Right up to 2 weeks before my trip, I still couldn't confirm my flight. Mostly because flights were really expensive during the december season, and I couldn't be sure if I could take leave to go for that long a duration (which I eventually confirmed by resigning from the dumbass company that I was working for. No regrets. Ungrateful lot.). After I resigned, I booked myself for a 3 days church camp to Malacca and I wanted to waste no time in getting there(to Paris) after coming back. Finally I managed to book a ticket on Qatar Airways for slightly less than SGD$1,500, but I had to make a 8 hour transit at Doha (which I made full use of). It was probably the best deal at that time and here's how I did it.
It'll be crazy to check every single airline I knew for a flight before deciding. All I needed was a good local agent and a good international aggregate site to narrow my choices. Logged onto www.airfares.sg and Zuji to find the cheapest flights +/- 3 days from the date that I wanted to leave Singapore for Paris. It helps if you can allow a +/- 3 days, sometimes the flight just the next day coulde be more than 20% cheaper and that's about $200 on a $1,000 ticket.
The results showed on both sites that Emirates had the best deal around $1,500-1,700 depending on how long you were willing to transit at Dubai. This was followed by Qatar Airways at $1,800 and a couple of others like Air France which were pretty close in pricing as well.After I've short listed about 3-4 airlines between the 2 sites, I went direct to the airlines to check the prices for a +/- 3 days as well. That's when I found that if I booked direct from the Qatar Airways site, I could book a flight for less than $1,500 but I had to wait 8 hours in Doha on the way to Paris (this option wasn't available on Airfares.sg or Zuji.). I didn't have a problem with that because I had to go to the bank to close my account which had been there since I left Doha 2 years ago. Booked the ticket. Saved a trip to Doha to close my account and got the cheapest available flight to Paris.
Saving tip: Use aggregators and agents to narrow down about 4-5 airlines that are flying to your destination. Then go to the airline's main website to check for other variations of transits and transfer, you might find a better deal there (or plan for a "additional" short trip on your transit destination.) otherwise, just go back to the original aggregate site and book the tickets there. Air tickets get more and more expensive as you approach the departure dates so it's always wise to book early.
Note: So sites do allow you to reserve tickets without paying for them first. Don't feel bad about booking first and cancelling later. e.g. Airfrance allows you up to 3 days to pay for your ticket. But if you don't, they will just give up your ticket.
Next up... Arriving in Paris and saving(cheating) on the Metro.
