Best flight tracking | flight communities like Scott's Cheap Flights

My Favorite Ways to Track Flights Part 3: Flight Communities

Post published:January 18, 2019
Post category:Flight Planning / Planning Strategy

One of the most consistent complaints I hear from people that are starting the travel process is how frustrating buying flights can be. What is the best approach to flight tracking?

Prices fluctuate. Seats get taken from under your nose while you have an airline’s website open. And, in the back of everyone’s mind is the sickening feeling of having to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars just to GET to where you’re going (not even to enjoy it yet!).

Luckily, there is a bounty of online businesses popping up that try to help with what many consider the most stressful part of travel planning. Below is part three of three common digital formats for tracking (not buying, necessarily) airline tickets. In addition, I’ve added my assessment of the various pros and cons, as well my personal favorite flight community to use.

FLIGHT-TRACKING COMMUNITIES

Building from Part two of my flight tracking series about using apps, taking the laziness one step further is to tap into a community that already does this work for you. There are several websites and businesses that will do this monitoring and send emails to members about daily deals. Generally, this is the most passive, and usually the most effective, way to score cheap flights.

Pros

Hands off; the most work you would do is set up a profile with a preferred departure airport
It’s free! Well, unless you upgrade your account
These services do the work of exploring alternate days, departure airports and destinations to assure you get a cheap flight

Cons

Not paying into the premium version may put you at a disadvantage when booking speed is crucial
Scott emails these deals. Therefore, you are at the timing whims of the service… you cannot proactively seek out these deals

The Meticulous Traveler’s Fave

Scott’s Cheap Flights

SCF is one of the best kept secrets in the travel planning space. The free version is great; users get a daily email with a notably cheaper-than-usual flight to an international destination from a US-based one. There is a long list of departure airports and sometimes multiple destinations (e.g. a Europe sale to various countries).

In addition, there is a general time window to purchase tickets. Rather than booking through the service, SCF includes a link to an example Google Flights search. This way you can find, tweak and book on your own.

Personally, I subscribe to their premium service. For $39 annually, you can customize your departure airport and get the daily deal email ahead of free subscribers. This gives you an opportunity to book as fast as possible.

I have used this service to purchase two flights. So for me, the annual fee has been “covered” for several years just on the savings I realized on these two buys. As an example, see the following email. I received this deal via email from Scott’s Cheap Flights on January 18th, 2019.