Márk's Travel Blog

Flight Hack #1: Construct your own route

When I was trying to find the cheapest way to fly to Tbilisi from London, I noticed that the budget options all have 1 stop, and direct flights are much more expensive. This is not surprising, but what I also noticed is that nearly all of these options have one stop at Istanbul Airport (IST) which is the most well-connected airport between London and Tbilisi.

So I searched flights from London to Istanbul, then on the same day from Istanbul to Tbilisi. When I compared the total price of these two flights, it was a full £60 less than the cheapest option I could find when searching from London to Tbilisi. The connection time was also a comfortable 2-3 hours.

The reason behind it is these were two separate tickets, that you cannot book at once, so booking sites won’t offer you these as an option. These options can offer significant savings as the airline offering the cheapest route between City A and City B is often different (and non-partner) than the airline offering the cheapest option between City B and City C.

It is important to note however, that there are some downsides to this trick as well. When you book two tickets separately, the second airline assumes you are only flying from the airport you have the ticket with them, so they will not wait for you in case your first flight is delayed. Another potential downside is if you have checked baggage, you might need to clear immigration and customs, check in the bags again and go back to the departure gate (although most major airports have transfer desks where they can arrange this for you, so you can proceed to your gate as if your two flights were under one booking)

Overall, this hack can work well if the connection time between the two flights is adequate, and you don’t have checked baggage, or you arranged baggage transfer options beforehand.