TAKING ADVANTAGE OF SKIPLAGGED AND CLEVERLAYOVER

There are many meta-search engine for booking your flight tickets. The most popular one being Kayak and Google Flights. Although these are good places to give you quick efficient results, you might save some more dollars ($$) if you are willing to trade longer lay-overs, combining two different tickets to create or itinerary or simple book one-way tickets with hidden city ticketing (or throw away ticketing). This bring us to the two new entrants in the block which are SkipLagged and CleverLayover. Let's look into them to see how can they help save us some dollars ($$) or make two trips out of one.

SkipLagged:
This site tries to find you cheaper flight options by taking advantage of the fact that not all markets are created equal. So, there might be an airport with lot of competition from different airlines and thus the prices could be competitive. But the fact that not all airlines from your "Source Airport" flies directly to this "so-called destination" gives opportunity for flying to the "connecting airport" at a lower cost. Let's look an example below where you are flying one-way from Dallas (DFW) to San Francisco (SFO) on Monday, Aug 10th. As you can see you can get a non-stop flight from DFW-SFO by skipping SFO-PDX leg for just $135.

---

DFW-SFO non-stop is cheaper when you skip SFO-PDX leg

CleverLayover:
The CleverLayover works on a different concept. It tries to see if it can break your journey into two separate tickets to save you dollars ($$). This could be useful if you do not mind long layovers or changing flights, or you want to visit additional destination which could be your "layover" city en-route to your destination. Lets see for example you are looking to book one-way ticket from Los Angeles (LAX) to London (LHR) for Aug 8th, 2015, as shown below:

You can book a non-stop for $634 or visit Moscow for $67 more!!

As you can see from above you can book a flight with 20+ hours Layover in Moscow for just $67 more than a non-stop flight to London (LHR). This is a great way to maximize or stretch your dollar spend on the flight ticket.

So make use of SkipLagged or CleverLayover the next time your plan your trip and you might be in for a surprise. Be aware though that when you skip legs you SHOULD NOT check-in your luggage and when The CleverLayover gives you itinerary which involves multiple carrier there might be a need of collecting and re-checking your luggage as those airlines might not have interline agreement. 

Do make sure you still check your usual websites like Kayak and Google Flights as some times you might be able to find better "hacker fares" on those sites as well. Best of Luck!