Wanderlust is a funny thing. When it strikes, the urge to go is powerful, but it may not send you in a particular direction. It can turn the simple question—where?—into an agonizing choice. But, like most things in life, there's a website for that: Concorde.io is an airfare aggregator, new in February, that lists flight deals that you can book right now, pulled from around the internet. At first glance, it's a wholesale list of amazing flights—$131 round-trippers in the U.S. on United, or flights to Cape Town, South Africa for $700. You don't even need to know your dates. Travelers with tons of flexibility or chronic indecision, rejoice.
Here's how it works: Head to the site's "Deals" tab, and start browsing. From there, you can narrow your options by choosing a departure month. October? Sure, why not. Users can also set up an account and sign in to the "Discover" section (new this month) to customize their profile, which will let them choose departure dates and airports, and sort options by cost-per-mile.
There's no charge to search or book through Concorde, but the site does receive commissions from bookings—"typically $5-$10 depending on if the flights are domestic or international," John Marbach, Concorde's founder, tells Condé Nast Traveler. Concorde has posted deals from Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., but primarily publishes for New York and San Francisco. (Marbach says he plans to publish more deals in other metro areas based on demand.)
For more insight into Concorde, we asked Marbach a few questions:
Who is Concorde made for?
I built this tool for people who are impulse flyers with flexible schedules. As one user recently put it, I am building a tool for the person who "...[wants to] know if I could suddenly get to Poland for $350." Typically this type of person is a young professional with some disposable income, or a college student, and wants to explore the world without breaking the bank before they even arrive at their destination.
There are so many other flight deal sites—it's a crowded space. How does Concorde stand out?
There is a lot of competition, for sure, but there are also a lot of flyers who seek this type of information. Concorde is primarily focused on building tools for its users to discover deals themselves. While we publish compelling deals for the benefit of our users, we are focused on empowering users to be able to easily discover cheap flights from their own home airport, wherever that may be.
Much of my adventure in building a flight-deals website and discovery tools began in college, when I frequently sought out cheap places to fly with friends over school breaks. As a junior, I booked a flight with my sisters to Las Vegas for $100 round-trip, and then during my senior year I booked a flight from JFK to Abu Dhabi for $270 round-trip. I would tell my friends about websites such as TheFlightDeal, and they would come back to me weeks later saying that they visited the site every day, to my surprise. This had me thinking that there must be a way to automate the repetitive task of searching for flights, along with building a user interface that is actually designed to display this information.
Have you noticed any deals that tend to be ever-present this season, or destinations that seem to be trending in awesome airfare deals?
Fall is historically the cheapest time to fly. For example, flights to many major European cities from the Northeast U.S. can be as low as $400–$500 round-trip. Plus, who could complain about fall in Paris? Deals to China and other parts of East Asia are typically inexpensive during this time of year. And, despite the ultra long-haul distance, deals to Dubai and Abu Dhabi for about $600 round-trip are common.
Domestically, this is one of the cheapest times of year to fly between New York and SFO/LAX/SEA ($200–$300 round-trip), along with New York to Florida ($100–$200), or certain popular routes that are busy during the summer, such as New York to Nantucket ($130 round-trip).