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The 'hidden airport' travel hack could save you as much as 80% on flights

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Chances are that when you're searching for flights, you'll check Kayak or Orbitz to find the best price.

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But a new travel website called Tripdelta says it has created a unique algorithm that can save travelers as much as 80% on flight prices compared with those found on the bigger websites.

The website, which has been in the works for over two years, was put together by a team of developers who created a complicated algorithm that could search for deals like a seasoned travel hacker.

The algorithm finds these alternative travel routes, which the Tripdelta team calls hidden airports, by searching for connections from nearby airports or connections between two different airlines.

"Flight searches are not able to make out the right hidden connection," Tripdelta founder Maximilian Ibel told Tech Insider. "It requires a self-improving, self-learning, and predictive algorithm to solve this problem."

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tripdelta
Tripdelta

Ibel said Tripdelta compares up to 500 times as many flight combinations per search as competing websites, combining different carriers and routes to find the best option.

"For example, if you want to go from Berlin to New York, one option would be to stop over in London," Ibel said. "Both flights are probably being operated by British Airways. Usually all major airlines provide a flight option to your destination. However, in this case it might be cheaper to take a low-cost carrier like Ryanair to Stockholm and from there take a flight with Norwegian to New York."

"The problem is that Norwegian and Ryanair do not operate in the same alliance and do not have a codeshare agreement," he added. "Therefore, they are not found together by other flight searches. That makes Stockholm a secret airport and this route hidden."

Essentially, the same search tricks you could do yourself by combing websites like ITA Matrix or Skiplagged, Tripdelta does for you.

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Here's a recent example. I searched for the same flight from San Francisco to Berlin on Kayak and Tripdelta and saved $20 on the same lowest-priced flight. The next-cheapest flight on Kayak, however, was $537, while Tripdelta found several flights for under $500.

tripdelta_vs__kayak
Tripdelta and Kayak

I did learn, however, that the website didn't always give travelers the cheapest option. When I searched New York to Berlin, for example, Kayak's lowest result actually beat Tripdelta's by $15.

tripdelta_vs_kayak
Tripdelta and Kayak

Still, travelers who want more options on where to check flights and compare prices will appreciate Tripdelta for doing the work for them instead of spending hours manually searching for the best route.

Ibel said that Tripdelta had more than 100,000 users and that he had saved thousands by using the search engine.

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"The thing about Tripdelta is that we give you a lot of additional, unique options with every search," he said. "Sometimes the flight is cheaper, sometimes the connection is better and shorter, and sometimes the original search is the best. But we try to make sure that you have every option in one search available."

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