UK comparison flight guide a directory of cheap airlines booking sites

Book Flights Online

Comparing flight prices can deliver massive savings if searched properly. No flight aggregate air ticket website is the same and they use different algorithms to check flight itineraries. Run your flight requirements through at least two flight search engines. The more flexible you are usually equates to cheaper prices i.e. flying early morning or Tuesday or Wednesday rather than the weekend.

How to find cheap flights

Search more than one comparison site, shop around and then check directly with the airline to relate prices. Flexibility with the day you fly will help the costs, early morning flights are cheaper. Book air tickets at online travel portals they use more providers than travel agents.

Compare Airline Tickets

No need to search all airlines to find the cheapest tickets. This can be done with flight comparison websites which allow you to search numerous airlines and travel brokers within their algorithm. You will be provided with much more information and travel options.

Budget Airlines

Flying budget does not mean a compromise on safety. It means baggage restrictions so if you need more baggage book in advance not at the airport. Unlike long haul you will have to pay for your food. Budget airlines usually but not always operate from smaller airports.

Flight Cost Comparing Sites

Find the UK's Cheapest Flights

The best flight comparison websites

The best sites for cheap UK airlines and low cost budget flights

kiwi.com pay less for travel

1: Kiwi formerly Skypicker

Best Buys: Nomad a search tool for multi-city flights Strong Points: Top flight places for London travellers – Unique algorithm to combine flights – Interactive Inspirational flight map.

About Kiwi

At Kiwi.com you can find cheap flights and discover a world of destinations to explore for business and pleasure. It’s a completely new way to book travel and holidays with their interactive map and destinations guide easily accessible on or off line. They provide a ticket price aggregator metasearch engine for booking airline flights. Knowing when and where you want to fly is great, but if you’re looking for inspiration, they can basically help you find flights and fly within your budget.

History Summary

Kiwi.com previously known as Skypicker and was established in 2011 in Brno a city in the Czech Republic. It was founded by Jiří Hlavenka and Oliver Dlouhý the CEO. They are one of the big five European travel agents selling airline tickets online in Europe. Their speciality is including airlines that are not normally cooperating airlines and guaranteeing missed flight connections. They rebranded in 2016 changing from skypicker.com to Kiwi.com which cost $800,000 to buy the domain name. It is a Czech tech business success story.

flightcentre.co.uk

2: Flight Centre

Best Buys: Flight Centre really know their stuff for cheap long haul flights. Strong Points: Amazing reviews on Trustpilot which gives confidence its the best place to find cheap flights from a reputable flight finder.

About Flight centre

A UK website where you will find the best deals on long haul flights. These people are very friendly and will go above and beyond to find you the best deals on flights and holidays. Try them you will be surprised there are still travel agents that care about the customers needs.

History Summary

Initially founded in Sydney Australia in the early 1980’s by Graham Turner and Geoff Harris. Flight Centre now operate worldwide.

bookingbuddy.com saves you time

3: Booking Buddy

Best Buys: Last minute deals offered. Instantly compares the top travel sites. Email alerts for best specific flight prices. Simple user-friendly search features.

About Booking Buddy

Booking Buddy was a pioneer travel comparison website in the early days of internet holiday searching. It’s now run by TripAdvisor who have massive resources to find you the perfect bargain flight. The world of online travel booking is a shrinking vessel. Customers can spend hours searching for flights on the myriad of online-mobile travel comparison sites. Little do they know through acquisitions and mergers most are owned or are subsidiaries of a few powerful travel companies. This can result in wasted hours searching for bargains only to be given similar results. They offer an easy way to search hundreds of travel sites and have access to more than 70,000 of the latest travel deals.

History Summary

BookingBuddy.com was created by Harvard graduate Daniel Saul under the company umbrella of Smarter Living later to change its name to Smarter Travel. Which he founded in 1998 to give travel tips and consumer flight advice to friends. This quickly developed into the place to go for travel news and also provided travel content for major US media news outlets. In 2003 the BookingBuddy.com flight comparison site was launched, it went on to introduce hotel and cruise holidays into its search results capabilities. The huge success of Smarter Travel and subsidiary Booking Buddy brought the attention of major travel companies with TripAdvisor being the one showing most interest. A spokesman for TripAdvisor Brooke Ferencsik confirmed the buyout in 2007 but did not release the terms of the deal.

momondo.co.uk compare cheap flights

4: Momondo

Best Tip: My Trips journey insights planner. Strong Points: A rapid and reliable flight platform – Cheapest airport to fly from option – Excellent flight data price factors.

About Momondo

Tests have shown for consistency you cannot beat Momondo at the moment for fair overall delivery of the cheapest airfare prices. It can on some searches be a few pounds dearer on some flight routes. Generally it’s one of the cheapest and most reliable flight aggregators. The website is fun to use and has helpful tips on trending places to visit. It also uses a few smart search tools like nearby airports. They have a super tool called Trip Finder where you provide your travel requirements like your budget, when you want to go and where to. Or leave it open to get the best deals possible. They are not an airline or travel agent but a metasearch engine for flights and travel related services like hotels and car hire. The results of the search you conduct will bring an impartial list of the cheapest airfares and they never add any booking fees on top. Cookies are not used by Momondo to inflate air ticket prices based on your search history like suspected rivals.

History Summary

Momondo is a free independent flight search website founded by Thorvald Stigsen in Copenhagen Denmark. With a background in flight software development Stigson founded Skygate in 1992 a travel management solution. This gave the knowledge and foundation to develop the travel fare metasearch engine Momondo with a team of coders in 2006. They don’t sell flight tickets they show you the best and latest prices so you can choose your tickets. Within one click you can then buy direct from the travel supplier. Knowing you are getting the lowest price across the board. The Momondo Group including cheapflights.co.uk was bought by Booking Holdings in 2017 for 550 million dollars US. Booking Holdings run Kayak and Priceline.com, Agoda.com, Rentalcars.com amongst other travel websites.

skyscanner.net search cheap flights

5: Skyscanner

Best Bookings: Budget airline flights Strong Points: Best rated flight comparing site by Which reviews – 1000s of routes and airline travel sites compared – Book a skyscanner flight for hotel discounts.

About Skyscanner

Skyscanner.net compares 1000s of air routes and airlines to find you the best deals on last minute flights and advanced tickets. With Sky Scanner you can add the search option to use nearby airports opening up further price choices. You will also have the ability to view flights across a month making it easy to select the cheapest time to travel. They were one of the first to show results for low cost airlines, not just long haul high cost airlines. So whether you want to fly for an holiday from Manchester to Malaga Spain with Easyjet or London to Sydney with Qantos airways they have your travel requirements covered.

History Summary

Established by three technology expert graduates of Manchester University, Gareth Williams, Bonamy Grimes, and Barry Smith. It all started from the personal experience of Gareth Williams who was frustrated by the problems searching for a cheap flight for a skiing holiday. This led to the idea of the flight price comparison website Skyscanner. These types of websites are also known as travel metasearch engine sites or travel fare aggregators. Skyscanner was initially developed in 2002 and went on to hire its first employee in 2003 then opening its first office in Edinburgh Scotland in 2004. They have won many awards and are consistently voted one of the best flight comparison sites. Like a lot of great British companies in 2016, the biggest travel company in China Ctrip acquired Skyscanner for £1.4 billion creating a big windfall for the three founders.

ebookers.com search for flights, hotels, packages

6: ebookers UK

Best Buys: Cheap flight and hotel deals Strong Points: Tailor-made air travel deals – Discover last minute flight deals – ebookers BONUS+ rewards programme.

About Ebookers

Find the best priced flight offers with ebookers who deal with over 400 airlines, you can also compare accommodation, holiday activities and car hire in your chosen holiday destination. They are obsessive about travel and believe in offering inspiring and extraordinary travel destinations all over the world. Ebookers are one of the world’s foremost online travel agents. Websites are made for specific countries with seven localised websites for European countries. Guaranteeing that customers can constantly be sure that they are receiving the best price for their journey.

History Summary

The founder Dinesh Dhamija a well-educated British Indian business entrepreneur. The son of a diplomat he has done his fair share of travelling. He began selling travel tickets at Earls Court tube station. At the time the company was called Flightbookers and this went on to have offices throughout Europe. He and his wife were quick off the mark at the start of the internet travel boom and were the first UK internet travel agents. In 1999 they he set up ebookers. He sold the company in 2005 for £209 million it is now part of Expedia who own Orbitz Worldwide and various other online travel companies.

www.opodo.co.uk

7: Opodo Cheap Flight Search

Opodo lets you search the best flight deals worldwide from airports across the UK like Manchester and Leeds/Bradford with more combinations than any other flight comparison website. They cover the best budget and low cost airlines.

www.travelsupermarket.com

8: Travel Supermarket for Cheap Flights

This has to be the first stop for bargain flying, easy to use and concise with no extraneous distractions just simple cheap flight searches. A plethora of original travel articles and flight advice. Search 100s of travel websites at the same time. TravelSupermarket.com compare the best flight deals all in one place.

How to search on cheap flight websites

Clear cookies and browser search history for cheaper airfares. There has been suspicion that airlines and air ticket comparison websites have been using your search history and cookies to manipulate ticket prices. Although this is unconfirmed cookies are used to give information and track your flight search details. You can search for flights in private browsing or incognito mode. Using your browsers settings clear cookies and set to private browsing, check your internet browser for privacy settings.
Familiarise yourself with the leading flight search websites especially if you are a frequent flyer. It’s good to know what each one has to offer. There is a lot of information online describing the virtues of each airfare search engine website. Getting to know the best flight prices for your needs will come from testing the searches yourself. They each provide a nuanced service whether it be short haul budget flights to Spain or long-haul fares from London to Beijing. Try a combination of flight scanners to gauge the best prices they are not always consistent.
Traditionally Tuesdays and Wednesday have been the cheapest days to fly on with Sunday being the most expensive to book a flight. When searching for flights choose the weekly or monthly view so you can visually see the cheapest dates to fly on.
If you are a frequent flyer spending a lot of time surfing the clouds, it would be silly not to take advantage of airline loyalty schemes to save money and receive offers. You can go the traditional route and collect air mile rewards but airlines have taken the loyalty schemes a little further since the introduction of frequent flyer programs. You can now get discount on hotels, car hire and baggage allowances not to mention airport departure lounge access and the popular first-class upgrades. It’s worth creating an account with the airline of your choice and checking out what loyalty schemes you can benefit from.

Lastminute Booking or Not

The great debate is it cheaper to book flights at the last minute or in advance. The simple answer and safer options are booking tickets in advance is your best bet. If you know the date when you need to fly it is risky to leave it to the last-minute hoping for a reduction in ticket prices. Rarely do airlines lower prices running up to departure date in fact passenger demand usually increases causing prices to rise. This is especially true in budget short haul flights. The dynamics of long-haul flights are slightly different and you can get last minute flight booking bargains this is not guaranteed and your finger nails may take a gnashing. The ideal time to buy air tickets in advance is 3 three months up-to 3 weeks.

Cheap UK airlines and low cost budget flights

Low cost UK budget airlines – A number of airlines such as Easyjet, TUI Flights from the UK and Ireland TUI Airways operate out of three airports in Ireland – Dublin, Cork and Shannon – flying to 30 different locations around the world. Ryanair, Jet2, Aerlingus, and Flybe offer low cost flights from several UK airports. Bigger airlines offering short haul budget flights are Air France, Etihad Airways and British Airways. Book cheap airline tickets for domestic and international flights from Manchester and all UK airports to worldwide destinations.

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