How I scored a cheap flight ticket to LAX

If you are wander-fully travel obsessed like me, a good travel bargain can send tingles down to the toes. So imagine my excitement when I was able to buy return tickets to Los Angeles (LAX) from Kuala Lumpur (KUL) at only RM3,500 all-inclusive! Murah!

(For more bargain, one could purchase the same trip for RM100 - RM200 less by taking either China Southern or China Eastern.  Both husband & myself opted to take our national carrier, Malaysia Airlines )

Here are my tips & strategies:



1. Plan ahead
I try to plan ahead any long-distance travels since the cost can burn a hole in one's pockets. Hence, I think it's important to think about the trip very much early. This helps you to save up, as well as to have a rough estimate of what the total cost will be. For our USA trip, we actually started planning for it way back in 2010!

2. Monitor the fares
Once you have decided on your destination, start monitoring the fares so you can start observing the fare trends. I kept track of it using Excel, but feel free to use your own system.

I find that these websites to be very useful at this stage:

Skyscanner - allows you to quickly compare fares from various major airlines (including budget airlines like AirAsia!).  The beauty of Skyscanner is that you will be able to view the fare trend for the entire month or year!- useful if you are flexible with your travel dates. Fares displayed have included taxes & surcharges.

flyKLIA - if you are flying via Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA or, airport code: KUL), check out flyKLIA. Similar to Skyscanner, the website uses a farefinder tool to search for the best bargains for flights from/via KLIA. But, be careful if the fares are too good to be true - it may not include taxes/surcharges.

There are other fare finder websites like FareCompare or Hipmunk, but these websites charge you in US currency so you may lose out a bit with the exchange rate.

Here's my fare tracker spreadsheet:

From the tracking that I have done for over a year, I was able to observe the following:

• fares are higher towards the end of the year
• the best bargain from Malaysia Airlines is during its Malaysia Airlines Travel Fair (mostly takes place in February)
• the 2nd best bet is to purchase during the MATTA Fair usually held in March <-- this is where I bought my tickets for RM3,500

3. Decide and buy!

Once you have a rough estimate about the cost of your flight and know how much you're willing to pay for, go ahead & book that dream trip of yours!

These are just some of the tips I can share with you. Hope the websites I listed above will help you with your travel planning!