Updated: July 9, 2026
In this guide
Back in 2018, I was doing my annual Black Friday Christmas shopping (online, as usual), when I came across an Air New Zealand fare mistake on a blog I follow.
$600 to Auckland. Round Trip.
New Zealand has always been a place I’d like to visit, but to say it wasn’t on my radar right now with an 8 and 10 year old would be understating things. 18+ hours of flying was something I wanted to wait until they were older to tackle.
But $600 for a flight that usually costs $2,000 or more? That’s an amount of savings that’s tough to pass on when multiplying by four tickets.
To make a long story short, we spent two weeks on New Zealand’s North Island, and it was the trip of a lifetime.
That trip sold me on deal-first travel planning for good, and I’ve done an embarrassing amount of reading on cheap travel in the years since. A lot has changed since I first wrote this guide in 2018. The newsletter that found me that New Zealand fare has a new name, two of the airlines I recommended back then no longer exist, and Columbus has more nonstop options than it has ever had. Everything below is re-verified as of July 2026.
The short version: the cheapest way out of Columbus in 2026 is a deal alert service like Going, free price tracking on Google Flights, and knowing your budget carriers. Frontier and Breeze fly cheap from John Glenn, Allegiant flies from Rickenbacker, and JetBlue lands at CMH on November 3, 2026.
The Most Important Thing: Going (Formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights)
If you take anything away from this article, please make it Going. Longtime readers will remember it as Scott’s Cheap Flights, and it rebranded in 2023. Even if you think international travel might be out of reach or just not in the cards for you right now, sign up anyway.
Going started as an email newsletter and became one of the more stunning internet success stories in travel, growing from one guy flagging mistake fares into a full-blown app.
The viral success has come because the newsletter is singlehandedly the most useful thing you will find online if you are even vaguely interested in international travel.
How Going Works
- Sign up for Going here. There’s a 14 day free trial if you want to test it first.
- Pay the $49 a year for the Premium plan. If you book one flight a year, it will pay for itself 10x over (probably more.) Premium gets you every economy deal, including mistake fares, and you get them faster than free members do. That timing matters most on mistake fares, which can vanish in hours. (There’s also a $199 Elite tier that adds business and first class deals, but Premium is the sweet spot for most people.)
- Be sure to select all the airports you could conceivably fly from (at least Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh.) Many deals are good enough to find a way to get to an airport 2-3 hours away.
The Kind Of Deals Going Flags (Recent Examples, Round Trip)
- New York to Florence: $344
- Los Angeles to Tulum: $271
- Boston to Mykonos: $468
Those particular fares left from other cities (they’re from Going’s own recent deal awards), but that’s the caliber to expect. Set Columbus as your home airport and you’ll get the CMH and nearby-airport versions when they pop. Going says its deals average about 45 percent off the typical fare.
Be Decisive. Be Flexible.
The fares that Going sends out sometimes sell out in hours. At best, they are usually only available for a day or two. You have to be prepared to act, which is why it’s a good idea to have a very loose and general plan of where you’d like to go in the near future, and what you’d be willing to pay.
Flexibility should also be considered beforehand. Vacation time is hit or miss depending on careers, but maximum savings come to those who can be maximally flexible.
The good thing is that most fares Going sends will have windows of available booking time, i.e. the prices aren’t for a specific day or week. Instead they are usually blocks of months (a fall through spring window is typical) giving you some time to plan things out once you’ve bought your ticket.
Other Websites To Watch
Going is my favorite (as you might have guessed), but there are other websites that are useful as well.
I prefer Going because it’s passive. I don’t have to remember to check prices or sign up to an email list to be alerted when a certain fare drops in price. I had no idea a trip to New Zealand was even a possibility back then, so there’s no world where I would have been signed up to watch prices on Air New Zealand. Probably the next trip I take will also be to a destination I wasn’t really considering.
But you might feel differently. Perhaps there’s a trip you take yearly to see family, or maybe you know for a fact that you really want to go to London if you can go roundtrip for under $700. This is what to do.
- Airfare Watchdog: sign up for email alerts on specific routes and let it do the watching for you.
- Kayak Explore (CMH): a priced map of everywhere you can fly from Columbus. Make sure you toggle nearby airports, then select when you want to travel. When I re-checked this in July 2026, a $55 nonstop round trip to Atlanta was sitting right at the top of the map, so it definitely still works.
- Google Flights: turn on price tracking for any route and Google emails you when the fare drops. It has quietly become the best free tool of the bunch.
- One more solid deal site: Secret Flying, which even keeps a dedicated Columbus deals page.
Play The Credit Card Game
Probably you know this one already, but do all of your spending on a rewards travel card that you then pay off every month. It will add up to free flights yearly, and the sign-up bonuses alone are usually good for at least one free flight.
I’m a fan of Chase’s Sapphire cards (Preferred or Reserve) because the points are transferrable to Southwest, the most common airline I fly. If you want to keep it extremely simple, a card like the Capital One Venture is good. There’s no messing around with point transfers or rewards programs, you simply book your travel and then redeem points for a statement credit.
If you want to get more complex, be aware it’s a very deep rabbit hole, but one that can have great rewards. A blog called Doctor of Credit is what you’ll need to get started.
Discounted Travel Gift Cards
Want a quick 10-15% off your next trip? Check the warehouse clubs.
Costco regularly sells $500 Southwest eGift cards for around $430, a 14% discount on flights you were going to book anyway, and Sam’s Club runs similar deals. Both rotate other travel brands through. The old eBay gift card trick I used to recommend is gone, but this one is better: no auctions, no sketchy sellers, just a warehouse club membership. Doctor of Credit is great for catching these sales the moment they run. I’m all about passive info and not having to make travel search into a dedicated routine.
Get To Know Airlines Flying Out Of Columbus
It is helpful to know exactly what airlines fly out of Columbus, and consider signing up for their email newsletters so that you can receive their sales announcements. Getting to know where these airlines fly is also helpful, and can help you pick domestic destinations that don’t require stopovers.
Airlines to watch:
- Southwest (the biggest carrier at John Glenn)
- American Airlines
- Delta
- United
- Alaska
- Air Canada
- Breeze
- Frontier
- Sun Country
- Allegiant (flies from Rickenbacker on the south side, not John Glenn)
Number 11 is on the way: JetBlue returns to Columbus on November 3, 2026, starting with a nonstop to Fort Lauderdale. More airlines fighting over the same routes is exactly what pushes fares down.
Frontier, Allegiant, and Breeze have copious rules on things like carry-on and checked baggage, and the base fare never tells the whole story, but most flying these days isn’t exactly luxurious, so why not save your money? These three are the key to the absolute rock bottom prices on domestic routes from Columbus in 2026. (A moment of silence for Spirit, which shut down for good in May 2026. It was never comfortable, but it kept everyone else honest on price.)
Cheap Flights From Columbus FAQ
What’s the cheapest airline flying out of Columbus?
Frontier and Breeze usually post the lowest base fares from John Glenn, and Allegiant runs cheap leisure routes from Rickenbacker. Add up the bag and seat fees before you compare, because the cheapest base fare is not always the cheapest trip.
When should I book a flight from Columbus?
For domestic trips, one to three months out is the usual sweet spot, and Tuesday and Wednesday departures tend to price lower. Deal alerts flip that logic: you book when the deal shows up, not when the calendar says to.
Does Spirit still fly from Columbus?
No. Spirit shut down entirely on May 2, 2026. JetBlue picks up some of the slack when it starts flying nonstop to Fort Lauderdale from CMH on November 3, 2026.
How many airlines fly out of Columbus?
Ten as of July 2026, counting Allegiant out at Rickenbacker, with JetBlue arriving as number 11 in November. Our guide to every nonstop flight from Columbus has the route by route list.
Did I miss anything? Have any travel tips or hacks you want to share? This article will see updates over time, so let us know. And if you happen to book a deal as a result of this article, definitely send us a photo. Happy CMH and LCK flying. ✈️✈️✈️
