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Tips for booking airline trips
Brian Kelly, Found of The Points Guy, shares important tips for anyone looking to fly.
null - Amid ongoing inflation, the search for cheaper airline flights has become commonplace among many Americans.
Going – a company which seeks out the best airfare deals for consumers – set out to find out which airlines offered the most flight deals in each state over the past year.
To reach its conclusion, the company tallied up the number of deals sent from each airport they serve in each state and counted the number of deals that were bookable on each airline between July 2023 and July 2024.
Here’s what the company found.
Flight deals found on Big 3 airlines
The company revealed that the airlines that most frequently had great deals for each state were either from American, Delta or United.
FILE: Airplane flying overhead. (Credit: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
"Those Big 3 airlines dominate when it comes to best deals," Going wrote in its study.
Of all the deals Going sent to its clients over the past year, 34% were bookable on one of the Big 3 airlines.
Despite not being U.S.-based, Air Canada had the fourth-highest number of cheap flights for US travelers, followed by U.S.-based JetBlue, Alaska Airlines and budget airline Breeze.
An airport hub may not actually offer the most deals for their city
Atlanta is Delta’s biggest hub; the airline’s flights account for nearly three-quarters of the daily departures.
A consumer might think that with so many flights, Delta would have the most deals.
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But Going actually found more deals bookable on American at Atlanta’s airport.
"When one airline has a monopoly on an airport’s flights, a good rule of thumb is that the greatest number of deals are typically offered by competitor airlines," the company said.
Don’t ignore international, smaller U.S. airlines
Despite 34% of deals coming from a Big 3 airline, 66% came from smaller U.S. airlines such as JetBlue, Alaska, Breeze and Avelo, or international carriers like British Airways, Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, TAP Air Portugal and Icelandair.
For several years in a row, Going found that most deals on airlines were part of Star Alliance (which includes United and Air Canada). In fact, 28% of all the deals they found in the past 12 months had been on a Star Alliance carrier.
Number of flight deals in each state
The study found that Florida had the highest number of deals with 7,189 across 15 airports. This was followed by California (5,772), New York (5,218) and Texas (3,778).
The bottom line
Going suggests casting a wide net when looking for cheap flights.
"One of the worst things you can do when shopping around is to only search for flights on one airline," they continued.
They reiterated that the airline that dominates a flyer's region or the airline that’s the typical go-to may not offer the best deals for a particular trip, and that could mean missing an incredible deal.
For the best chance of snagging a great deal, the company suggests search sites like Google Flights to search multiple airlines or their own website Going.
This story was reported from Los Angeles.