Least Expensive Airfare to Four Continents

Least expensive air travel from Omaha to four continents - Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.

Outline

Ground rules
Method
Influence of travel dates
Least expensive round-trip to Europe
Least expensive round-trip to Asia
Least expensive round-trip to South America
Least expensive round-trip to Africa
Sum total of all three airfares

Ground rules

This is somewhat of a competition. I give extra points for the person with the least total airfare to all of these continents. All airfares must be roundtrip from Omaha, and must for be a three-week period from now until Sept. 1. It can be two different airlines, in which case you would present two different graphic files. The timing must be such that you can make the connection. Provide at least 3 hours. If the connection has you spending the night at the airport, you must include the cost of a hotel.

Generally, the least expensive fares to these destinations are from coastal cities in the US, like LA and New York. In order to get the lowest fare, you need to find the least expensive coastal city and the least expensive flight from Omaha to that city. Sites like Kayak and Expedia won't do this automatically. There may be some ground transportation involved in transferring to a nearby airport. Include the ground transportation cost and associated graphics. Bigger cities have multiple airports so don't get confused. New York, for example, has five airports: JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, White Plains, and Newburgh. Only three offer international flights. The cheapest flights are often from the smaller airports that charge a lesser fee for landing.

You don't need to check luggage but you do need to include a carry-on bag.

Prices vary widely during this period. They also vary by day of the week. You must present screenshots of the airfare with sufficient detail to verify the dates, connections, and price - including taxes. Use only commercial airlines - you can't use military aircraft or family connections with commercial companies. The flight leaves from Omaha â€“ you can't drive to another city.

Method

I used a variety of different websites to research the cheapest flights to all 4 countries including but not limited to, kayak.com, expedia.com, kiwi.com, and cheapoair.com. I started by breaking it down into whether it was cheapest to fly round trip from Omaha to the countries or if it was more cost effective to fly to a coastal city first. I was able to use filters to determine the cheapest days to fly.

For Europe and South America, it was cheapest to fly round trip directly out of Omaha.

For the other 2 countries, Africa and Asia, it was cheapest to first fly from Omaha to a coastal city and then make a round trip to the country and book a return flight from the coastal city back to Omaha.

Once I made that determination I found out which coastal city was cheapest to fly out of by searching for both LAX and JFK flights.

Influence of travel dates and cities

For this part I used websites with low fare calendars to determine the cheapest dates to travel. If it was the most cost effective to travel to a coastal city first, I then used those dates to correspond the cheapest one way flight to the coastal city from Omaha and then back.