Guides & tips
A cheap fare is only useful if the trip around it works. These are short pieces on timing, routing, packing and what a place is actually like in the month the deal lands you there.
Practical
Shoulder-season fares often mean a warm coast and a cold pass in the same week. Packing for both without checking a bag.
Destination
November to February: the same city, a third of the queues, and some of the lowest fares of the year.
Planning
How to judge a price against its own history instead of against the first number you happened to see.
Practical
A long stop is not automatically a bad one. Which airports reward a day, and which you should route around.
Planning
Two weeks either side of peak is where the fare, the weather and the crowd levels stop fighting each other.
Destination
Where to snorkel without standing on anything that took two hundred years to grow, and which operators are worth the extra.
Practical
The train or bus is usually faster and always cheaper. Twelve airports where it genuinely matters, with the platform you want.
Practical
Most alpine packing lists are written by people selling equipment. This one is shorter.
Destination
Half the towns close and the other half get better. How to tell which is which before you commit to a week.
Straight to your inbox
Pick your airports and we'll write when a fare turns up that makes one of these trips worth booking.
