Wi-Fi. Here, too, is where you can filter for “hacker fares:” those that combine one-way tickets to or from a destination on different airlines, resulting in occasional bargains.

If this intrigues you, then check out Skypicker, a Czech startup that finds combinations of flights among airlines such as Spirit and United. For instance, the site turned up flights from New York for an October weekend in Chicago for around $140 using JetBlue and US Airways.

Another nascent contender, Flyr, also advises travellers when to pounce. There are nifty graphs, and I see the potential, though Flyr has some shortcomings. The site can feel confusing; there are few options on the landing page; and American Airlines flights didn’t show up in my searches, to name a few.

One thing that distinguishes Flyr is that it allows undecided users to temporarily lock in a fare with no commitment to purchase the ticket (the few bucks you pay to lock in the fare are non-refundable). That’s helpful. Flyr will refund you up to $200 if your fare increases in that period and let you keep the lower price if the fare goes down. Note though that in some of my searches it was cheaper to lock in the fare directly on the airline’s website. For instance, to hold the same United round-trip flight for seven days was $11 on Flyr and $8.99 on United.com. Lock in the fare through the airline’s site and if the price goes up, you’ve already secured the lower fare. If it goes down, you don’t have to buy the ticket you’re holding. Just book a new one at the lower price.

Still, if, like me, you enjoy airfare hunting, it’s probably worth revisiting Flyr when it has matured.

Whatever farecasting tool you try, check the number of stops, time between connections, and trip duration (flights that are normally two hours can become 20 hours with layovers on some sites). No fare is a deal if you have to sprint through an airport only to miss the next leg of your trip, or spend more time flying from coast to coast than to Asia. Enterprising Dutch engineers have drawn inspiration from the sandcastles of youthful beach holidays to create two hotels made almost entirely of sand. But there’s no danger of the tide washing away slumbering holidaymakers — the pop-up suites are constructed of thin walls covered inside and out with reinforced sand to prevent crumbling. The one-bedroom units, which have running water, electricity and Wi-Fi, have been built to celebrate annual sand sculpture festivals in Sneek and Oss in the Netherlands. The sandcastle suites will be slipped inside eight-metre-high sculptures modelled on the Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Army, and the Flintstones’ cartoon home town of Bedrock. But like all sandcastles, they’re only temporary. CNN reported that the sold-out rooms will be dismantled when the festivals end on Oct. 4. British trade officials are hoping a little stuffing will be go a long way in promoting more Chinese tourism to the U.K. A Chinese firm is investing $8 million to create a British-themed teddy bear amusement park about 30 kilometres from central Beijing. The 400-hectare park is the brainchild of The Great British Teddy Bear Co. and a local partner. Among its attractions: a “Beefeater bear” food court and a Shakespeare theatre deploying outsized teddy bear actors. Spokesman Paul Jessup told the South China Morning Post that the park will be targeted at “families of all generations to interact, create memories and have a British experience.” London is one of the top three global destinations for mainland Chinese tourists, according to recent figures.