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From time to time a few friends of mine and I are meeting in a European place. And time and time again, finding the best airfares is a problem. Basically, we're trying to assess a possible destination and one of the important questions is how can we all get there for a reasonable price in a reasonable amount of time.

Is there any website which can do a query multiple flights at once and get a summary for the cheapest non-stop flights? Ideally, I'd like to put in multiple options for the origins and the destination, just in case there are cheaper flights for alternative airports.

Example: Let's assume we'd like to visit Vienna (VIE) and given that Bratislava (BTS) is close, that'd be a possible destination too. Let's also assume people are visiting from Basel (BSL with ZRH close), Stuttgart (STR with FKB close), London (LHR, LTN, STN, LGW, LCY), Berlin (TXL and SFX), Munich (MUC) and Cologne (CGN & DUS).

So in total we'd want to search the following return flights:

  • BSL/ZRH -> VIE/BTS
  • STR/FKB -> VIE/BTS
  • LHR/LTN/STN/LGW/LCY -> VIE/BTS
  • TXL/SXF -> VIE/BTS
  • MUC -> VIE/BTS
  • CGN/DUS -> VIE/BTS

Right now I find Google Flight Search to be the quickest option because it's easily possible to alter the search and also enter multiple origins and destinations separated by comma (see example).

I just wanted to ask if anybody is aware to formulate all these queries together in one flight search engine and get a summary.

JonathanReez
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Johannes Weiss
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  • Probably not the answer you're looking for but...yes, by opening multiple Tabs in you preferred browser, you can enter the different O/Ds and compare the results. – DTRT Jan 17 '17 at 14:18
  • Just FWIW: I'm not sure if you realize, on simply expedia you can now click "nearby airports", which is very useful. – Fattie Jan 17 '17 at 15:36
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    This is the sort of question for which travel agents are useful. – Patricia Shanahan Jan 17 '17 at 15:46
  • Related: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/42887/flight-search-tool-for-multiple-travelers-from-different-cities-to-a-single-dest – JonathanReez Jan 18 '17 at 08:21
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    Are you deliberately restricting your travel options to flights only? Rail will be cheaper in many cases. For instance, the cheapest train fare from Munich to Vienna is €39, whereas the cheapest flights I can find for that route are well over €100. (Time is 4hrs rail vs. 1hr flight, but for the flight you have to add time to reach airport, clear security, board, disembark, etc.) – Pont Jan 18 '17 at 11:35
  • very good point. In the Vienna example, from Munich it's probably best to go by train/coach/car but I didn't want to make it even more complicated and also include queries of other modes of transport. Generally, I find train travel much more predictable so I think it's easier to estimate how much it will be. And trains run much more often than aeroplanes. So I'd be willing to these searches manually. – Johannes Weiss Jan 18 '17 at 11:42
  • Train tickets vary in price too depending when you buy them. But to semi-answer this question: you need to write a bot scraping search engines. –  Jan 18 '17 at 13:34
  • Related: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/13845/how-do-i-minimize-total-cost-of-separate-flights-to-the-same-destination-plus-op and https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/16868/is-there-a-website-to-minimize-overall-agony-for-n-travelers-at-once?noredirect=1&lq=1 – JonathanReez Jan 21 '17 at 17:59

1 Answers1

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No such search engine exists as the query would be far too complex. Your best answer is therefore to contact a travel agent, who would then offer you some options based on their experience.

JonathanReez
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