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The longer the flight, the more important a major hub is for cheap flights

BangkokPeople who live in the largest cities have a lot of advantages and they usually pay a lot for those perks. In the case of very long flights, it can be a big savings to live in a huge city, and those who don’t can help themselves by employing the strategy set out below.

The situation: Overseas flights are only cheap from the largest hubs

As friends of mine are planning a trip to Southeast Asia for this coming autumn, they were looking around at airfares from the US to Bangkok. You might assume that the cheapest flights are from Los Angeles, and you’d be right, but you might also assume that flights from the east coast would all be expensive because they all need to fly into a west-coast hub anyway.

In that case you’d be wrong. Flights from New York City to Bangkok are almost as cheap as those from Los Angeles. Specifically, the cheapest round-trip fare from Los Angeles to Bangkok right now is $910 and from New York to Bangkok it’s $950. However, from Boston to Bangkok it’s $1300, and prices are at least that high for Atlanta and Miami as well.

What causes this?

In this case, the lower fares from New York City are available because Cathay Pacific flies directly from JFK to their main hub in Hong Kong, but they don’t fly from any other cities in the eastern United States. It’s also a complicated codeshare situation, so it’s likely that you’ll never even be offered a flight to NYC on your way to save you money.

So let’s say you live in Boston and want to go to Bangkok. If you just put that into a search site you’ll find that your cheapest option is $1300 and you’ll change planes in Los Angeles. It won’t suggest you take a short flight to NYC to get the $950 fare because that would mean 3 total flights on 3 different airlines.

Your strategy

If you are flying more than, say, 7 hours from your home, you should first research prices of the flights starting in your own city, but don’t forget to check fares from the nearest huge city as well. This could be New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, or even Chicago.

You’ll often find that those flights are much cheaper than what you are offered out of your own airport. In many cases you can get a cheap ticket on a budget airline that will save you a lot of money compared to buying it all at once.

So starting from Portland, Oregon and going to Madrid, it’s worth checking the prices from Los Angeles to Madrid and then a flight from Portland to Los Angeles. It doesn’t always save you money, and you have to worry about the connection yourself when you book tickets separately, but often it can save you enough to make it worthwhile.

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