Benjamin Din, Naldwarette
Airlines are preparing for a busy summer schedule, flying to new destinations and increasing the frequencies of popular cities. They are beginning to announce new autumn routes.
For airfare contract hunters, it means new opportunities to travel somewhere cheap. New flights are worth tracking, especially if the airline offers attractive deals to sell route announcements.
“This is truly an opportunity for airlines to create epic entrances for new routes and really raises excitement,” says Katy Nastro, spokesman for Going, a flight alert service.
Here’s how travelers can take advantage of new routes and the transactions surrounding them:
Find an introduction fare
The summer schedule has been released for a while, and some airlines believe it will already fall. Delta announced that it would begin flights from Atlanta to Marrakech, Morocco in October 2025 (last year it began flying from Newar Liberty International Airport in the New York Area Hub to Marrakech).
The Autumn Flight to Marrakech in the Delta is on sale for a roundtrip of $534. That’s well below the average price of a trip that previously included connections, according to Going.
Keep an eye out as new flights and destinations are announced. If you’re flexible about where you’re traveling this year, you might be able to get cash or point discounts as part of a new route promotion.
Budget carriers like Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines are also announcing route network updates. Earlier this month, Spirit announced it would add services to Chattanooga, Tennessee and Columbia, South Carolina.
However, introductory fares are not necessarily the best deal. Use the travel search tool to find what has been historically considered a cheap price for a particular route.
Consider the competition
Airlines may launch new routes that compete with current airlines. That happened last summer when the Delta began flying from Seattle, Taiwan to Taipei. Taiwan, Taiwan was already serving its services by Taiwanese aircraft carrier Eva Air. Within a few months, two other Taiwanese airlines (China Airlines and Starlux Airlines) also began flights from Taipei to Seattle.
According to aviation analysis company Cirium, if you say that in July 2023, there were 10,602 plane seats along that route. This July, that number is expected to quadruple the number to a whopping 43,222 seats.
When so many seats flood the market like that, airlines often respond by lowering prices to weaken competition. According to Google Flights, the price war has already begun this summer, with the Delta in early July priced round-trip flights at a low price of $740 over the past 60 days. Other airlines are looking for around $1,300 or more per person, almost double it.
Taipei also stands out in the sale of Delta awards. Last month, Points and Miles travelers can book round-trip economy tickets from Seattle and other West Coast cities with 40,000 Delta Sky Miles and taxes and fees.
Additionally, increasing competition could lead to lower prices for domestic flights.
For example, you’ll go on a flight between Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Alaska Airlines was the only flight to route non-stop until this month when Delta launched its own flight. Currently, two carriers are competing for passengers. See this route for potential fare drops.
Sometimes just wait
If you missed an introductory deal that came out a few months ago, you might still be lucky.
Additionally, new routes can lead to lower prices if carriers overestimate the demand for a particular destination. “Airlines are just very predictable,” says Nastro. Therefore, if the expected demand does not come true, “soft after the game” could lead to a good deal.
One of the airlines to see this year is united. This summer, Carrier is adding flights to far-reaching regions such as Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and Nuuk, Greenland.
United bets that tourists are tired of crowded tourist destinations, and rather wants to visit away from beaten tracks. How full these new flights will be determined how airfare pricing will look towards the end of the season for new routes and whether they will return next year.
How to take a new airline route
Sign up for emails from your favorite airline. Airlines usually send new flight route transactions to the mailing list. Usually, only the number of seats you choose is sold, so you can know first.
Use tools such as “Explore” on Google Flight. These results show you the cheapest flights anywhere in the world for the date you choose, and you may find destinations you didn’t even know you could reach from the airport in your home.
It helps you to actually provide a benchmark for quite some things using tools to track pricing history. Both Google Flights and Going offer such features. Set a price alert and book fares where you can rebook and earn flight credits if the price drops.
Benjamin Din writes for Nald Wallet. Email: bdin@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @benjamindin.
The airline is adding new routes. Here’s how it originally appeared in Nerdwallet:
Original issue: April 18, 2025, 2:39pm EDT
