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Hah! I have to laugh when
I think that the airline industry is
very much like Istanbul's Grand
Bazaar: How much does it
cost to fly to Turkey? As
much as the airlines can get you to
pay!
Honestly, there may be several
dozen different fares for
the same flight. Unfortunately, no
one agency or
website always gives the lowest fare. You've
got to shop around.
Generally speaking, airfares to Turkey
are lowest in December and January and
highest in June and July; May,
August and September are
a bit lower,
March and November lower
still.
BOOKMARK THIS PAGE so
you can come back and use the links
for later shopping. In fact, the websites
listed below are good to check
for any airfare, whether to
Turkey or elsewhere.
AIRFARE.com 
A leading seller of "consolidator" (ie,
discounted) airfares on major airlines ("14 million
unpublished fares!"), they also sell regular published
fares. Good, easy-to-use website. For many years I've
found they have the lowest fares, and I
always seem to buy my USA-to-Turkey tickets from them. More...
KAYAK
This "meta-search engine" searches
more than 4000 travel websites—airline,
hotel, car rental, etc—for the
lowest prices all at once. The search
takes only a few seconds, and the results
are presented in a clear, useful
format, with all taxes and
fees included. It's often the
first place I go to check airfares. More...
A leading US consumer products testing
organization found that
, an airline reservation service operated
by a consortium of nine airlines, gave
the lowest fares more frequently than
any other major reservations service.
(But...you must be a UK resident to
buy.) Use the box at the top of the
right-hand column to try it. —> More...
From Europe
Besides the Turkish
airlines of AtlasJet,
Pegasus Airlines, Onur
Air, and Sun
Express, several smaller low-cost
European airlines operate
cheap flights to Turkey.
Most fly to Istanbul's Sabiha
Gökçen Airport (SAW)
on the Asian shore of
the Bosphorus,
not to Istanbul's
main Atatürk
International Airport, 23 km
west of the city center on the
European side of the Bosphorus.
Sabiha
Gökçen Airport is
much farther from the center of historic
Istanbul, and not as convenient
for ground transport as Atatürk
Airport, but the airfares are
certainly lower.
Corendon
Based in the Netherlands,
Corendon flies from Eindhoven and Brussels
to Istanbul (SAW).
easyJet
easyJet now flies from the UK to Turkey.
Germanwings
This German carrier operates flights
from Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne-Bonn
and Stuttgart to Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir.
Pegasus
Air
This Turkish airline flies
from many cities in Germany and Holland
to Turkey, between Athens and Izmir,
and within Turkey to many cities. More...
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