Finding a cheap airplane ticket is something of an art, one that you can learn in a very short space of time, but can spend the rest of your life trying to master. Being able to buy cheap airplane tickets is a very handy skill, and it's surprising they don't teach it in school. Spending a whole year learning calculus in college didn't provide me with anything that I have since used in real life. Maybe if I'd instead learnt how to get cheap airplane tickets, Id be an expert by now, quite apart from all the money I'd have saved in my lifetime.

Okay, so my school never taught me how to get a cheap airplane ticket, but I've found out quite a lot just by stumbling blindly through the airline industry. Probably the best way to get really cheap airplane tickets is to own your own airline. It's amazing how easy it is to get a cheap airplane ticket when there's a bunch of your own airplanes just waiting to head off wherever you want to go.

All joking aside, owning an airline is probably a bit expensive for most of us, so you'll have to find simpler ways to get your cheap airplane ticket. One of the best and most overlooked ideas is to travel during the off season. What time of the year is actually the "off" season will vary a lot, depending on your destination, but basically it just means the time of year when less people want to go there.

The funny thing is that the place you're going will be basically same even if it is in the off season. Those words conjure up an image of something being bad or "off" about the destination, but it could simply be that the timing doesn't fit in with when most people can get the time off work to travel there. For example, there's hardly a place in the world with an "off" season over Christmas - simply because that's when an enormous number of people are available to travel. Having said that, there are parts of the world where the weather at certain times of the year is very definitely off, and a good reason why so few people want to visit. While it may make it easier to get cheap airplane tickets by travelling at that time, you're possibly going to have a miserable holiday if you're stuck in hurricans or snowstorms.

Another thing that many people don't know is that the earlier you book, the cheaper the plane ticket is likely to be. Buying a plane ticket at the last minute is almost a guarantee that you'll pay top dollar for it. Whereas airlines often begin selling a flight with a whole range of ticket prices - and naturally the cheap plane tickets go first. So it's always a good idea to take a look at prices as far ahead as possible, circumstances permitting, to give yourself a great chance of finding some really cheap airplane tickets.