cheapest 'gateway' to MNL
 

I hope this is posted in the correct forum.

How can I find which airport in the continental U.S. has the cheapest flights to MNL?

Is that even something that I can find?

I would like to fly out from the lowest cost U.S. airport to MNL.

Probably LAX. But really the question is irrelevant without knowing which city you are originating from unless you live in a gateway city or are walking to one.

I may walk or hitch hike to the cheapest gateway airport if I can save at least 15% on my airfare.

Profile says you're in IA (DSM perhaps?); will take a wild guess that the largest nearby gateway city to Asia will be ORD, may give you the most options, and most likely be cheapest.

That said, ITA Software will let you search all nearby airports of your home airport.
1. Enter your "From" airport, select "and any airport within 300 miles"
2. Enter your "To" airport as MNL
3. Select dates
4. Go

It will give you different fares and let you browse the results by airport.

Thank you.

As I mentioned I will possibly hitch hike to whichever airport in the continental United States has the cheapest airfares to MNL.

In that case, the To: field will let you enter a series of airports (separated by semicolon) to help cover a wider area; something like
should be sufficient.

Wow. Thanks again. That's a great search tool.

Turns out that Seattle, for my trip time-frame, has the lowest airfares. I wouldn't have guessed that.

If you live in an oddball city probably the cheapest option is a zone ticket from a travel agent.

http://www.happysun8.com sometimes has good prices US to MNL. Call them on the phone though. 1-866-923-3588 The web site is worthless.

What is a zone ticket?

Where they add the connecting flight by "zone". Like non gateway West Coast cities are zone A or whatever $50 more than the gateway city, Midwest cities are zone B or whatever $100 more, East coast cities are zone C or whatever $150 more. Rules depend on the ticket. A travel agents constructs the itinerary. But the advantage is they charge by zone for the domestic connecting flights which is often much cheaper if you live in an off the main path city that usually has expensive domestic flights. MNL is one of those places where you "may" (or may not) still get a better deal calling a travel agent than you will on-line. Especially with connections included to nongateway cities. It's worth a phone call to find out.

Have you used http://www.happysun8.com ?

I've bought a number of tickets to MNL from them. Generally for my market they beat web sites by $60 or so. Sometimes allot more, sometimes the airlines site or Travelocity is better. The only sketchy thing about them is they ask you fax a copy of your credit card and ID to prevent fraud but nothing bad has ever come of that for me. They issue e-tickets and you can pull up the reservation on Sabre's web site.

Angel Travel http://www.angeltravel.com 1-800-922-1092 is another agent I have used before that you might call. Again, the web site is useless. Use the phone.

A FT member was kind enough to PM regarding flying to MNL.

I hope it doesn't offend this FT member if I post their message here. I think others could find it very useful too.

I would have thought Hawaiian would have the best fares to MNL.....:D

Hard to hitchike to HNL though I suppose....:eek:

(Sorry.....missed the "continental USA" bit.....)