Find a Cheap Fare to SOMEWHERE
When you are planning a trip, you probably know exactly where you want to go. However, sometimes you may be open to several possible destinations, depending on what type of deal you can get.
Several tools are designed to uncover well-priced airline tickets for your next trip, letting you easily browse airfares to many different destinations. These tools are the best way to find a great deal on airplane tickets and can provide inspiration for a trip to a fantastic destination.
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Our favorite option is Fareness.com
Our favorite site for finding good flight deals to different possible destinations is called Fareness. They compare currently available fares to the “normally available” price levels, in order to ferret out destinations that are currently available at unusually low prices. Whenever we look at the tool, we are shocked to see how low some of the airfares are, compared to what we’d expect.
For example, getting to Europe from Seattle is usually pretty expensive. We expect prices to be cheaper in the winter, but even then, expect to pay between $750 and $1,000 for a round trip ticket (and are jealous of people who live in other cities and can travel to Europe less expensively). Fares in the $400s feel incredibly cheap. Similarly, we expect to be able to fly to Arizona inexpensively, but round trip fares below $100 just seem crazy.
Usually you have some idea of the type of trip that you are looking for. Fareness lets you easily choose a “Destination Theme” to filter down the possibilities. You can view great deals to Europe, to other places in the US, to good beach or family destinations, or to any of a set of other options. Here’s an example of a list of a few suggested beach vacations from Seattle, which are available at lower than normal prices.
If you are interested in one of the suggested destinations, you can click to see a calendar of the likely dates you can find availability. For example, there was an unbelievable fare between Seattle and Amsterdam of $448. Once we clicked in, we could see that the pricing was available for most days through mid-March. Then, you can fine-tune the dates to find specific flights to book.
Usually we will use Fareness to get good ideas of where we might go and then use a favorite airfare booking sites, like Google Flights, to see if we can get an even better rate.
Scanning through fare deals
Another approach to finding a good destination is to scan through recent “deals” that are posted on several websites that focus on spreading the word about unusually low prices. These websites aren’t so much airfare searching tools as they are listings of airfare alerts. They are designed to provide notifications about new deals and just show a list of each deal in the reverse order of when they found them.
The most convenient way to view recent deals is with All the Flight Deals. This website searches several of the other “fare deal” websites and pulls together all the deals in one easy-to-view listing. You can also sign up for email notifications for flights from your city.
Other good options for exploring possible destinations
- Google’s Explore Map. Google lets you view possible destinations on a map. You can view prices for specific dates or for a weekend, one week, or two week trip across the following six months or for a specific month. The prices displayed on the map are only approximates. You’ll need to click through to individual cities to see the real fares. At least with Google flights, this will be blazingly fast.
- Kayak’s Explore Map. Kayak has a similar map, which allows you to more flexibly control your date options, but doesn't let you search an exact set of dates.
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