Flights to Malta: 7 Top tips for finding the best bargains
There may be more competition than ever before but that doesn’t stop airlines trying to extract as much money as possible from you when you book. If you want to find cheap flights to Malta, Choice Holidays - Travel Special for Malta holidays is here to help. We have used our many years’ of experience to compile this page of top tips for saving money on your flight.
Booking flights used to be simple. Book early, book direct with the carrier and choose the time of year you visit carefully. With the rise of discount airlines and stiff competition on some routes, those rules are out of the window. Now, you have to be a very savvy shopper to save money on flights. Fortunately, our experts have combined their collective knowledge to give you the information you need to save money on flights to Malta.
While this page specialises in flights to Malta, you can use the same principles when booking flights to anywhere.
Incidentally, at Choice Holidays, we can offer you the best prices of package deals to Malta - guaranteed! Given that we are able reserve flights directly and our special partnerships both with airlines and hotels in Malta, you won't find better prices, anywhere else!
Use our flights search function below to find a combo of flight + hotel package for your holiday to Malta now.
1. Timing isn’t everything
Not that long ago, the earlier you booked your flight, the cheaper it was. That isn’t necessarily the case now. With more competition come more special offers and deals and they are not all time-sensitive. You could still grab a bargain flight to Malta by booking early but those old ‘book early save big’ principles aren’t as ironclad as they were a few years ago.
Airlines often release discounted tickets early but also closer to the time. You may like to set up a price alert on a flight website you trust rather than just booking early. There are lots of websites that can track specific destinations or carriers and send you an email alert when discounts are offered. These are more likely to save you money on your flight to Malta than just booking early.
2. Be careful booking direct with the airline
Booking your flight directly with the carrier used to offer some great deals. Now it isn’t so simple. Booking direct still offers distinct advantages if you need to change the date or modify your plans but they are rarely the cheapest way to get a good deal on your flight.
Travel agents and travel websites often have undercut rates they can apply to prices to remain competitive. They can give you a decent discount but work best if you already have a ticket price to quote. Travel agents won’t often quote you the cheapest price when you ask but if you go to them with a ticket price and ask them to beat it, they often can.
3. Keep your searches secret
There is a little known phenomenon with internet searches that can apparently raise the cost of your flights. Flight and holiday websites place cookies in your browser to help you get back to where you were if you return to the website. However, some websites are alleged to track how many times you search for a particular flight or holiday and will increase the price each time you return.
There is no concrete proof of this but many anecdotal reports cite different prices in different browsers at different times. Not all websites do this. Choice Holidays won’t do it because we think it is unethical but other websites are thought to use the practice.
When searching for flights to Malta, use your browser’s Incognito mode to prevent websites planting cookies. This stops them being able to track your searches and put up prices.
4. Be flexible on your departure date
Did you know it is often cheaper to fly out on a Wednesday than any other day of the week? Surprisingly, Saturday afternoons are also traditionally cheap times to fly, as are late at night and early in the morning. For many destinations, cheaper flights are when business people don’t fly or when the package holiday crowd are least likely to fly.
If you can be flexible on the day or time of your flight to Malta you may save a lot of money. When searching for flights, try a search without a date that includes a wider time period. For example, set a search for an entire week or month and see what days are cheapest. There are lots of flights to Malta from many carriers and several UK airports. Shopping around will save you money.
5. Be flexible on your departure airport
Malta only has a single airport, Malta International Airport (MLA), so you cannot be flexible with your arrival airport. You can however be flexible with your departure airport. Flights to Malta depart from London Heathrow or Gatwick, Bristol, Bournemouth, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Norwich.
Not all fly direct, some will require a flight change. Indirect flights offer more potential cash savings too.
6. Capitalise on the airline’s mistakes
Another not very obvious way to save money on flights to Malta is to look for error fares. This are when the airline systems publish an incorrect price or other mistake that lowers the cost of the ticket. This happens more than you would believe and is a credible way to find cheap flights. The airline doesn’t have to sell you the ticket but they often will and will honour the price they quoted too.
A good source of these kinds of tickets is Secret Flying, a website dedicated to finding the cheapest possible flights capitalising on airline errors. Flights to Malta don’t come up very often but you can save serious money when they do!
7. Shop around
Our final piece of advice for finding bargain flights to Malta is just to shop around. Check the airline’s websites, check Choice Holidays, check ticket websites and check with travel agents. The more information you have about prices, offers and cheap and expensive times to fly, the higher the chance of you making savings.
Don’t just rely on one ticket website because they say they have the cheapest deals. Check their prices against the airline, against airport websites and anywhere else you can think of. Yes it takes a little time but now everything is online, you have more information at your fingertips than at any time before. A small investment of time and effort could save you a lot of cash on your next flights to Malta!