How do we choose our air travel? 

So far we’ve been on 25 different airlines for 35 flights.

Simply put, it’s a balancing act of a variety of factors. The travel costs, especially during the second half of our adventure, have been a significant determinant regarding our travel route and destinations.

So, how do we do it? In sum, we dig into a couple of different apps and favorite websites, balance our findings against our criteria, and go from there. 

We use two primary resources to identify routes of travel, flights, and airline costs; Google Flights and Skiplagged. 

We first dig into Google Flights with our general idea of travel. 

No surprise, Google Flights does an excellent job of providing multiple results – mass information. It’s great for when we’re looking to break down larger problem sets – e.g. Where is the cheapest place that we can fly to from Istanbul? It provides the information in a variety of useful options. I really like the Google Flights Calendar because it provides aggregate results in a weekly / monthly picture for us to analyze for any anomalies. It can identify if there are any specific days that are obviously cheaper to travel than other days, which is often the case. Some days for some locations are much more expensive, and cheaper, than other days. Google Flights helps us narrow down our search. 

Once armed with those results, we reference Skiplagged to look at specific flights, airlines, departure / arrival times, number of legs, etc.

We have also used Rome2Rio (also great for other modes of travel), Skyscanner and CheapOair during this trip, just not as frequently as the others. 

Our decision tree includes the following factors:

• Our flexibility regarding days/dates we’re considering – any special events or holidays
• Cost of tickets, to include meals and baggage
• Duration of flight
• Availability of nonstop flights
• Time of departure and arrival 
• Distance and travel mode from destination airport to next domicile
• Time of year of travel as it relates to the location and weather – late June night arrivals into Scandinavia will offer a different environment than night arrivals into Moscow during winter
• What airline is it – we all have our favorites
• Is there an opportunity to earn points?
• If there’s a layover, could it be a natural travel break? E.g. short visit to Kuala Lumpur when flying to Australia 

This approach may be cumbersome, too detailed, and slow for some. However, it works for us as we balance interests, costs, and needs for six people during our travels.