Find cheap flights when you have a set destination, set dates, but flexible home airport

How do I find the best deal when I know where I want to go and when? Set Destination airport but departure airport is flexible.

In our last blog we discussed how to find the best deal when know dates we want to go and destination airport and departure airport are fixed. This blog we will discuss if we are a bit more flexible in our approach and include airports around your home city.

Again, Flexibility is KEY to getting the best deal!

Lets again open up Google Flights

Home Airport: The airport you are flying from
Destination: The airport you are flying to
Start/End Trip Dates: The dates you are flying to destination and LEAVING your destination. Please note that this is not arrive back home dates. Flights like red eye flights will be landing the next day.
Map: One of the most powerful tools

Desktop / Mobile

For our example we will still focus on finding flights to Sedona, AZ.

This time we assume we don’t mind driving to a nearby airport. From Huntsville we have 3 additional airports within a 2 hour drive: Birmingham, Nashville, and Chattanooga and two more within 3.5 hours adding Memphis and Atlanta. 3.5 hours is a decent drive and we typically will only take these flights if the savings are significant, but it is still worthwhile for us to add these airports. It is important to take into other factors when deciding your airport. For instance, you may have a family member or friend that can drop you off at your home airport, whereas you have to pay for parking when you fly from a nearby city. On the flip side, you may be flying as a family of 5 saving $100 per ticket meaning it is absolutely worth a short drive to a nearby city.

Finding Nearby Airports

This is easy, but worthwhile pointing out. Most people don’t look at ALL of the airports nearby. Its important to look through all of the nearby cities, even ones that may appear smaller.

For my example, people from Huntsville hardly ever look at Chattanooga as a viable airport even though they are often the cheapest!

For our example, I will search from Huntsville (HSV), Chattanooga (CHA), Nashville (BNA), and Birmingham (BHM) for a trip to Sedona for an event on May 8^th 2021

Again, we have the “Best Departing Flights” at the top and “Other Departing Flights” following. Under the flight time it will tell you the departing airport and arriving airport. Since we searched for multiple airports, we must look at these codes to tell us which airport we are flying from.

For our example. The American Airlines flight leaving at 7:38AM is departing from Nashville (BNA) and will cost $277.

It is worth noting that the “Other Departing Flights” typically have more expensive flights or less attractive flights like red eye flights or long layovers. It is important to check the details to see if this is worthwhile

For our example, “Other Departing Flights” actually has a cheaper flight for $253 from Nashville. This flight is unattractive due to an overnight 11 hour layover maying the total travel time over 16 hours.

From here we can again pull up the date grid to find the cheapest price.