Watching for new routes is fun – It's exciting when your home airport announces a new place you can get to without a connection. But watching closely for new routes is also the single best strategy in travel for finding cheap flights and points and miles award availability.
It's not just fun, it's smart.
Year in and year out, airlines are tinkering with their route networks, launching new nonstop routes – and even brand-new destinations – a few times each year in hopes of luring in new customers as they expand. Our advice? Follow the news and search for cheap cash (or award fares to use your points and miles) in the wake of these announcements … because they regularly lead to huge savings.
The formula is simple: U.S. and foreign carriers launch new flights to destinations all around the world. Then, not long after that, we find incredible deals on those upcoming new routes for our Thrifty Traveler Premium members. It's like clockwork, and it's the closest thing we have to a sure thing in the world of flight deals.
Best of all: This time of year (fall) is the very best time of year to take advantage of new routes. Airlines are currently tinkering with their winter schedules by adding destinations down south and are looking ahead to the summer travel season, adding new nonstop routes to Europe and beyond, too. September, October, and November are the best times of year to take advantage of new routes, which is why we call this time of year Booking Season.
Just last week, we had a perfect example of this. First, we learned Cathay Pacific was launching a new route from Dallas (DFW) to Hong Kong (HKG). It set off alarm bells at Thrifty Traveler HQ, and we covered the news right away for our readers.
As our reporters were jumping on the news, our team of flight deal analysts were scouring for cheap flights and points and miles award availability on this route. And we found it!
There it was: Wide-open business class availability for 70,000 points each way from Dallas to Southeast Asia – an incredible deal. It triggered what we call a “Unicorn Alert” – flight deals that are so rare and time sensitive that the email alert is accompanied by a text message alert for our subscribers, too.
There were multiple ways to book these flights, too, whether you had American or Alaska miles or flexible credit card points you could transfer to Finnair or British Airways or even Cathay Pacific itself.
Seeing Cathay Pacific award space available via partner airlines like American or Alaska is exceedingly rare, but when new routes are announced, hundreds of empty seats are immediately loaded into the system all at once!
That's just one example of why we love new routes and why one of the best ways to save big on airfare is to watch out for them.
Why You Want to Watch for New Routes
You should watch for new routes on your own by following your local or nearby airports on social media, following your favorite airlines, and keeping up with the news the best you can.
But really, you don't actually have to do anything. We always watch for this type of news and will always bring you the latest right here. And if we find big savings on airfare or award redemptions, our Thrifty Traveler Premium members will get the deal right away, too.
But it's good to understand why a new route deserves your attention.
The number one reason is simple: New routes mean empty planes, and the airlines need to start filling those seats right away.
Some airlines will offer those fares at a steep discount right from the get-go, hoping to create a buzz in order to get people onboard, but sometimes, it takes a few days for the lowest fares to kick in. Here's a perfect example: After announcing a partnership with Southwest Airlines in the U.S., Icelandair announced new nonstop service to Southwest hub Nashville (BNA). At the outset, the fares were loaded into the system at $1,000 or more roundtrip, but about 48 hours later, the bottom fell out.
Boom! Just like that, perhaps the lowest Iceland fares we've ever seen from Tennessee. During our near-hourly searches, we found these fares, lassoed them into an email alert, and sent them to our subscribers in minutes.
Half-price Iceland flights were a perfect product of the new-route-to-flight-deal pipeline. But when it comes to new routes, award availability – flights you can actually book with points and miles – appears much faster, if not immediately.
Like this, for example: Over the weekend, Delta announced a new nonstop flight from Salt Lake City (SLC) to Seoul, South Korea (ICN).
And the second those flights were put on sale, award availability sprung up to book them through Delta partners Air France/KLM and Virgin Atlantic, all of which offered way better pricing than Delta itself.
Delta loaded hundreds of empty airplanes into its system all at once, which meant those empty seats were suddenly made available to its partners to book for a third of the price. New routes, my friends: This is what they offer.
Book Business Class with Points on New Routes
Want to fly business class using your points and miles? New routes might be your single best bet to make it a reality.
Booking premium cabins using your points and miles can be a chore, as award availability can be tough to find to actually put those points to use. But we've seen an undeniable trend: When airlines add a new route, they often open up those top-dollar seats to be booked with miles, too – including by airline partners.
When Delta announced new nonstop service to Taipei (TPE) from its Seattle (SEA) hub, we started watching it closely for this exact reason. And boy are we glad we did!
These SkyMiles fares to fly Delta One Suites business class on the A330-900neo are some of the lowest SkyMiles business class fares we've ever seen, especially for peak summer travel to Asia.
When Delta announced new nonstop service to Brisbane, Australia (BNE) earlier this year…well…I'll let you guess what happened next…
In an attempt to fill hundreds of Delta One Suites on the A350, Delta slashed SkyMiles rates for Brisbane hopefuls.
If you went to book those fares today, they're going to stretch to 350,000 SkyMiles or more in most cases. But within a few days of the route announcement, you can make a dream trip out of these flights for much more affordable rates.
Delta does this all the time, but by no means do they have a monopoly on business class award availability following new route announcements. The best airline in the world does it too!
Qatar Airways QSuites Business Class is one of the top business class experiences out there, so booking it with points and miles anything inside of nine or 10 months is nearly impossible. Unless, that is, the airline adds a new route and puts hundreds of flights on the calendar with empty seats all at once like Qatar did when it announced Toronto (YYZ) earlier this week.
These seats were bookable for just 70,000 to 95,000 British Airways Avios or Qatar Avios, which you could get by transferring points from any of the major banks – Amex, Bilt, Capital One, Chase, Citi, or Wells Fargo. And the best part about Qsuites is Qatar flies them all over the world.
By now you understand the formula. It's so simple, yet so many of your fellow travelers aren't taking advantage. It's happened more times than we can count this year. It happened with Air Canada launched nonstop service from Montreal (YUL) to Stockholm, Sweden (ARN)…
And it happened when Aer Lingus announced nonstop service from Dublin (DUB) to Las Vegas (LAS), too…
If you want or need a lie-flat seat somewhere, there's no better way than to follow the new route announcement, even if if means booking a positioning flight to take advantage of it.
Award availability for business class seats like this doesn't come around unless the planes are empty on brand-new routes. It's a surefire way to book the trip of your dreams in a lie-flat seat.
Flying Economy for Cheap, Too!
The fancy seats in the front get all the glory when new routes are announced, but there are hundreds more economy seats on every plane, too, and those seats need filling…for cheap. That's where we come in.
Remember that new Delta route to Brisbane, Australia (BNE) that led to Delta One SkyMiles availability from the section above? Well economy flyers got access to a sizzling deal down under, too.
Most of the same airports that saw business class availability also saw these bargain fares down under, too. From just 66,000 SkyMiles roundtrip, you could make your Australia trip happen on the cheap.
When American Airlines launched their own new Brisbane route from Dallas, huge savings also followed.
The Dallas-based airline was trying to pry away some Delta customers with these tantalizingly low fares to Australia on their new route with quick connections in Dallas.
Often, it's simpler than that. The new nonstop route needs butts in seats…and you could be that butt! When Fiji Airways launched nonstop service from Dallas to Fiji (NAN), it happened there.
And when United launched brand new service to Marrakesh, Morocco (RAK), it happened there, too.
Plus, these long-haul routes aren't the only times you can get huge savings on new routes. I'll use my home airport of Minneapolis (MSP) as an example. Earlier this year, Delta launched a few new nonstop routes to the Caribbean from Minneapolis, including Tulum, Mexico (TQO) and Aruba (AUA). In both cases, sweet points and miles flight deals could be found the minute those fares went on sale.
For Tulum, your SkyMiles could get you down to the Yucatan from just 25,000 roundtrip! For the Aruba flight, you were much better off booking with Delta's partners in Virgin Atlantic and Air France/KLM Flying Blue.
In both cases, those same flights might cost you $600 or more in cash or twice as much in Delta SkyMiles. But when the routes were new, the savings were massive.
Bottom Line
That old saying goes “Newer is better,” and it can easily apply when you're looking for a great deal on a new flight.
As airlines try to drum up interest and fill seats on their newest routes, we regularly see deeply discounted fares (or amazing points deals) to some of your favorite – or soon-to-be favorite – destinations. So stay up to date on the latest new routes here at ThriftyTraveler.com and subscribe to Thrifty Traveler Premium so you don't miss out on the next great surprising deal.
