Skyscanner flight search
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Search tips and tools - quick start

Thursday 3 June 2010

Skyscanner's search tools
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Don't know where to start? Try Skyscanner's quick search user guide
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Need ideas? Search everywhere for destination inspiration!
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Don't know where to go? Use the map to plan your trip...
 
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Search whole month to find the very cheapest days to fly!
 
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Search by country for the cheapest airports
 
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Use Skyscanner on Facebook to find your flights
 

Quick start - find a flight


You can use Skyscanner in a number of ways. If you know where and when you want to travel, enter the details and click search to get prices instantly. Or if you want to consider different destinations and/or dates, you can use the Skyscanner site to sift through all the options.

    bullet.gif  Choosing where to fly
    bullet.gif  Choosing when to fly
    bullet.gif  Narrowing down your choices
    bullet.gif  Selecting a flight
    bullet.gif  Final check


Choosing where to fly

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Either type in your departure point and destination or select them from the drop down menu options for country and city.

 

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To select a country, click on the blue arrow at the side and scroll up and down through the list of countries.

When you have chosen your departure country, you can choose a more specific departure destination from the ‘City/Airport’ list below. Or, if you would like to see more options, choose ‘Any Airport’ at the top of the list.

Now select where you want to fly to. The default option is ‘Everywhere’ (any country and any airport), which is great if you’re looking for ideas.

But if you know where you want to go, type in the country or city you want to fly to, or click on the blue arrow above the ‘To’ box and click on the blue arrow at the side of the ‘Country’ box to scroll down through the countries you can fly to.

You can also scroll down through the ‘City/Airport’ list to choose where exactly you want to go in that country. Some destinations will be in green. These are countries and airports with direct flights. Some will be in orange – you can fly there using indirect flights.


Choosing when to fly

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When you’ve selected your destination, choose the dates you want to fly in the ‘depart’ and ‘return’ boxes. (Or click on ‘one way’ if you don’t want a return flight.)

 

search_calendar.gifClick on the calendar in the right hand side of the box to open the drop down calendar. You can choose a specific day, or if you are flexible on dates you can click on the ‘whole month’ or ‘whole year’ options at the top to see the very cheapest days to fly.

Then, when you have filled in how many people are flying in your party, click on ‘Search’.


Narrowing down your choices

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If you’ve chosen specific airports and dates, skip this bit and scroll down the page to ‘Selecting a flight’.

If you’ve chosen to look at ‘Any Airport’ or ‘Whole of year’, you will be shown some options for different destinations first, then different months you can fly. Choose the destinations and months you are interested in and click ‘Next’.

When you have narrowed down flights to a particular month, you will be able to see the different prices for each day in the month before you decide which day to travel.

 

calendar_chart.gifClick on the ‘Chart’ tab to see a handy graph showing which days are cheapest. If you hover your cursor over a particular day it will show you the cheapest flight on that day.

Or click on ‘Calendar’ and you can see all the cheapest flight prices arranged in a calendar view.
plane_icon.gif When you see this symbol, it means that there are flights on this day but we are in the process of updating our price information. If you select this day and click on ‘next’, you will see the prices on the next page.


Selecting a flight

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When you’ve chosen your destination and preferred travel dates and clicked ‘Show Flights’, you will then be shown all the flights on those days that you can choose from.

day_view_new.pngYou can browse flight results in two ways: “Compare prices” lists prices for round trips, while “Compare flight times” lets you choose the best combination from a timetable of outbound and incoming flights

filter_bar_new.pngOn the left of the page is a filter bar. You can use this to narrow down the results by choosing the times of day you would like to fly, your preferred airlines and airports, journey duration, and whether you prefer non-stop flights.
price_symbol_new.pngThe latest prices: Skyscanner searches constantly to make sure we have the latest prices for you to compare, but fares may sometimes change because of availability at the time of booking.
           
If we think a price may have changed we’ll tell you when it was last updated. When you see this symbol refresh_symbol_new.jpg it's telling you how many hours and minutes ago the flight was last checked.
           
Don’t worry – if you click on this flight, you will get the latest flight price to check before you book. When you see ‘live’ under the price you know that’s the latest best price offered by the airline or travel agent.


Final check

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When you’ve selected your flights, click on the price shown. If there’s been any changes to the price you will be given a live update of the latest price for you to check to see if you are happy before you are transferred to the airline or travel agent to check details and make your booking.


And it’s as simple as that!


Happy searching, and we hope you enjoy using Skyscanner. Make sure you try the hotels, car hire and holiday searches too!

If you have any problems, or you would like to tell us about features you like or don’t like, you can contact us here:

http://www.skyscanner.net/contactus.aspx



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