Going Grade
These fare wars have resulted in some of the very best deals we’ve ever seen. And not just because we think they’re killer deals—but because the numbers tell us they are. We’re not in the business of gatekeeping, so we’ve released a system to let you, our members, know that it’s a deal worth snagging. Allow us to nerd out for a second.
Going deals tend to be 40–90% cheaper than the normal flight price. (Average Going-curated deal in 2024: 45% off.) While this percent off of a normal price is useful information, airfare is much more complex than just normal prices.
Airfare fluctuates all the time, so when figuring out how good a deal is, you should take the normal cost of airfare into account as well as all potentially available prices at that moment. In other words: how big or small the fluctuations in fares are on any given route.
So we’ve pulled in millions of data points, determining the normal available prices for thousands of routes. These numbers are updated based on the latest searches submitted by travelers as they look for their next trip using a wide variety of search tools. With these numbers, we’ve verified that Going deals are really freaking good (but you already knew that).
Specifically, the average Going deal in the first quarter of 2025 was about 2.2 standard deviations below the average price. What does this mean? The average deal our flight experts delivered to members was cheaper than 95% of all prices found for that route.
Even among these top-shelf deals, some rise above the rest. That’s where the Going Grade comes in.
First, we scored every single hand-picked deal we delivered to members and ranked them relative to one another. Now when we put together a deal, we not only show you how the price relates to the normal price on these routes, we also call out if the price is among the very best in the grand scheme of Going deals—using the Going Grade.
Deal badges will indicate if a deal we’re sending members is in the:
- Top 15% of deals
- Top 10% of deals
- Top 5% of deals
- Top 1% of deals
For reference, the Atlanta–Athens deal that we mentioned earlier received a Going Grade in the Top 10%. To make it in the top 10%, a deal needs a score of -2.8 or better. These are the kinds of deals worth snagging now and asking for PTO later. They barely register on a scale of all fares. They’re that good.
Going Grades aren’t reserved for fortress hubs, though—they pop up for fares at airports across the country. E.g.:
- Top 1%: Nashville (BNA) to Iceland for $299 roundtrip
- Top 5%: Portland (PDX) to London for $498 roundtrip
- Top 10%: Albuquerque (ABQ) to Hawaii’s Big Island for $389 roundtrip
- Top 15%: Washington, DC (IAD) to Puerto Rico for $198 roundtrip
So keep an eye out for Going-Graded deals in your email inbox. These are objectively deals that you shouldn’t sleep on.
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