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Though their annual fees may set you back a bit, investing in an airline credit card will ensure that those travelers with especially bad wanderlust will rack up the points to eventually travel at incredibly discounted prices. According to The Points Guy, the JetBlue Plus Card is the best option for mostly domestic travelers, as it offers a generous amount of airfare points (40,000 points after you spend $1,000 in the first 90 days) for each dollar that you spend.

If you're booking a flight, it's likely that you'll also need to book a hotel—and those two rates combined can seriously add up. Lucky for you, many large hotel chains offer package deals with major airlines—and that means you can save big on both expenditures.

We understand: Layovers can be a total drag. But booking a route with a layover is likely to be much cheaper than the nonstop alternative—sometimes as much as 50 percent, writes FareCompare CEO Rick Seaney. For example, that previously mentioned $224 Barcelona flight has a layover in Madrid. If you wanted to fly direct, you'd be shelling out around $1,000. That's $776 in savings!

Unfortunately, the cheapest days to fly aren't always the most convenient. But if you can swing a mid-week departure, you might want to consider it. Hopper data found that the cheapest day to depart on a domestic flight is Wednesday and the cheapest day to return is Tuesday. The potential savings on those days are around $45 per ticket.

Think about which type of destination you'd most like to visit when—say, a coastal town in summer and Europe in spring—and then do the opposite. Check Hopper for its price-trend calendars and the results will speak for themselves. Pro tip: If you didn't know that booking a trip to Europe in the fall or winter could save you hundreds of dollars, you do now. For example, flights from New York City to Barcelona are tracking at around $500 in August, while this travel reporter just found an itinerary in September for a bargain-bin price of $224 round-trip. In short: Don't fear the off-season

Flying on major holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas—times when other passengers would rather be at home with family instead of at the airport with the TSA—is perhaps the best way to score incredible travel deals. In fact, according to data compiled by Cheap Air, travelers who flew on Christmas day and New Year's Eve scored the deepest discounts on holiday travel in 2019.

As we mentioned earlier, the only "hack" there is to get the best airfare possible is to stay diligent. But sometimes, you just don't have time for that—which is why you should let the internet do the work for you. Sign up for price alerts on a site like Skyscanner or Google Flights to get a notification whenever fares drop on your itinerary. And if they do, book ASAP! Amazing deals never last long.

If you've never flown a particular route before, it can be difficult to know what a good fare looks like. For example, a $350 flight might seem like a steal—until you learn that that flight typically costs $300. That's why you'll want to download Hopper. To use the app, simply plug in where you'd like to fly and when. Hopper will tell you what the average fare is for that route at that time and will use historical data to tell you when you should book your flight to get the best deal.

Ever heard that Tuesdays are the best day to book a flight? Or that you should search for airline tickets in incognito mode? Those are total myths. Most travel experts nowadays agree that there's no "best" day, time, or hack to get amazing fares. "Airlines use advanced computer and pricing algorithms to determine prices and run sales based on the time of the year, passenger demand, weather, major events/festivals, time of day, competitor prices, and much more," writes travel blogger Nomadic Matt.

The reason why you can save this way is because "airlines often sell multiple fare classes at different prices, with a couple seats in each class," write the deal experts at Travel Zoo. "If there's only one seat left in the lowest fare class and you search for four seats, most automated systems will show you the highest fare class for all four tickets."