Want to become an expert at booking flight tickets? First, master these three essential steps.

▲ Illustration of a flight ticket. (Photo / Reporter Chen Ruizhong, archival photo)

By / Excerpted from“16 Smart Ways to Travel Abroad,” Jimeng Workshop

The cost of flight tickets makes up a significant portion of the entire trip, and ticket prices can range from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand Taiwanese dollars. Therefore, it’s essential to compare prices before purchasing. Additionally, unlike train or bus tickets where you simply ask about the price and departure time, buy the ticket, and hop on board, flight tickets involve many details and restrictions, as well as numerous English abbreviations that can be quite confusing for the average person when booking a flight.

Generally speaking, the first step in booking a flight ticket is to extensively gather information and compare prices; after selecting a flight, ask the airline or a travel agency to make a reservation; the final step is to issue the ticket and obtain the receipt for the electronic ticket, completing the flight booking process.

Step 1: Extensively gather information and compare prices
After initially deciding on your departure time and destination, you can start searching for flight information. Currently, online travel resources are quite developed—you can begin by checking the booking websites of major travel agencies. Once you have a general idea about the prices and flight details, you can then visit the official websites of specific airlines. If you have no idea how to search for flights, simply call a travel agency, inform them of your intended departure time and destination, and ask them to help you look up options. Since there are various possible routes between your departure and destination—aside from direct flights—you can choose a direct flight if possible, but direct flights are usually much more expensive. To save money, consider connecting flights.

▲ Illustration of boarding. (Photo / Reporter Hong Shengyi, archival photo)

Step 2: Select a flight and ask the airline or travel agency to make a reservation
After gathering information and comparing prices, lock in the flight you want to take and promptly make a reservation with the airline or a travel agency. Making a reservation means reserving the seat in advance and agreeing on the price for that seat. At this stage, you’ll need to provide your passport’s English name. You can only reserve a seat on the same flight once—it is strictly prohibited to make duplicate reservations for the same flight through different channels. If the airline discovers that the same person has made two reservations, both will be canceled. After the reservation is completed, a ticketing deadline will appear. If you do not complete the ticketing process before this deadline, the reservation will be canceled.

▲ Illustration of an electronic ticket. (Photo / Reporter Cai Wenjun, archival photo)

Step 3: Issue the ticket and obtain the receipt for the electronic ticket
Issuing the ticket means confirming the seat and price, then paying the full amount to receive the ticket. The ticketing time varies depending on the ticket sales policy. If you book a flight ticket on a travel agency or airline website, as long as there is a confirmed seat, you must decide whether to pay and issue the ticket immediately or within a very short period of time. If you call the airline or travel agency, you can decide whether to pay and issue the ticket after completing the reservation over the phone, up until the ticketing deadline for that flight.

Author of this articleHsu T’ai-jung: Teaches tourism English at the Department of Foreign Languages, National Chung Hsing University. Hosts a weekly “Travel English” segment on Taipei Broadcasting. Also serves as a professional international tour guide. With over 23 years of international travel experience across five continents, published “16 Smart Ways to Travel Abroad” in 2015, which topped multiple bestseller lists and was the top-selling travel book of the year at Eslite Bookstore.