Cheap flights

 If you do decide to get one, it's worth keeping in mind that credit cards offer Section 75 protection. This means that, if you've made a purchase that costs over £100 and up to £30,000 and something goes wrong on the seller's side, you can claim your money back.

 Debit cards don't offer quite the same protection. So, as long as you can pay it off in full and on time, it could help to use a credit card to book holidays.

 Credit cards can also be better for spending abroad and might offer better exchange rates than debit cards. Again, do lots of research before deciding on a card to use.

 Plus, you can earn air miles with certain credit cards, and many offer you cashback on your flights. This means if you spend a bit more on your flight, you might see some return.

 When booking long-haul flights it will nearly always prove cheaper to book a flight with a connection somewhere rather than a direct one. While this will increase your travel time, you'll most likely save money.

 Be aware of the risk involved here, though. If one of your earlier flights is delayed, this could result in you missing a connecting flight. Some cheap student travel insurance should cover you in case something goes wrong.

 It's also a good idea to search by country on comparison sites rather than cities. Main city airports are usually more expensive, and the periphery airports normally specialise in budget airlines. Opening up your search to these alternatives could save you money on the flight.

 If you're not in a rush to get where you're going, it might also be worth considering a layover to help keep costs down. Try searching for connecting flights individually to see if it would be cheaper to spend a day or two somewhere else en route. Just think of it like another mini holiday!

 Use Compare the Market for your travel insurance and get 2-for-1 cinema tickets for an entire year out of it.

 Package holidays are often a great option for students. They're cheap and not just for the 50+ crowd. If you've ever watched Coach Trip, you'll agree.

 Book a package holiday and you're likely to get discounts on flights as well as accommodation, airport transfers and activities like bus tours while you're there. We've listed some great summer holiday package deals if you need any inspiration.

 As holiday companies book in such large quantities, they tend to get the biggest discounts. Sometimes you can even get an entire holiday for less than the cost of a regular flight.

 However, this might not be a good option for you if you enjoy exploring and eating out a lot on holiday. As food and drinks are included in the price, you'll save a ridiculous amount of cash by eating all your meals at your hotel.

 This might sound like an obvious one, but always check whether you can get a student discount when booking flights.

 This applies to both airlines and holiday companies alike, for anything from domestic to round-the-world trips. A good place to start is our own directory of student discounts on travel.

 The last thing anyone wants is spam in their inboxes, so signing up to travel company newsletters might not sound too appealing. However, this is often the best way to discover top deals. Travel companies and airlines are particularly good at rewarding newsletter subscribers.

 For example, Ryanair is likely to notify its subscribers of big sales early on. As seats are always limited in these instances, it does pay off to put up with the emails.

 It's also worth considering joining a secret flight deals service, like Jack's Flight Club or Secret Flying. Both are free to join, but Jack's Flight Club also offers a paid premium membership if you're keen to receive extra deal alerts.

 You can also sign up for our student deals newsletter and Telegram group. We'll let you know about any great travel deals we come across. Also, keep an eye on our student travel deals section which we update most days.

Cheap Flights

 We've all experienced the tiresome, repeated searching when trying to book the cheapest possible flights to any given destination. With endless search engines and continually fluctuating prices, the approach to frugal flight booking is overwhelming. Here's some key tips that will save you time, frustration and most importantly money when booking your next flight.

 Don't miss our other guides on How to Find Airline Mistake Fares, How to Get Free Extended Layovers to Hack One Trip Into Two, and Round the World Tickets: The Ultimate Guide!

 You're not crazy for thinking that a flight price has changed after searching it a few times in your web browser. Based on the cookies in your browser, flight prices do increase when a particular route is repeatedly searched, as the site wants to scare you into booking the flight quickly before prices get even higher. Always search for flights in incognito or private browsing mode to see the lowest prices.

 In Google Chrome or Safari, incognito is enabled by hitting Command (or “Control” if using PC), Shift, “N”. For Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer, hit Command (or “Control” if using a PC), Shift, “P”. This will open a new browser window where your information is not tracked, thus not inflating prices as you search. Note: if you're using an older version of OS X, open Safari then click “Safari” in the menu bar, and select “Private Browsing”.

 Your cookies are reset each time you re-open an incognito window. So if you want to start with a clean slate for each flight search (so your previous searches aren't “remembered”, potentially inflating costs), close all your incognito windows, open a new one, and then perform your flight search.

 All search engines have inflated flight costs as part of taking a cut from the airlines. Some search engines (e.g. Expedia) consistently inflate much higher than others (listed below). It pays to familiarise yourself with sites that offer the best prices.

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 Kiwi.com (combines all airlines to create routes that are cheaper than booking with just 1 airline – see tip #9. They also have a deals page.)

 Most budget airlines will now appear in the broad search engines we are recommending (but NOT Southwest). If you want to be 100% sure though, you can do an additional search for regional budget airlines (we've listed as many we know of further below).

 Finally, no single search engine is consistently perfect (though we typically find the cheapest price on Skyscanner or Momondo). As such, you may need to try a combination of search engines to ensure you're not missing any results. There doesn't seem to be one that gets the cheapest flight 100% of the time.

 While many theories exist around booking specifically on a Tuesday to save money, the reality is there is no consistent truth to exactly which days are cheapest to fly. Most of the time it is cheaper to leave on a weekday, though this isn't always the case. Your best strategy is to get a quick visual of prices for a whole month to see what days are cheapest for your specific route. Here's how:

 Step 3. Select “one-way” (even if flying round trip – you're just determining the cheapest days to fly out first)

 Step 4. On a computer: click “Depart” but instead of entering a date, select “Whole Month”, and then “Cheapest Month” so you can browse all dates to see which is cheapest. Hit “Search flights” to easily see which date is cheapest.

 In the mobile app: Tap the departure date, then change the view to “Chart”. You can easily swipe left and right to find the cheapest date, and tap on one of the bars to see the price.

 Repeat these steps for your return flight if applicable. You can still book a round trip in one booking, but doing these steps first will let you see which dates are generally cheaper to fly in/out on for your round trip.

 Kiwi.com and Google Flights work similarly to Skyscanner, plus they have map views as well, so you can see where the airport is. For tracking when and where is cheapest to fly, Hopper also offer price analysis and track fluctuations (i.e. when is best to fly).