If you are anything like me then you spend a lot of time researching flights. I spend a crazy amount of time trying to find the best value, the best dates and the best destinations to make the most of our travel time and money. My favourite tool to do this is I Want That Flight which is perfect for this task.

This site is incredibly powerful. It is especially good for Australians with a lot of functionality for finding flights from Australian airports, but it also works for flights originating elsewhere. I have been using it to track down an elusive, affordable flight from Malaysia to Japan.

Here are some of my favourite ways to use it…

Australian domestic flights

There are two ways to search for the best domestic flight prices. You can enter dates into the search functionality. If you select flexible dates then you can see a month of prices at a time across all airlines.

The second way shows you an overview of the year as well as a graphical representation of the prices for the next couple of weeks. You can see this by going to the Domestic Flight page and selecting the destination you wish to visit:

On the next screen, select where you are flying from. You will then see a graphical representation of the upcoming flight prices as well as some information about your destination.

I particularly like the yearly overview. Often I want to go somewhere, but it doesn’t really matter when so this lets me know what time of year might be the cheapest time. For example, I visit Hobart regularly to see family, but I don’t really care when that is. I can quickly see the following information:

Yearly overview of Melbourne – Hobart flight prices

Looks like I won’t be visiting this month!

International flights

Like with domestic flights, you can search for international flights in two ways. Firstly, you can enter your departure and arrival airports (neither needs to be in Australia) and search for dates. You will then get a screen with all the flight prices returned with many filters. For example, you can filter via airline, price, transit airports, etc.

This search is very powerful and I like that it shows up combinations I would never have thought of. For example, for the Japan flights we are looking for from Malaysia, a cheaper option was to fly a combination of flights from budget airlines, Cebu Pacific and Air Asia.

The second way is fantastic if you are departing from Australia. You can navigate to a super clever screen to search between two different destinations using search criteria such as a date range for when you want to depart and then a time frame for when you want to return.

For example, say you have two weeks leave you need to take in February or March next year but you don’t care exactly when. You can go to this page, enter a departure date range in February and March and say you want to return two weeks later. It will return the cheapest dates for you.

To do this, start by going to the International Flights page. From here select the city you want to go to or All International Destinations if it is not shown there.

Once you have selected where you want to fly to, you can then select where you want to fly from. The cheapest flights to your destination will appear. If these do not suit, you can filter based on date and duration of trip. In the screenshot below, I have searched for the example I mentioned above – a 2 week trip to Bali sometime in February or March. I now know which airlines are the cheapest on which dates.

If I scroll down further, I can see the yearly overview of average monthly prices like I did for domestic flights.

Alerts and newsletter

The other functionality that is great on this site is the ability to set up alerts so that you get an email once a flight price drops below a certain price. For example, I love using these for flights such as my trips home to Tasmania. I set it to let me know when it gets under $55 and then I can snap up a bargain.

There is also a newsletter which will send you all the cheapest deals from your closest airport. Perfect if you want some inspiration for your next trip. However, be warned that this can be a dangerous option for travel addicts like myself 😉

I am very glad I came across I Want That Flight. It makes it much easier to find cheap flights and is especially good for those of us who live in Australia as it makes it super easy to find the best deals.

Do you have any flight booking tricks?