1mo ago

How do you search for flights based on a town you want to go to, not an airport

I am looking to visit a friend in a place where the major airport is like 3 hours away. But there are regional airports too. But the search engines I have tried either won't take just a town, or they seem to only choose the closest to the town, and the major airport. Skipping all the other regionals. Any good engine out there for considering all of the regional airports?

15 comments

Most search engines allow you to specify that other nearby airports are ok. For example, kayak has a toggle that can be enabled to include nearby airports.
But if all else fails, just take note of a few of the airports and search for them directly.

Look up the regional airport and see which airlines fly there. If it’s a smaller regional airline, you might need to contact them directly and purchase your ticket through them.

Google Flights can do that, see for example this search for flights from Mysłowice to Åre which found the small regional airports of Katowice and Östersund, click on "Change flight" in the flight details to see the original search query which only mentioned the places of departure and arrival, without any airports specified:
https://www.google.com/travel/flights/s/YqdhwS3UoZT9w3F17
- Sadly it wouldn't let me put in multiple. And when I put in the town, it only had the nearest small airport, then all the far away major ones. I know of one other minor airport for sure and it wasn't even on the list.
  
  Google Flights can do multiple stops too, see my example search here amended with an additional stop in Göttingen:
  https://www.google.com/travel/flights/s/bXcwvQvRZU8i8PX87
  As for why it doesn't find the particular airport you're looking for, that's impossible to guess without knowing which airport that is.

Every airport accepting commercial flights has an IATA code. You should be able to search using the code as a destination in every (partner) airline that services that airport.
https://www.iata.org/en/publications/directories/code-search

I still use matrix when I want to do complicated searches. Google bought it years ago and incorporated its feeds into google flights. Try the advanced options: https://matrix.itasoftware.com/search

Usually the small regional airports aren't indexed in large search tools like Kayak or Google or anything.
I recommend looking up directly what small airlines fly between those regional airports and seeing their flight schedules directly

Not an expert at any of this but: I'm betting most regional airports don't deal with passenger flights from the big airlines. Their runways are too short for large jets. They will be geared towards execs on the company jet or even people who fly as a pastime. You might be able to find someone to fly you from one airport to the other but it'll cost you.
- Well, regional maybe the wrong word. I don't know. But I do know a lot of very small airports often have a few commercial flights per day. Like my buddy live 5 minutes from a very small airport. It runs 1 commercial flight a day to a major airport hub that is a few states away. One near me has like 2 flights a day each to 2 nearby major airports. And I know New York has lots of smaller airports that I thought were referred to as regional airports that fly into the various airports in New York City.

I use Google Flights, but I haven't looked for specifically small regional airports. Good luck.

Major airlines don't generally do flights to regional airports (which I expect is because of runway size), those are mostly for private/chartered flights or smaller local airlines. This is an article on how to find those flights, by a website that purports to let you search for them.