Cheap Flights & Airfares to Turkey

Hah! I have to laugh when I think that the airline industry is very much like Istanbul‘s Grand Bazaar: How much does it cost to fly to Turkey?

Well, how much are you willing to pay?

Honestly, there may be several dozen different faresfor the same flight. Unfortunately, no one agency or website always gives the lowest fare. You’ve got toshop around.

The suggestions below are for flights to Turkey. For domestic flights within Turkey, you can save a huge amount of money by making your own reservations online, or through one of my recommended Turkish travel agencies. More…

Generally speaking, airfares to Turkey are lowest in December and January and highest in June and July; May, August and September are a bit lower, March and November lower still.

BOOKMARK THIS PAGE so you can come back and use the links for later shopping. In fact, the websites listed below are good to check for any airfare, whether to Turkey or elsewhere.

Airfare Search Engines

An airfare meta-search engine is a search engine (like Google) that searches other search engines. The links below will take you to airfare meta-search engines roughly in my order of preference. Look for fares on a few of them before buying.

(Note: most of these search engines will search one another, so you needn’t go to them all, but do try more than one.)

Google Flight Search

When it comes to search, Google is the Big Dog. Google Flight Search is FAST! Look here first. More…

ITA Software Airfare Matrix

If Google Flight Search doesn’t give you what you want, you can try this Google-owned company, which searches the Internet for the lowest fares, then exhibits them in a date matrix making it easy to see which days have the lowest fares. You can’t buy tickets from ITA, but you can see who has the lowest fares, and take the flight and fare information to a travel agent or airline website. More…

Momondo.com

Momondo.com is perhaps the top airfare search engine these days, with a wide reach (includes some railroads) and easy-to-use interface. More…


You can’t pig out* on Turkish Airlines. Here’s why not.*

Skyscanner

Easy to use. More…

Mobissimo

Also simple, fast and clear. More…

Vayama

Very good, though you must put up with many ads and some pop-ups. More…

Kayak

Results are presented in a clear, useful format, with all taxes and fees included, but fares are now often more expensive on Kayak than on other airfare meta-search engines. More…

BookingBuddy.com

Searches many of the major travel-booking sites in an elaborate way. Good results, but sorta complicated and not the easiest to use. More…

Consolidators

AIRFARE.com

A leading seller of “consolidator” (ie, discounted) airfares on major airlines (“14 million unpublished fares!”), they also sell regular published fares. Good, easy-to-use website. More…

From Europe

Besides the Turkish airlines of AtlasJet, Pegasus Airlines, Onur Air, and Sun Express, several smaller low-cost European airlines operate cheap flights to Turkey.

WeGoLo.com is a meta-search engine that finds airfares on lower-priced airlines. More…

Many lower-priced flights go to Istanbul‘s Sabiha Gökçen Airport (SAW) on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, not to Istanbul‘s main Atatürk International Airport, 23 km west of the city center on the European side of the Bosphorus.

Sabiha Gökçen Airport is much farther from the center of historic Istanbul, and not as convenient for ground transport as Atatürk Airport, but the airfares are certainly lower. Here’s how to travel to and from Sabiha Gökçen Airport. (By the way, Efendi Travel in Istanbul operates a great value-for-money private transfer service from both airports [Atatürk and Sabiha Gökçen] that’s far superior to a taxi, and not much more expensive. More…)