8 min read
When you travel full-time, flights stop being an occasional expense and start being a recurring line item. A digital nomad who moves to a new city every month or two might take 10-20 flights per year. At average prices, that is thousands of dollars in airfare alone. But it does not have to be.
The strategies in this guide are specifically for people who fly frequently and have the flexibility that location independence provides. You do not have to be back at the office on Monday. You do not have a fixed home airport. That flexibility is your biggest financial advantage if you know how to use it. These techniques pair well with the fundamentals in our cheap flights guide, but go further into territory that only makes sense when travel is your lifestyle, not just a vacation.
Not all cities are created equal when it comes to flight prices. Some cities are natural cheap-flight hubs because they have high airline competition, large airports with many routes, or are served by multiple budget carriers. Basing yourself in one of these hubs dramatically reduces the cost of your onward flights.
In Europe, cities like London, Barcelona, Berlin, and Warsaw are hubs for Ryanair, easyJet, and Wizz Air, meaning flights across the continent regularly go for 20-50 euros. In Southeast Asia, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur are hubs for AirAsia, Scoot, and other low-cost carriers. In South America, Bogota, Lima, and Santiago offer relatively cheap connections across the region.
Pro tip
Flight Alerts covers major hub airports across South America and Europe specifically. Setting alerts for a hub city you base out of means you will see the cheapest routes radiating outward, making it easy to plan your next move based on price rather than an arbitrary itinerary.
Traditional travelers book round trips because they know when they are coming back. Digital nomads often do not. Booking one-way tickets gives you the freedom to decide your next destination based on where the best deals are, rather than locking yourself into a return date and city weeks in advance.
Within the US and on most budget carriers worldwide, one-way fares are exactly half the round trip. There is no penalty for booking one-way. On legacy international carriers, round trips can occasionally be cheaper than two one-ways, but this gap has been shrinking. Always price both options.
The flexibility of one-way tickets also lets you mix carriers. Fly into a city on whichever airline is cheapest inbound, and leave on whichever is cheapest outbound, even if those are different airlines. Check our Google Flights tips guide for how to use multi-city search to build these kinds of itineraries.
A positioning flight is a short, cheap flight you take to reach a different airport where a much cheaper long-haul fare is available. For example, if you are in Madrid and find a $300 round-trip fare from Lisbon to New York, it might be worth buying a $30 Ryanair ticket to Lisbon to access that deal. The total cost of $330 could be hundreds less than flying direct from Madrid.
This strategy works best in regions with dense budget carrier networks. Europe is ideal because you can reposition for 20-60 euros on a budget carrier to reach a departure city with a much better long-haul fare. Just make sure to book the positioning flight with enough buffer time to account for delays, and remember that these are separate tickets so the airline will not rebook you if you misconnect.
The cheapest flight is the one you do not take. Many nomads burn money by moving too frequently. Staying in each destination for 4-8 weeks instead of 1-2 weeks cuts your annual flight count in half or more. You also get deeper into the local culture, qualify for monthly apartment rental discounts, and reduce the logistical overhead of constant movement.
Slow travel also gives you more flexibility to wait for deals. When you are only moving every 6-8 weeks, you have a wider window to watch for cheap fares rather than needing to book whatever is available for a specific date. Set up Flight Alerts for your current city and let the deals dictate your next destination.
Every region of the world has budget carriers that offer dramatically lower fares than the major legacy airlines. Learning which budget carriers operate in your current region is essential knowledge for any nomad. These airlines often do not appear in mainstream search engines or may require booking directly on their websites.
Budget carriers charge for everything beyond the seat: bags, seat selection, food, priority boarding. Pack light with a personal item that fits under the seat, and these fares become genuinely cheap. A 10-liter packable daypack and a carry-on-sized backpack is the nomad setup that avoids bag fees on almost every budget carrier.
Many popular nomad destinations have visa limits of 30, 60, or 90 days. When you need to leave and re-enter, the flight you take is commonly called a visa run. The smart move is to turn visa runs into opportunities rather than obligations.
Instead of taking the shortest and most obvious border hop, look for cheap flights to a nearby country you have been wanting to visit. If you are in Thailand approaching your 60-day limit, a $40 AirAsia flight to Malaysia or Cambodia lets you explore a new place while resetting your visa clock. Plan visa run timing around deal availability rather than waiting until the last day and paying whatever is available.
Pro tip
Keep a running list of 3-4 nearby countries you want to visit from each base. When your visa window starts closing, check fares to all of them and pick whichever is cheapest. This turns a bureaucratic inconvenience into a mini-trip.
Deal stacking means combining multiple savings techniques on a single booking. A stacked deal might look like this: a mistake fare found through Flight Alerts, booked on a travel credit card earning 3x points, through a shopping portal for an extra 2x miles, departing on an off-peak day from a nearby budget airport. Each layer saves money or earns points, and the cumulative effect is enormous.
The key is having systems in place for each layer. Use deal alerts to surface the cheap fares. Have the right travel credit card in your wallet. Know your regional budget carriers. Be flexible on dates and airports. When all these systems are running, deal stacking happens almost automatically.
Your toolkit as a flight-hacking nomad should include several complementary resources:
Digital nomads have a structural advantage over traditional travelers: flexibility. You can choose your base city for flight connectivity, travel on any day of the week, extend or shorten your stay based on visa timelines and deal availability, and mix one-way tickets across multiple carriers without worrying about returning home by Monday.
The nomads who fly cheapest are the ones who treat flight costs as a system to optimize rather than a fixed expense. Base yourself in cheap-flight hub cities. Monitor deals from those hubs with Flight Alerts. Travel slowly so you take fewer flights. Stack savings across budget carriers, credit card points, and deal fares. And let your next destination be driven by price as much as preference. That approach consistently cuts annual flight costs by 50% or more compared to booking reactively.
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