Cheap flights to
North Carolina

There isn’t a single day of the week or hour in the day when airline tickets are inexplicably cheaper, but over years of tracking airfare all over the world, we’ve found there is something of a sweet spot before every flight when you’re most apt to get the best deal on a ticket. It’s about 1-3 months before a domestic flight and 2-8 months before an international one, a period we call the Goldilocks Window.

While this is the best time for deals for most trips, it’s not true for all trips. If you’re planning to fly during the high tourist season, for instance, or you don’t have flexibility with your actual travel dates, you should plan to add a few months to the equation. Hoping to fly home for Thanksgiving this year? Start looking at fares in June or July. And, no matter when you’re flying, be sure to book before the airlines raise prices as the departure date gets closer—this usually happens 21, 14, and 7 days before takeoff.

In a perfect world, we’d all love to find that the best deal on airfare is also the one with a direct flight from the airport near you to one that’s right where you want to end up. We all know this doesn’t always happen, though, so you may need to get creative. One of our favorite creative hacks is what we call the Greek Islands Trick, which isn’t limited to just Greece or even just islands. The gist is that you’d find the cheapest flight you can that gets close to where you want to be and then find another mode of transportation to make up the difference—which might be another flight, but it also might be a train trip or a scenic drive.

If you’re looking at flights to Charlotte, North Carolina’s biggest airport, you might think a connecting flight from Los Angeles that costs around $350 roundtrip is a pretty good deal. But the daily flight schedule at Charlotte pales in comparison to that of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson (ATL), which is less than four hours from Charlotte by car. You may find a nonstop flight from LAX to Atlanta for around $200 roundtrip, so it’s always a good idea to look around at other airports in the area before you click the buy button. And yes, this kind of multi-step itinerary may take a bit more planning on your part, but sometimes the savings are worth it.

Travelers who live near more than one big airport are likely already used to checking the fares from multiple departure airports whenever they’re planning a trip. But this is a habit everyone should get into, regardless of how close an airport is to where you live. We see amazing deals on flights from airports all over the place, big and small, and sometimes the fares are so cheap that you’ll save money even if you add a second roundtrip flight to get from your home airport.

Take, for example, North Carolina’s busiest airport in Charlotte. You might find a roundtrip fare from Minneapolis for a little under $300, but if you zoom out on the map a bit, you might notice a $150 roundtrip fare from Chicago. Cutting the cost of your ticket in half may make the road trip from the Twin Cities to Chicago an easy choice.

Flexibility is one of the best ways to save money on a trip. By avoiding the high season, you can often save hundreds on airfare alone. The high season is popular for many reasons, not least that it’s when kids are out of school, but there are a few other ways to be flexible with your planning that may save you a little bit of money.

If your trip has to be in the summer, try to plan it for the first two weeks of June or the last two weeks of August, which are sometimes the cheapest times to fly in this peak season. You should also try to schedule your flights on the days that are usually the cheapest: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. The most expensive days to fly are usually Fridays and Sundays, so avoid those if possible.

Put the power of technology to work for you so you don’t need to spend countless hours scouring the internet for deals on airfare. Sign up for fare alerts for whatever itinerary you’re looking at, and you’ll get an email when the cost of the ticket has dropped. You’ll need to set up a separate alert for each itinerary, so keep that in mind if you’re considering multiple dates or destinations. Alternatively, you can sign up with Going and let us do all the searching for you.

North Carolina’s biggest and busiest airport is Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT). It’s a hub for American Airlines, which operates the most daily flights in and out of Charlotte by a wide margin. There are 12 other airlines that also have direct service to Charlotte, which has nonstop flights from 144 airports in the US and 25 airports in other countries.