I love to travel and try to take a few domestic and at least one international trip each year. There’s just something about getting out there to explore that I love. Now, I’m not made of money and have to be pretty smart when it comes to booking travel. I’m very into the points game with loyalty and credit cards. However there are still lots of times that I must pay cash for flights and hotels. One of my new favorite tools I’ve found for saving on flights is Airfare Butler – a service that monitors your flight after you’ve booked. Here’s why I use it and why I recommend anybody that travels use it too.
The nature of flight prices
I’m going to say this and you’ll probably respond ‘yeah duh’ but airline flight prices rise and fall all the time. One day that flight to Cancun will be $700 and the next day it’ll be $500. Airlines are always changing prices to try to sell as many tickets as possible. You’ve probably used flight tracking tools like Google Flights – they are a great predicting tool. They’ll tell you if a price is high or low and what they think it’ll do moving forward.
However many people (myself included) will do all this research, book the flight and then forget about it. The truth is your flight could fall in price even after you book!
Airlines are getting more friendly with changes
During COVID, many airlines in an attempt to woo customers back eliminated many of the change fees they previously had in place to give you more flexibility in your travel plans as we all learned that flexibility is pretty important in our plans. These days you as long as you book above basic economy you’ll be able to change your flights without a change fee and you’re just responsible for the fare difference.
In the case of a flight drop – you can actually contact the airline, have them rebook and you can get a flight credit back. Or if you booked a refundable ticket you can actually get cash back. Airfare Butler has found over tracking hundreds of flights that 40% of them fall after people book. In most cases it’s a quick 10-15 minute process and the airline will issue you a credit that you can use for a future flight.
Why not DIY?
There are a few hacks out there to track your flight – a common one on social media is to use Google Flights and set a price alert. However I’ve found Google Flights notifies you a little too aggressively – sure there might be a cheaper flight but I’m not switching airlines and taking an 11pm flight vs a 11am flight. Or some people do have reminders to manually track their flights but Airfare Butler reports that flights might only stay low for 24-48 hours.
Some flights they track will be up for dozens of days, drop for 1 day and pop right back up. Sure you could track on your own but unless you’re doing it daily you’ll have to get lucky to catch the drop!
Why Airfare Butler is no risk
One of the things I love about Airfare Butler is that they only charge me if they save me money. One recent flight I had them track was to Sarasota Florida. It was $457 when I booked and I felt good about it. About two weeks after booking I got a note saying my flight had dropped $200 and it was now $257. I booked with Delta who make it super easy – right through the app I messaged them and within 10 minutes I had a flight credit for $200. I was rebooked on the same flight in the same seat. Airfare Butler then asked me for their fee which is 15% of the savings – so I paid them $30 to save me $200. Not bad! I’ve had other flights that don’t fall and I don’t get charged for those – only for when I save! If you are booking a flight this year I highly recommend using Airfare Butler – I’ve saved hundreds using them and you can too! Don’t overpay for flights and keep traveling more!
