Starter Kit, Vol. 1: The Keys to Find the Cheapest Flights

The Thrifty Traveler Podcast

In the first episode of 'Starter Kit,' hosts Gunnar Olsson and Kyle Potter break down the foundational strategies for finding and booking th

Key takeaways

• Starting with flight planning before booking hotels or requesting time off gives maximum flexibility to save on airfare.
• The 24-hour rule allows full refunds for flights booked at least seven days before departure if canceled within 24 hours, making it ideal for mistake fares and uncertain plans.

Main topics

• Flight First Rule
• 24-Hour Refund Rule

Notable quotes

You need both sides of that coin in order to really start to care about this and make it a piece of your life.

Conclusion

By mastering the Flight First Rule, leveraging the 24-hour refund window, using Google Flights

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olsson, a reporter for Thrifty Traveler and a flight deal analyst for Thrifty Traveler Premium and joining me for this special series and every episode of the Thrifty Traveler podcast. It's Thrifty Traveler, executive editor and our Points and Miles Sherpa. It's Kyle Potter. Kyle, welcome to Starter Kit. Speaker 2 (0:18) We're really sticking to the Sherpa thing, huh? Speaker 1 (0:20) I like Sherpa. You're our guide through the mountains, through the wilderness that is Points and Miles. This is... our first edition of Starter Kit. And today we're talking about the fundamentals of finding and booking the cheapest flight possible. We're going to go over two fundamental rules to live by, give you an overview of the most powerful flight booking tool there is, and do some airfare myth-busting too at the end. So Kyle, you and I are both now what we would consider points and miles sickos, a term of endearment for both of us, but it wasn't always that way for either of us. How and why did you get started in travel rewards? Speaker 2 (0:52) Well, you know, I think back. about a decade ago when my wife and I were planning a trip through Southeast Asia and Japan. We went to Thailand, Vietnam, and then Japan. And that did two things for me, which I think are just so critical for sending you down the rabbit hole of learning and caring about this stuff. First and most importantly, it was just an amazing trip. incredible, life-changingly cool experiences. And I think that's really important. But two, in the process of planning that trip and trying to piece things together and find the cheapest fares and use what little at that time points and miles that we had saved up, I started to see the travel booking process as a puzzle and really enjoy something that to many people, hopefully not many people that are listening to this, view as extremely frustrating. And that that part of it made it really rewarding. And I really think that you need both sides of that coin in order to really start to care about this and make it a piece of your life. I Speaker 1 (1:48) think that's such a relatable story in Points and Miles. That's exactly the way that people get into it is they realize that the puzzle is kind of fun and the whole journey of it is part of the point. For me, I got into Points and Miles because I needed to save. on flights to go skiing, which is already a hobby that I couldn't afford. So I really couldn't afford to go buy plane tickets to go out to the mountains and go skiing every year. So actually, I turned to Thrifty Traveler, but way before I joined the team. And I was watching and listening to you guys all the time, giving me tips on how to get better at this. And look at us now, Kyle, hosting Starter Kit to help others get involved. Who would have thunk it? Who would have thunk we'd be here? Okay, today on the first episode of Starter Kit, we're going over all the best strategies to find and book cheap flights. We're going to talk about the two most important rules for buying airfare, how and why all your trips should start with Google Flights, how to identify the right fare, and how to get the best deal on flights. All that and more. Welcome to Starter Kit from the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Speaker 1 (2:52) Okay, we're back. Let's jump into our discussion for how to find and book cheap flights. And I think we have to start with two rules that are core principles to airfare. One that is a literal law and another that we came up with. And I think we're going to start with our rule. Kyle, what is the flight first rule? Speaker 2 (3:10) It's more important than federal law, apparently, because we're starting with the first. That sounds like a joke, but I actually think it's true. I think this is the single most important change that you can make. in your travel planning process to find and book cheap flights. And it is exactly what it sounds like. So most people, as they plan a trip, they request time off work. They maybe even book a hotel or their cruise or whatever they're going to do. And only then they go back to look at flights. And then you're locked in. You have to be somewhere on September 17th. You have to come home on September 24th because that's when you check out of your hotel. And you are now at the whim of whatever the airlines want to charge you. And maybe you get really lucky, but you probably don't. And you probably see some atrocious airfare and you just have to swallow it. So instead. you flip that entire travel planning process on its head and you look at flights first. You follow the flight first rule before you request time off work, before you book your hotels, before you do all of those things, because that gives you the flexibility to get on the plane when it's cheapest. And then from there, you build out the other parts of your trip. You request that time off from your boss. But by starting that way, it gives you the most wiggle room to save on flights because changes by even just a day or two. can save you hundreds of dollars on domestic airfare. If you're talking about a big trip abroad, you could easily save thousands for a family of four or more. Yeah, Speaker 1 (4:31) this is really smart. Airfare is the most volatilely priced part of your trip almost no matter what. So booking your flight first is going to help you save. Let's get to the letter of the law. This has to be my favorite law in the world, Kyle. What is the 24-hour rule? The 24 Speaker 2 (4:47) -hour rule is a federal requirement that whether it's a U.S. airline like American or Delta or United or a foreign carrier like Lufthansa or Swiss or EVA Air, if a flight touches U.S. soil, an airline is required to issue a refund when requesting a cancellation within 24 hours of booking. This is non-negotiable. They cannot stick you with just a travel credit or a voucher. You can get your money back if you have buyer's remorse or you book that flight and you start to scope out your plans and it turns out, oh, you know what? This isn't going to work. Or you booked your flight and the hotels are just crazy expensive and you can't stomach it. You cancel for a full refund. Get that money back. I think really importantly, some big exceptions to this, namely many airlines. don't allow you to do this booking last minute. So you can't book a flight today for a trip tomorrow and then say, oh, well, you know what? I can't do this. The federal government only requires airlines to honor this rule when booking at least seven days before departure. Some airlines do this a lot better. Delta, for example, allows you to book whenever and cancel as long as you cancel within 24 hours. Others take that full seven days. Speaker 1 (6:02) Yeah, it's an amazing rule. It has definitely helped. me get my PTO approved by you, my boss, and to get a text back from my wife to make sure that we can actually make this work. Now, I just go ahead and book the flight that I want when prices are the cheapest and I have 24 hours to figure it out, get that text back, or have you deny my vacation request. I Speaker 2 (6:21) really love those emails from you saying, I'm going to leave for three weeks. You need to respond by the end of the day. Is that how people should use the 24-hour rule? I think so. You know, I think the perfect examples are this situation where you see a great deal, you want to book it, you're not sure if it's going to work with work and all the other logistics that you need to figure out. Maybe most importantly, it's amazing for mistake fares, which is the epitome of, you know, a flight that should probably cost $1,500 and for some reason it costs $201. You don't know if you're going to be able to take that trip. You don't have the time to figure that out because mistake fares can disappear like that. So you book it now. You ask those questions later, knowing that you've got this 24-hour window to sort things out. And if it doesn't work, you cancel that for a full refund. Speaker 1 (7:09) Awesome. Okay, let's move on and talk about Google Flights because I think this is the most important travel tool, period. Every trip of mine starts and ends with Google Flights Flight Search, but it goes a lot further than that. Let's highlight a few of the tools in Google Flights that we find most useful. And Kyle, you start. What's your favorite feature of Google Flights? I Speaker 2 (7:28) mean, if you want to hear me talk about this for like 15 minutes, go back and listen to our Google Flights episode from earlier in the summer of 2026. But it's the calendar, and it's because it is what supercharges the flight first rule. So with Google Flights, you start searching for your trip. You search that September 17th to the 24th. trip for wherever you're trying to go. And then there is a two month calendar that you can pull up where it will show the dates in green where it's cheapest to actually fly. So if in fact, it's, you know, significantly cheaper to fly to leave on September 15, instead of the 17th, you're going to see that very clearly. And then Google Flights takes it to the next level where if you've already selected those dates, and you're not in the calendar anymore, but it's 200 $500 cheaper to depart one or two days earlier, it'll give you a pop-up notification and tell you, hey, by shifting this trip by a day, you're going to save $200, $300, whatever the case is. It is just so enormously powerful and user-friendly to an extent that no other site even comes close. Speaker 1 (8:32) Yeah, it's kind of shocking to see the variability in flight pricing day-to-day when you do pull up that calendar. That's why it is such an important tool. I will give a shout-out just to the filters of Google Flights. When you're searching for a flight, you get the search results and you'll see a... toolbar on the top that has a ton of filters. You can filter for having a carry-on bag or a checked bag even. You can filter for the length of your layover. You can filter for what airports you do or don't want to have a layover at, the time of day for your flights, what airlines you want to fly, how many stops you're willing to stomach. The filters go on and on. And the best part about the filters is that once you put those in, the filters will inform the calendar. So when you pull up the calendar again, it'll show you the exact fares that match all the filters that you've put in. And that also goes for the explore tool, which I assume we'll talk about here next. Speaker 2 (9:20) Oh, it's this is maybe the single most powerful tool on