ChatGPT can help you find cheap flights, you just need to know this

I then asked it which airlines fly to Bali from Australia, which days are the cheapest to fly, did a flight search on those tips with Google Flights and Skyscanner — and found return flights to Bali for $460.

Best prompts to use ChatGPT for cheap flights

The AI community on Reddit has a lot of suggestions of prompts that people have honed.

“One thing I like to ask is for the cheapest flight from [my local international airport] to [continent] in [2 month range next year].” says one Reddit user.

This sounds like a good idea for anyone keen to get to Europe summer, but who doesn’t have time to test every airport in a flight search (side note: there’s also this super handy Google Flights map trick for finding cheap flights to a particular continent).

So I tried that prompt asking for the cheapest return flight from Sydney to Europe in June this year.

It came back saying “Rome: return fares are available from $1,075 when departing between June 4 and June 20. Rome is among the most budget-friendly European destinations from Sydney this year.”

I went to Skyscanner, plugged in Rome and those dates and sure enough, there was a return flight to Rome for $1072.

Winner.

Is Google Gemini better for a search like this?

A colleague said Google Gemini would be better at a search like the one above, so I fired it up and asked “can you help me find the cheapest flights to Europe from Sydney in June this year?”

An icon showed it was tapping directly into Google Flights, and came back with the below result (which was the same airline that the ChatGPT inspired Skyscanner search returned above, but this time flying into London). Interestingly, it was slightly more expensive than the solution ChatGPT led me to.

Here are some other tried-and-tested prompts that can work well for Australian travellers:

• “What are the cheapest international destinations to fly to from Melbourne in July?”
• “Which airlines fly from Brisbane to Bali, and when are the cheapest months?”
• “Create a 10-day itinerary for Vietnam that includes the cheapest entry and exit points.”
• “What are the budget airlines flying out of Australia to Europe?”
• “Suggest stopover cities between Perth and London that can reduce overall airfare costs.”

You can also get clever with timing. For example, asking: “When is the cheapest time to fly to New Zealand from Sydney that avoids school holidays?”— can help you bypass price spikes around peak periods.

ChatGPT hacks for multi-city trips

If you’re planning a round-the-world trip, ChatGPT can help you string together multi-city legs in a way that saves money. For instance, flying from Sydney to Bangkok, then on to Athens, before returning via Singapore, might be cheaper than a Sydney–London return.

Prompt idea:“Plan a budget-friendly multi-city trip from Australia to Europe and Asia over 4 weeks.”

You can even ask ChatGPT to suggest cities where budget airlines operate hubs — such as Kuala Lumpur (AirAsia) or Doha (Qatar Airways) — and build your itinerary around them.

In conclusion

Google Flights still returned the best results when you have a time and destination in mind.

But what AI was very good at was helping narrow things down (eg the ‘I want to go somewhere warm in August’ example), or in suggestion multi-city trips / routes that you may not have considered). Kind of like a travel agent might.

But the truth is, AI is constantly improving, and by the time you read this article, it may have functionality where it can tap into real time flight prices …

Which is when it really will become our new best friend.