It can often feel like the JFKs, LAXs, and ORDs of the world get all of the love when it comes to cheap flights—they are among the best airports for cheap flights year after year, after all. However, not everyone lives near a major airport with access to seemingly endless deals, and to that we say: Small airports deserve some love, too.
While the deals may not come around as often, they are, in fact, there. You just have to know how, when, and where to find them.
Why are flights from smaller airports more expensive?
While a number of factors influence flight pricing, competition is the biggest determining factor. The more airlines that are operating on a certain route, the cheaper those fares will be. That’s why we see more deals out of LAX than ATL, for example. Want to get to Europe? From LAX, you can choose from about two dozen airlines, while from Atlanta there are only a half dozen.
So when you have a smaller airport as your home base, you’re unfortunately going to see fewer deals. It’s not your fault, nor ours. It’s on the airlines—should more airlines add routes from your small airport, it’d help drive down prices.
That said, there are tactics that you can use to unlock incredible deals from your airport (or an airport not too far away). Here are ten of our favorite tricks.
1. Note new routes
When airlines add a new destination from your airport, they’ll often advertise these routes to determine whether it’s worth making it a permanent destination. During the promotional period, the flight cost may be discounted for a short amount of time, or the airline may offer things like wider availability (how many days per week or times per day the flight runs), nonstop routing, or unlimited changes if you book the new route.
It’s important to note that when airlines run these promotions, the best deals drop right when the sale begins and they go lightning fast. The best—and quickest—places to learn about new routes at your airport are through your local news stations and airlines’ social media pages.
2. Book one ticket at a time
When you’re booking multiple tickets, airlines want to put your entire group in a single fare bucket. Fare buckets denote which cabin you’re in and any privileges included with your ticket, like whether it’s refundable or eligible to upgrade. The number of seats available per fare bucket isn’t a secret, but it takes some digging to find. All we’re typically shown when we search for flights is the lowest ticket price.
So when you’re searching for flights and the airline has fewer tickets available in the lowest fare bucket than the number of people in your reservation, they can bump your entire party up a fare bucket—raising the cost of each ticket.
By playing with the number of tickets in your reservation, you can get fewer tickets at a lower price in the cheaper fare bucket. Once the tickets available in that fare bucket have been exhausted, the rest of your tickets will need to be purchased in the pricier fare bucket, but you’ll have saved on the initial tickets.
Here’s an example of how it might look in practice. You have 4 people in your group. There are only 3 tickets left in the lowest fare bucket, so the airline only shows you tickets in the more expensive fare bucket. Instead of buying all 4 tickets at a higher price, buy 3 tickets in the lowest fare bucket, then buy the last ticket at a slightly higher price.
Does this work every time? No. But anytime you’re traveling with a group, it’s worth checking if fares are cheaper by buying tickets individually. That’s especially true if you’re traveling with a larger group; the more tickets you buy, the greater the chance there won’t be enough seats for you all in the cheapest available fare bucket.
If you’re able to successfully use this strategy, call the airline after you book and ask to have your itineraries linked. That way, if there are any changes to your flight, the whole group will be able to stay together.
3. Take advantage of schedule changes
Airline schedules sometimes change. And when they do, that presents an opportunity. Under federal law, if an airline cancels or significantly changes your flight itinerary, you’re eligible for a full cash refund. Airlines would rather just move you to a different flight, and that can be lucrative for you, the traveler.
Say you originally bought a 6am nonstop flight because it was the cheapest. If the airline decided to make that a one-stop flight, you could switch to a more convenient time—without having to pay more. If you had a connecting flight and the airline changed the time, you could see about switching to a nonstop. And if it’s a trip you no longer want to take, schedule changes let you get a full cash refund.
Read more about the hidden loophole that lets you get better flights without paying a fare difference.
4. Be flexible
Now that we’ve highlighted some juicy tricks, we’d be remiss not to point out some of our tried and true ways to get a decent deal on a flight. Staying flexible with where and when you can take a trip is one of the best ways to snag a good flight deal.
Rather than deciding where you want to go first, flip the approach and see what deals are available in your desired price range out of your airport; once you have a short list of places that fit your budget, choose the destination you’re most excited to visit.
Also, remember that peak seasons (summer and winter holidays) are the most expensive times to travel, so if you have the flexibility, try to travel during the shoulder seasons—or even the off season—for lower prices.
5. Mind the Goldilocks Window
Airfare is set by complex algorithms that account for hundreds of ever-shifting factors, from consumer demand to competitor’s prices and beyond. While airfare changed weekly at one point, it now changes daily, hourly, or even by the minute, making it impossible to know when you’ll get a good deal.
The good news: Cheap flights are popping up all the time. The time that you’re most likely to find a good deal is during what we like to call the Goldilocks Window.
For domestic flights, most deals pop up 1–3 months before your travel dates. For international trips, it’s 2–8 months prior. If your trip is during a peak travel period (Christmas, summer, St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin), add a couple months to those windows so it’s more like you’re booking in the winter for a summer holiday and vice versa.
If you’re traveling during low season it’s more likely cheap fares will pop up closer to departure, but prices tend to jump in the last month or two, so don’t cut it too close.
Also, pay attention to times when you know airfare is going to go up. That is usually 21, 14, and 7 days before a flight departs. Airlines know leisure travelers tend to book flights early and business travelers tend to book flights late. Airlines want to make sure they milk as much money as possible from business travelers (it’s their company paying, after all), so they increase fares on the types of tickets business travelers buy, including last-minute bookings.
If you’re hoping for cheap (not just cheap-er) flights, planning further in advance is the way to go. And if you have to book last minute, just make sure you're doing so before the 21-day mark.
6. Reposition yourself
Sometimes a great deal is hard to come by in your home city, so you might find an amazing deal from a nearby hub. Or perhaps your home city doesn’t have any deals for the dates you’re interested in, and you need to go elsewhere to snag the lowest price.
In these cases, we recommend repositioning yourself, which could be a drive, bus ride, train ride, or even flight to get you from your main city to another city to take a long-haul flight.
For example, if you live in upstate New York, it could make sense to reposition yourself to take advantage of flight deals from NYC’s JFK, LaGuardia, or even Newark. In a more dramatic scenario, you may snag a mistake fare—like the one we recently sent from Minneapolis to Dublin for $114 roundtrip—in which case, it’d probably be worth your time and money to take a flight from upstate New York to Minneapolis for less than a hundred bucks.
With repositioning flights, there is unfortunately a risk. As you have to book repositioning flights separately from your primary flight, airlines won’t see the two as connected, and they are not contractually obligated to rebook you for free if a delay on the first flight causes you to miss the second. Instead, you might have to buy a new flight all together.
The best way to mitigate this risk is to book a repositioning flight that arrives several hours—or even a day or two—before the long-haul flight departs. (It’s also a great way to add another city to your trip.)
Read more about why you’d want to take a repositioning flight, the risks involved, and how to book one.
7. Use the Greek Islands Trick
It’s called the Greek Islands Trick because it helps you get to the islands cheaply, but it works just about anywhere. The idea: Find the cheapest long-haul that gets you close to where you want to go, then use cheap regional flights (or a train, bus, car, or ferry) to close the gap.
In the case of the Greek Islands, this would mean that instead of booking one ticket that gets you from NYC to Santorini for $1,100, you look for the cheapest flight you can find to Athens (as low as $400 roundtrip) and then buy separate tickets on a European carrier to get you from Athens to the island (often less that $100 roundtrip, saving you a big chunk of change).
This is especially pertinent for small airports because truly good deals are fewer and further between. When one pops up, you have to be willing to snag it, then work out the rest of your itinerary to get you where you’d like to go if necessary.
8. Set up loyalty with an airline
If you fly out of a small airport, chances are that you have relatively few options when it comes to airlines, so you may find yourself flying the same airline repeatedly. In that case, it may make sense to sign up for an airline co-branded credit card so you can passively earn points or miles, as well as other perks that can bring down the cost of your flights.
For instance, if Southwest is big where you typically fly out of and flying domestically is a priority for you, you might consider this card.
Like with any credit card, if you use it on standard purchases, like internet and ridesharing, you’re essentially getting miles for free; plus, with a Southwest credit card, you can score a companion pass, which brings down the overall cost of your tickets if you’re traveling with another person.
Airline co-branded credit cards definitely aren’t for everyone, so you should examine your travel habits, most frequently used airlines, loyalty and points systems, and the airline perks that are most useful to you before deciding whether or not to open one.
Read more about the pros and cons of getting an airline co-branded credit card.
9. Consider budget airlines
There are a handful of low-cost and ultra-low-cost carriers that offer dirt-cheap base fares for flights. And while we don’t currently send out deals on these airlines (think Sun Country, Spirit, and Frontier), budget airlines can be the ticket to locking in the cheapest fares.
Budget airlines are able to achieve low-cost base fares because they skimp on traditional airline luxuries, such as carry-on allowance and seat selection (instead they’re offered at an extra cost). However, that doesn’t always mean that the onboard experience is low quality.
Flying with a budget airline won’t be for every traveler, but if your main airport is a small one, you’re price conscious, you aren’t traveling for long (and can therefore get by with less luggage), and in-flight services aren’t as important to you, a budget airline may make sense and save you a ton of money.
Read more about what to consider when choosing between a budget or legacy airline.
10. Book open-jaw fares
An open-jaw flight is a roundtrip itinerary that arrives in one city but departs from another (e.g. Boise to London, then Paris back to Boise). Open-jaw flights allow travelers to see two destinations in one trip without backtracking to the initial destination to catch their flight home, hence saving you money on an extra plane or train ticket in-destination.
A common misconception is that open-jaw fares are more expensive than roundtrip tickets. In most cases, they’re about the same price (though sometimes they can be a bit cheaper if you play with the routing and time of travel). But if you’re traveling internationally and plan to visit more than one city, booking an open-jaw ticket would no doubt be cheaper than booking two long-haul one-way flights.
Read more about how to book open-jaw flights to save you time and money.
Published August 6, 2024
Last updated August 28, 2024
