Flight Booking

How to Book a Going Deal

December 19, 2023

2 min read

Received a cheap flight you like from Going? Follow these instructions to find and book an amazing deal.

Step 1: Click the booking button on the website.

Every deal email includes a link to the Going website with more information about the deal and a link to find the deal using Google Flights.

👉 Even if you know how to use the booking site mentioned in the deal email, we recommend using the booking button found on the website. It includes all of the filters and additional criteria that are needed to get the fares we’ve found to appear.

[Reminder: Going does not receive referral fees for flights you book. Period. The booking links are there to help you out.]

Step 2: Customize your search criteria to explore availability.

After clicking the booking button (see Step 1), you may need to change some of the details of your search, such as:

Departure airport
Departure dates
Trip duration
Number of travelers

Step 3: Book via the airline or an online travel agency (OTA).

All flights must be booked directly through the airline or an online travel agency. (Going is not an online travel agency, so we don’t have any involvement in the booking process.)

Tickets are often cheaper via online travel agencies.

Online travel agencies often have the lowest available prices for our deals. When this occurs, we’ll call it out in the Booking Instructions section of the email so you can decide how you’d like to book.

Cancellation flexibility: For flights to and from the US, booking directly with the airline (vs. with an online travel agency) typically means you can cancel within 24 hours of purchase under the US Department of Transportation's 24-hour rule. Note: Some OTAs have similar cancellation policies.
Easier to resolve issues with reservations: In the event that something comes up, it’s often easier to deal directly with the airline than working through a third party.

For detailed instructions on how to use the most common online travel agencies or flight search engines, check out these guides, or read our guide to online travel agencies.

Can’t find the fare quoted in the deal alert email?

If you’ve followed the instructions above (use that booking button!) and still can’t find the deal, there are a few things that could be going on.

The deal is not available for your departure dates or route.

Double check the dates and route (departure and destination airports) in the deal email to make sure the dates you’re searching for are listed.

Or, the deal is no longer available.

We do our best to estimate how long deals will last, but it’s more of an art than a science. If you have a question about a deal, please contact us and we’ll be happy to take a look at what’s going on.

Scott Keyes

Founder & Chief Flight Expert

Scott Keyes is the Founder and Chief Flight Expert of Going (formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights), an app for flight deal alerts. He launched the service after spotting a $130 roundtrip fare from New York to Milan in 2013 and turned that discovery into a hobby of alerting friends to exceptional flight deals. Within two years, he formalized the email list into a business, culminating in the 2015 founding of the email service that has grown to serve more than 2 million members, sending them flight alerts for cheap flight tickets and mistake fares to destinations worldwide.

With a background in journalism and an education from Stanford University, Keyes spent years investigating airfare pricing, airline yield management, and consumer booking behavior. He worked with the Going team to build a mobile app, launched in 2024, that scans thousands of routes and publishes curated low‑fare alerts. The community has saved members over $1 billion in airfare in ten years, according to Mercury. His insights and story have been featured in The Washington Post, CNBC, Yahoo, Fortune, and more, where he has shared data-driven strategies on airline pricing patterns and booking optimization.

Alongside his role at Going, Keyes authored the book Take More Vacations: How to Search Better, Book Cheaper, and Travel the World (Harper Wave, 2021), which presents his methodology and encourages travelers to prioritize price‑first trips rather than destination‑first. Through speaking engagements and media commentary, he is widely cited as an authority on how to secure mistake fares, fare drops, and unadvertised deals.

Keyes is based in Portland, Oregon. His work bridges data‑driven airfare analytics with travel psychology, and he is committed to making global travel more affordable and accessible.

Last updated December 19, 2023