Do flight booking hacks really save you money? We check

We’re pretty sure you’ve heard of travel hacks to save money on travel… y’know, like using Incognito Mode on your browser or buying your ticket X months ahead of time to get cheap prices. In fact you’ve heard of these so often that you might actually consider them to be “common sense”.

But… do they actually work?

With our friends at CIMB, who provide some of the most attractive travel rewards through the CIMB Travel Credit Card, we thought we’d test out some common hacks that can supposedly net you cheap flight tickets. We’ll be buying tickets on 3 airlines (two local and one international) and comparing prices:

• on Weekdays vs Weekends
• Last-minute vs One year ahead
• One way vs Return
• Direct from airline vs Flight aggregator
• on Incognito Mode vs non-Incognito

These were all done with as few variables as possible – we kept the same dates, baggage details, and add-ons for all flights, and picked the cheapest reasonable flights (no 24-hour layover la).

So without any further flight delays, let’s start off with the most common one…

 

Using Incognito Mode on your browser gets cheaper tickets – BUSTED

The rationale behind going incognito is so that companies cannot track you through cookies embedded in the site, with the idea being that they can jack up prices if they know your location and what you’ve been looking for.

We got a baseline price for a regular purchase (2 tickets), and then tried the same flight in an incognito tab on Chrome. All flights used in this test were for 3 locations – Penang (PG), Bali (DPS), and London (LHR) and departing from KLIA/KLIA2 (KUL). Here’s what we got… all prices are in Ringgit Malaysia btw:

As you can see, in most situations there was no difference in the price. While there were some flights that were actually cheaper in Incognito Mode, the price variance is tiny – with only a 2% difference on average. On the other hand, there were 3 flights that were actually MORE expensive with a HIGHER variance of about 10% on average.

For the most part, we can conclude that going Incognito was not worth the effort at all, considering that it has a chance of increasing your airfare as much as reducing it.

 

Buying tickets in advance is cheaper than buying last minute – CONFIRMED

This one kinda surprised us. You would think that buying a flight WAY ahead would be a lot cheaper, but surprisingly it isn’t as straightforward.

If you just did it the straightforward way through the airline (table below, in yellow) then, yes, buying tickets a year in advance would get you better prices. However, if you do this on top of the other hacks, then well, your results will vary.

Significantly, what we found was that a local flight on a local budget airline won’t get you cheaper prices, while aggregators (more on that later) net you the better prices with premium airlines.

Word of warning though… buying 1 year in advance does save you money, it can also be significantly more expensive if you accidentally hit a high tourism period, like the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japan or something. Also, here’s another thought… what if you bought your tickets a year in advance, and the price drops after? *CRY*

 

Buying separate one-way tickets are cheaper than return tickets – CONFIRMED (but leceh)

So for this one, we tried two variations of “separate tickets” –

1. Buying flight tickets for two people separately
2. Buying two ONE-WAY tickets (to destination and back)

First up, if you’re planning on a romantic holiday with your better half, you can get different prices when you buy the tickets separately… which is weird.

But the bigger savings is when you actually get a one way ticket to the destination, and then book a separate one-way ticket home. Take a look for yourself:

One thing to note though, is that when you buy tickets one-way on most carriers, the currency changes to that of the departure country. For example, flights coming back from London are displayed in British Pounds and, from Bali, they need a lot more numbers to display the prices 😬

Keep in mind  that one additional factor here would be the exchange rate. We based the rates on Google’s mid-market currency exchange numbers at the time of writing, so your air mileage (heh) may vary. One thing we noticed though, is that countries with currencies lower than ours were quite consistently cheaper than those with a higher currency (ie, England) but again, this might not apply to every country.

While this had the best blend of consistent and significant savings, there are a few downsides that will make your flight a lot more leceh:

1. You have to key in your details twice (or four times if traveling as a couple)
2. The price may change after the first purchase (i.e. your partner’s flight might be more expensive after)
3. It might be difficult to sit next to each other on the flight

 

Aggregators are always cheaper than buying direct from the airline – BUSTED

Aggregators are basically middlemen for flight tickets and other travel services, and usually advertise lower-than-usual rates. It’s for this reason that many people would head straight to these websites or apps than to the airline themselves. For the purposes of this test, we used CheapFlights.com.my because it’s an aggregator of aggregators – it shows which aggregator gives you the cheapest flights.

For our entire test, aggregators resulted in more expensive flights 11 times, and saved money 15 times. One interesting thing you’ll notice though, is that most of the expensive flights happened with the local budget airline. We’re not entirely sure why, but our hypothesis is that budget airlines operate by offering low prices (and therefore low margins) to begin with; so there’s less room for discounts, much less a middleman.

One thing though – don’t trust the prices you see on the main page too much, because often once you get to the checkout page and match the same baggage and insurance package from the airlines own site, the end total may be equal or more expensive. Not just that, there’s usually a service fee charged.

The takeaway? Aggregators are a lot more convenient and can be cheaper, but you should still check out final prices on the airline’s own site just to be sure.

 

Flight tickets are cheapest on Tuesdays – Busted

Actually, this used to be true back in the day because airlines would manually update their prices on a certain day each week, usually on Tuesdays. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been true in years since prices are now electronically updated on the fly (heh).

Just for the heck of it though, on a Tuesday, we checked prices for flight tickets on February 20th 2023. Then, on Sunday we checked ticket prices for that same date since some people also think buying tickets on a weekend is more expensive. What we got was the reverse:

February 20th 2023 is a Monday, so it could be that prices might be higher if we chose to fly on a weekend, but that’s still a moot point. Nowadays, prices are determined through algorithms that consider factors like demand, route profiling, and competition; so it’s pretty fair to say that there’s no single best time or day for cheap tickets. 

 

There’s an easier way to get good travel deals – CONFIRMED

For the record, we don’t want to do this test again. It was painfully tedious to try all these variations, so if you wanna see our kerja rumah, click here. Otherwise, what we can say is that the rewards for most of the tests were painfully minimal, and oftentimes even more expensive. And this is something that we’re doing for work, so imagine having to do this for a holiday – sure spoil mood wan!

But you know what reliably works? Air travel points. 

The annoying thing about many airline travel points is that you have to travel to get points. But with the CIMB Travel Credit Card, you can now collect air travel points wherever you spend; be it at a cafe, an online shop, or even buying petrol and groceries.

Depending on the card, you can get up to 1 airline mile/point for every RM1 spent, which means a typical RM13 cappuccino can get you up to 13 miles closer to your dream destination. Otherwise, you can earn up to 10X bonus points to get you there even faster!

On top of generating points, you will also get additional travel perks depending on whether you get the Travel World Elite, Travel World, or Travel Platinum card:

Travel World Elite:

• RM1 = 1 Airline Mile/point
• 12X complimentary access to Plaza Premium First and Plaza Premium Lounges worldwide
• Up to RM80 cashback for in-flight WiFi
• Complimentary 3GB global data plan by Flexiroam, with 15% discount on subsequent purchases
• Complimentary 12-month HoteLux Elite Plus membership
• Marriott Vacation Club benefits, including a complimentary 4-night stay at participating properties in Bali and Phuket
• Travel-related coverage, including insurance up to USD500,000 for land, sea, or air travel

Travel World:

• Up to 8X bonus points
• Up to 12X complimentary access to Plaza Premium First and Plaza Premium Lounges worldwide
• Up to RM50 cashback for in-flight WiFi
• Complimentary 12-month HoteLux Elite Plus membership
• Marriott Vacation Club benefits, including a complimentary 4-night stay at participating properties in Bali and Phuket
• Travel-related coverage, including insurance up to RM1 million for air travel

Travel Platinum:

• Up to 5X bonus points
• Up to 4X complimentary access to Plaza Premium First and Plaza Premium Lounges worldwide
• Up to RM30 cashback for in-flight WiFi
• Up to 2X Grab ride to the airport, up to RM65
• Travel-related coverage, including insurance up to RM1 million for air travel

Of course, check out their website for a full description of these perks, including the terms and conditions.

So rather than spend a few hours sweating over a good deal on air travel, check out CIMB’s website to see if your solution was all the while in plane sight.