I accidentally discovered a flight hack that saved me hundreds of dollars on a recent trip from Ottawa to Dallas. It was not a bad accident. You won’t believe how changing a simple setting can make such a big difference in flight prices,
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The key to this hack is that when you buy a flight ticket online, you will be shown different flight prices based on where you are booking the flight from. So someone looking for a flight from Atlanta to LA sitting in the US will see a different flight price than someone looking for the exact same flight from Atlanta to LA sitting in Canada.
My name is AKIB, and today you’re in for a treat as I walk you through how I saved $400 by changing location settings on the United Airlines website. And as a bonus, if you ultimately decide to stick around all the way, I’ll share two additional hacks I’ve used over the years to always get the lowest flight tickets.
They are game changers. I started looking for a flight from Ottawa to Dallas on the United Airlines website with my location set to US. When I went to buy the flight for $698, United’s website gave me the option to log into my United Mileage Plus account.
When I log in, it recognizes my Canadian profile and then changes my location to Canada. Although the flight I selected had not changed, the price was now 1,356 Canadian dollars. And this price difference is not just due to currency changes. 698 US dollars should convert to about 946 Canadian dollars, which is $400 less than what I was seeing. I switched my location back to the US and the $698 flight price came back, which reveals a huge price difference for the exact same flight based on my location settings.
This is a clear example of the flight ticket price changing based on the location settings when purchasing your flight. But just to prove that it wasn’t a one-off fluke,
I’m going to give you another example. These examples were not hard to find, by the way.
Let’s look for a one-way flight from Bangkok to Toronto because I couldn’t think of anything more random. With the location set to Canada in this browser and the location set to the United States in this one, you see exactly the same flight with the same price, consistent with the currency conversion from US dollars to Canadian dollars. Nothing to see here yet.Â
Wait until you see what happens if we change the location settings to UK, but we keep this same one-way flight from Bangkok to Toronto. When I change location in the UK, flight options and flight prices change. These flights are sorted to show the lowest price flight tickets first, so you don’t need to do any currency conversions to see if the cheapest flight shown as UK is different from the cheapest flight shown to me when my location is set to Canada or USA.Â
And I have two more hacks to share with you that will help you decide which countries you should change your settings to have the best chance of getting a cheap flight ticket. This is going to save you from going through all 195.
I think that. If you know how many countries there are in the world, let us know in the comments. I think it’s 195. But before I dive into those techniques, it’s also important to know that many websites are not the same as United’s website. If you change location, they know you’re not actually in the new location, and therefore, they don’t show you different prices. You will find that many flight search websites,
Google Flights, for example, gives you the option to change the location, but then doesn’t actually show a different price because it tracks your computer’s IP address and can tell that you’re not actually in Tanzania or Zimbabwe or wherever you decide to set the location.
Using a VPN is an easy and cheap way to browse a website to find your true location
I have a VPN every time I use my computer to protect my passwords and credit card information and to keep everything I do online private. But a great bonus feature of a VPN is that you can change your computer’s IP address. So by using a VPN to change my virtual location, I get access to all kinds of different prices because it tricks the website into thinking I’m in whatever country I decide to set it to.
I just love my VPN, and you can try changing website settings without using a VPN, but the only way to be 100% sure you’re seeing local prices is if you’re not in the country you’re in,
A VPN must be used. It was by complete accident that I found cheap flights to Dallas with my location set to the US.
But there are two strategies I use to consistently find low flight prices.
The first is to relocate to a low standard of living country like India.
Someone staying in India and searching for flight tickets may see cheaper flight prices than someone searching from a high-income country like the US. And besides changing your location to a low-income country, something else you can try is to change your location to a country where you’re searching for domestic flights.
Another example is setting your location somewhere in Canada
If you are looking for a flight between two Canadian cities like Vancouver and Montreal. I have a screen recording of using a low income country and then using a country as your location where you are looking for a domestic flight. That’s a word of mouth. But you can find two of these examples in an article that I will describe for you.Â
And then remember that if you decide to buy a flight in a different currency, always consider the foreign transaction fees your bank may charge and make sure the savings are going to be worth it.Â
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It was definitely worth the $400 I saved on my flight to Dallas last week for VidSummit. Let us know in the comments whether you’ll check out this hack by changing your location next time you go to buy a flight online.
My name is AKIB, and I hope you’ll consider subscribing to join us next week for more travel tips and hacks. But until then, good luck with your flight booking, and I’ll see you soon.
