New Online Travel Tool Helps You Find the Cheapest Flights From Your City

If you’re overdue for a vacation but don’t know where you want to go, let Escape be your personal travel agent. This tool spotted by Thrillist helps you score the best airline deals by displaying a detailed, interactive map of the cheapest flights around the world at any given moment.

Just plug in your departure location and preferred travel dates to find the destinations with the cheapest flights. Want to travel from Chicago to Asia the first week of September? It looks like Beijing, China, is your best point of entry. Perhaps you want to fly domestic instead. Just select “North America” from the bottom of the screen, and start perusing the cheapest flight paths, which are displayed in green.

Escape is similar to Skyscanner’s flight comparison map, but there are a few notable differences between the two tools. For one, Escape lets you search by specific dates rather than an entire month. In addition to the usual filters (namely your budget, and whether you prefer direct flights), Escape also lets you narrow the search field by visa requirements, popularity of the destination, and weather. The site doesn’t sell the actual flight tickets, though. After you’ve made your decision, Escape will direct you to a third-party platform—like Skyscanner or Kiwi—to book your flights.

The Escape tool was created by the staff of the MIT Senseable City Lab in Singapore, which uses data and technology to address other urban challenges, like the effect of pollution on human activity in China. As for the Escape travel map, the goal was to help users “picture the price landscape whenever felt like taking a holiday.”

To try it out for yourself, visit greatescape.co, and check out our other tips for figuring out when to book a trip in 2019.