How We Find Cheap Flights

🎯 Key Takeaways

Finding a cheap flight is mostly a matter of timing and comparison. The hard part is doing that comparison at scale — across 1,800+ routes, every single day. That is exactly what FairFares automates.

⚙️ The pipeline

Every day, our data pipeline fetches live prices for 1,800+ route-and-date combinations from 36 departure airports across Europe.

For each result it calculates a 30-day rolling median price for that exact route. If today's fare is significantly below that median — typically 30 % or more — the deal is flagged.

Key design decisions:

• Routes are prioritised by popularity — London, Amsterdam, Paris, and other high-volume hubs are checked most frequently
• Same-class comparison — prices are compared at the same cabin class and a comparable number of stops, so a cheap connecting flight is never shown as a like-for-like replacement for a direct one
• No human curation — the pipeline runs without human intervention. No one manually selects which deals appear

The 30-day rolling median is the key: it tells us whether a fare is genuinely cheap for that specific route — not just cheap in absolute terms.

📊 How deals are scored

Not all cheap flights are equally good. A score is calculated for each deal using three inputs:

1. Percentage discount vs the 30-day median for that route
2. Absolute saving in euros or pounds — because 60% off a €30 fare matters less than 35% off a €500 fare
3. Historical rarity — how often has this route ever been this cheap? Rare lows rank higher

The combined score determines the order deals appear on the homepage. The most exceptional fares always appear first. Browse today's ranked deals →

🚫 What we do not do