Skyscanner is a good thing, but....
The little truth is that each airline has a major stake in each travel company.
Then each local carrier can "do things" to make their expensive flights show as the cheapest.
There is no such thing as an impartial search engine anymore, you must use them all to find an actual good deal manually.
Every programmer hopes to sell out to a V.C. sleaze, every V.C. sleaze hopes to sell out to a C.E.O. puppet, repeat.
Here are the two sites that usually end up being the cheapest to or from Asia.
*Disclaimer that is now, 3 years ago it was travelocity & I-ACE - Always check your options
**This also only counts for Asia major, each region across the planet has its individual best site
Orbits
I-ACE usa
*I still check every site anway
If there's an app that will search multiple sites that's awesome, but even the skyscanner app will miss cheaper flights when the "masters" tell it to
I've saved thousands of dollars over the past 8 years doing my searches manually on every damn site I could find.
Another HUGE trick is to change the website to the domestic language.
Depending on direction of travel this could knock off another $200 to $400 from your ticket. (or you'll see the price jump up that much)
However... ya gotta be able to navigate that language through purchase.
A good trick is to have an English and Foreign page open at the same time, on most major travel sites the layout is the same which makes the process possible even with zero skill in that language.
EDIT:
A third trick is to try neighboring airports. These systems are F'ing stupid
For example: to fly into a tiny regional airport in the middle of BFE it was $1,100 (closest)
Flying into Detroit was $1,212 (most direct)
Flying into the larger airport everyone chooeses was $2,340 (popular)
Flying into Chicago was $1,021 (the US superhub)
Booking an individual ticket from Chicago to the BFE airport was $299
Not only did I save money on the total, it was cheaper to fly to the closest airport (luckily) when compared to any Obvious choice.
TLDR:
In my experience nothing beats a manual search of all your options because every automated scanner or app is controlled by some "Master" and will hardly, if Ever return the best option.
Those graphs are sexy, but they are statistics.
There's a reason why "Math" has become an expletive.
EDIT:
Again, don't get me wrong, this is a great tool.
Just make sure to check your other options after you have found the best price.
