All About Going (Formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights)
After our London trip, I mentioned that we’d gotten our tickets much cheaper than normal through Scott’s Cheap Flights (it’s since been rebranded as “Going”).
If you’re unfamiliar with Scott’s Cheap Flights, it’s an email service that sends flight deals right to your inbox.
I was first introduced to Scott’s Cheap Flights by my mom who has been a subscriber for several years and in 2019 forwarded along $160 round-trip tickets to Hawaii. I happened to be sitting at my desk when the email came through, texted Bart at work who responded within seconds, and we had those flights booked within about ten minutes total (which was lucky because they sold out SO FAST).
So I’ve been a fan ever since.
I didn’t sign up for my own account until 2021 and now I’m fully hooked! We got cheap tickets to Hawaii (twice more since the 2019 tickets!), Australia, Croatia, Costa Rica, Paris, London and more!
Here’s how it works:
Scott’s Cheap Flights
- Sign up for a free account. No credit card is necessary.
- Set your airport that you normally fly out from (you can choose up to 5 airports)
- Emails with deals come right to your inbox. They’ll tell what the normal price is so you know how much you’re saving and show you what airport it’s out of and what the time frame for the cheap tickets are.
When you get those emails, they’ll look like this:
I have the Premium plan which is the most popular plan and I think it’s absolutely worth the $49 a year! One good deal for a single plane ticket and you’ll more than make that up (let alone if you’re flying two people or – in our case – SIX people!).
If you’re at all interested, I’d sign up for a free plan and then if you decide you want to upgrade, you can. You can also try out the Premium or Elite memberships for 14 days for free if you’d like.
Here are the main differences between a free (what they call a “Limited” membership) and a Premium plan:
- Premium members get Hawaii, Alaska and International Deals. With a Limited plan, you’ll only see deals for the continental United States. If you’d like deals to Hawaii, Alaska or international destinations, you definitely want a Premium membership.
- Premium members get deals that use points and miles. If you’re doing credit card points, you’ll definitely want the Premium membership for alerts for when your points and miles will go the furthest (I learned all about how to use points and miles from this course and it’s changed my life!)
- Premium members can set price alerts for specific destinations. Say you’re dying to go to Paris – you can set that as one of your destinations and they’ll alert you when a ticket price there drops! You can choose 10 destinations to track!
- Mistake fares are reserved for Premium members. If there are mistake fares (which are the golden ticket of cheap flights), you’ll get those as a Premium member.
Here are a few things I love about Scott’s Cheap Flights:
- They choose GOOD flights. They aren’t sending you ones with an awful layover or leaving at 2 a.m. or flying on an airline where you need to bring your own seatbelt and oxygen mask. They call it the Mom Test or the Bestie Test – if it’s not a flight they’d send to their BFF or put their mom on, they aren’t going to send it to you.
- You can look at deals on their site at any time! I love having the emails come through, but it’s also nice that you can log in to their site and see all the current flight deals in one place.
- If you refer a friend, you get a free month of Premium membership. Forward a deal to a friend or send them your link (you’ll find it in your account) and if they sign up – even just for a free membership – your account will automatically convert to a Premium Membership for a month and then return to your free membership when that month is up (or if you refer multiple friends, you’ll get multiple free months).
Have you used Scott’s Cheap Flights before? Any other questions about how it works? I’m happy to help!
This sounds worth looking into! Thanks for sharing! Can you share anything about seating? My husband is very tall and needs those rows that have more leg room. We have found generally with discounted flights that that type of seating is not available, so we stopped looking at services like this long ago.
You’re booking your own tickets (they just alert you to good prices), so it’d be the same as any other booking!
Thanks!
My husband is 6’9” and needs the room too! When you book the tickets you can choose to upgrade seats. You’re still booking directly through the airline. Scott’s cheap flights just let’s you know about the low fares! I love it!
I’m interested to know how cheap the flights get and how expensive they get while still being called cheap, from what you’ve seen.
Totally depends on the location – I’ve seen flights to LA for $30, flights to Hawaii from $165 and flights to the Maldives for $800. It’s based more on the normal price, rather than a flat rate.
What a great idea! I wish they serviced Canadian airports as well (hoping they will add them in the future).
How do you feel about the airlines? I’m such a flying rookie and always scared to try other airlines from horror stories. I grew up doing Delta and Southwest.
Any you suggest to not do?
They’re primarily for big airlines like Delta, Southwest, American, United, etc.
But frankly, we’ve had good luck on all sorts of airlines, including budget ones like Allegiant and Frontier.