Air Ninja Finds Your Flight – Nunchucks Not Required

Alert: helpful travel website recommendation coming… it’s Air Ninja. Okay so no throwing stars or black hooded pajamas, but if you need a short-hop on a discounted flight between two cities far away from home, this will be your site of choice. You will save money, and that’s all there is to it.

The main purpose of Air Ninja is to help you find out about flights on bargain carriers you didn’t know existed, all over the world. Many of AirNinja’s results fly out of secondary or smaller airports but if you’re not picky you could end up really scoring. Air Ninja’s recipe is that it locates and refers budget, low cost carriers that are not available through big booking engines like Kayak or Expedia. Which is why you’ve never heard of half the airlines it suggests: Air Berlin, Spice Jet, Sky, Mango, etc. All viable airlines but none spend money on advertising or pay to put their schedules on the big online booking sites and thus pass the savings right back to you.

The Air Ninja process goes as such:

• visit their website
• enter your point A and point B cities (dates are important because some airlines might not fly every day or every season)
• review the list of airlines that serve those places, if there happen to be any
• Click on the carrier’s link and be taken to their website where you book your ticket directly

You won’t find any national carriers – United, Emirates or British Air – but you will get airlines that take you where, or close to where, you’re going, and at quite often half the cost.

Here was my experience: I was looking for a the best way to travel between Nice and Venice. Sadly the train was useless (4 stops & not happening) and Expedia was quoting fares of $390 that routed through places like Frankfurt and London. Ridiculous. I pulled up Air Ninja and was tipped off to Fly Baboo, which is not exactly what you’d call a legacy carrier but a tiny (and fantastic) regional airline based out of Geneva that operates prop planes and charges a hell of a lot less than British Air. They also had a nonstop flight that I booked and paid €105 for.

Air Ninja has suggestions for pretty much any city pair in the world that has discount carriers serving them, so if you’re planning on getting a RTW ticket from say, AirTreks, you can fill in all those short one-way hops you didn’t initially add to your ticket. Wah-TAH!