Which Airport Should You Search? Why the Nearest Airport Is Not Always the Best

You Know Where You Want to Go. But Which Airport Should You Search?

Imagine you want to travel from Maastricht in the Netherlands to Győr in Hungary.

You know where you are starting.

You know where you want to go.

But which airports should you search?

You might simply choose the closest airport.

Or use the airport a flight-search website suggests first.

And you may find a flight.

But that does not mean you found the best journey available from where you actually are to where you actually want to go.

A nearby airport might require two or three flight connections.

Another airport, slightly farther away, might have a direct flight.

One airport may have an expensive fare, while another realistic airport from the same area may have a much cheaper one.

So finding a nearby airport is not really the difficult part.

Finding which nearby airport gives you the better journey is the real problem.

The airport is not the destination

If you want to travel to Győr, your destination is Győr.

It is not automatically Budapest Airport.

It is not automatically Vienna Airport.

And it is not automatically Bratislava Airport.

Those airports are simply different ways you might be able to reach Győr.

The same is true at the beginning of the journey.

If you are in Maastricht, Eindhoven may be useful.

Brussels may be useful.

Düsseldorf may be useful.

Amsterdam may be useful.

But whether an airport is useful depends on much more than its distance from Maastricht.

It also depends on where you are trying to go and what flight connections actually exist.

That is why ALLFLYGHTS does not simply ask:

Which airport is closest to this place?

It asks:

Which airports and flight combinations can give this traveller a useful journey between these two places?

Start with the places

With ALLFLYGHTS, you can search:

Maastricht → Győr

You do not need to decide the airports first.

ALLFLYGHTS keeps Maastricht and Győr as the real origin and destination and then looks for airport and flight combinations that can make the journey work.

That may mean Eindhoven or Brussels on one side.

It may mean Budapest, Vienna or Bratislava on the other.

Some airports are closer.

Some have better connections.

Some may require fewer stops.

Some may offer better prices when live fares are available.

The point is not to automatically choose the airport nearest to the place.

The point is to find useful flight journeys between the places.

See the Maastricht → Győr example

Why not just search all the airports yourself?

You can.

You could manually search:

Maastricht → Budapest
Maastricht → Vienna
Maastricht → Bratislava

Then perhaps repeat those searches from Eindhoven, Brussels, Düsseldorf and Amsterdam.

Eventually, you may discover a very good combination.

But now the traveller is doing part of the search engine's job.

And the problem becomes much bigger when neither end of the journey has an obvious major airport.

What happens when neither place has an obvious airport?

Now imagine travelling from Kemerovo in Russia to Olupona in Nigeria.

Most travellers will not immediately know which airport combination they should search.

They could start researching airports around Kemerovo.

Then research airports that might serve Olupona.

Then check different combinations between them.

But why should they have to solve the aviation geography before they can search for a flight?

With ALLFLYGHTS, the search can still begin with:

Kemerovo → Olupona

The system then looks for airports and flight connections that can make that journey possible.

This becomes especially useful for:

• small towns;
• remote destinations;
• regional airports;
• places with several realistic airports nearby;
• journeys where the closest airport has poor flight connections;
• and journeys where a slightly farther airport creates a much simpler route.

See the Kemerovo → Olupona example

The closest airport is not always the most useful one

This is the most important point.

Imagine two airports near your destination.

Airport A

• 50 km from your destination
• requires two flight stops

Airport B

• 90 km from your destination
• has a direct flight

Which airport is better?

There is no answer based on distance alone.

The traveller may prefer the extra 40 km on the ground to avoid changing aircraft twice.

In another case, the closer airport may have the better price.

In another, the farther airport may save several hours.

This is why ALLFLYGHTS considers the journey, rather than treating the nearest airport as the answer.

Distance still matters. We show it to the traveller.

But distance is only one part of deciding whether an airport is useful.

Sometimes the obvious airport is perfectly fine

ALLFLYGHTS is not trying to find a surprising airport just for the sake of being different.

Sometimes the nearest or most familiar airport really is the best option.

That is fine.

The important thing is that you do not have to assume it is the best option before the search has even started.

The search should be able to check the possibilities for you.

A simple idea

Most people know the place they are leaving from.

And they know the place they want to reach.

They should not also need to know every airport worth checking before they can begin searching for flights.

That is the idea behind ALLFLYGHTS:

The place is where your journey starts or ends.

The airport is one part of how you get there.

Tell ALLFLYGHTS where you are starting from and where you want to go.

We will work out the airport and journey possibilities.

Try your journey on ALLFLYGHTS