How it works · Sep 18 2026
Meet in the middle: flights for a group that starts in different cities
Three friends in three cities, one weekend, one question nobody's flight search answers: where can we all be by Friday evening, and what does it cost us? This is the search built for that question, and why it is the feature we would keep if we had to keep one.
What works today
Today the site prices from fares we have seen: /meet shows each person's cheapest fare to the destination for your dates, side by side, with the scheduled landing where the fare shows it, and what they add up to when everyone has one. The full meeting search — the meeting airport found for you, the fairness order — waits on a live price source.
Key takeaways
- One page, every member: each person's cheapest fare from their own airport is shown side by side, with what they add up to and the dearest ticket, and each one's scheduled landing where the fare shows it.
- With a live price source, the meeting airport is found, not guessed: the destination's own airports first, then the hubs on every member's way toward it — one airport per city, never a hub only one person can reach.
- Time is a first-class number: where every fare shows its scheduled landing, /meet says whether everyone lands by your hour (18:00 unless you say otherwise); with a live price source, a last arrival that lands inside the buffer is also flagged tight before anyone books.
- Four honest orders — cheapest total, fairest, least travel, earliest together. Today each picks every person's fare to the destination you name; with a live price source they rank whole meetings. No seller is ever paid for a place in any of them.
- Nothing is held. Every fare is the seller's, dated, and the click goes to the seller's page. A found meeting can become a crew plan the group votes on.
A meet-in-the-middle flight search takes several travellers, each with their own departure airport, and a destination, and finds the airports where the whole group can be together by a chosen hour on a chosen day — pricing one round trip per person from their own city and ranking the meetings by what the group pays in total. On a2bflight it is the /meet page, for two to eight members. Until a live price source is connected it answers from fares we have seen, for a destination you name: each member's cheapest fare side by side, the group's total when every member has one, and the scheduled landing where the fare shows it; finding the meeting airport waits on the live source.
Every flight search you have used prices one departure. That is the right shape for one traveller and the wrong one for a group, and the workaround is familiar: everyone searches their own flight, the results land in a chat, somebody adds them up, and the sum is only right if everyone picked the same airport and the same day and nobody lands at midnight. The meeting search removes the spreadsheet — not by being cleverer about fares, but by asking the question the group is actually asking.
In one line
If your trip has more than one departure city, search it as one trip: find a meeting. If it has one, the ordinary search shows the cheapest fares we've seen, each dated.
What a group search has to get right
The sum is the price
Three people, three tickets, one trip. The number that decides whether the weekend happens is the total, and a single-origin search never shows it. /meet adds each person's fare up for you; with a live price source, the meeting search ranks by it.
The last arrival decides the day
A group is together when the last person lands, not when the first does. Where every fare shows its scheduled landing, /meet says when the last of you lands and whether that is by the hour you set; with a live price source, every meeting also states the slack before it and the wait the earliest traveller sits through.
Fair beats cheap, sometimes
The cheapest total can put one person on a 03:00 departure to save the rest twenty euros. “Fairest” ranks meetings by the dearest ticket instead, so the trip is not carried by whoever lives furthest away. It needs a live price source to compare meeting airports; for one destination it picks the same fares as the cheapest total.
Separate tickets are your risk
Nobody sells a group on one ticket from three cities. With a live price source, the search says so and prices the gap: a 6-hour buffer before the meeting hour by default, and a tight badge when a last arrival cuts into it.
A meeting search against the way groups do it today
| What | a2bflight /meet | Single-origin search | Searches + spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Departure airports per search | 2–8; alternates with a live source | 1 | 1 per search |
| Finds the meeting airport | with a live source | ✗ | you guess it |
| Group total on one page | for one adult each | ✗ | in a spreadsheet |
| Last arrival vs. the meeting hour | where the fares show it | ✗ | by hand, per person |
| Fairness ranking (dearest ticket) | with a live source | ✗ | ✗ |
| Own party, cabin and bags per member | with a live source | one party | per search |
| Onward journey together (a spine) | with a live source | ✗ | ✗ |
| Kept fares, votes, a chosen option | crew plan | ✗ | a group chat |
| Sells or holds tickets | ✗ | varies | ✗ |
"Single-origin search" is any flight search that takes one departure per query — which, as of this writing, is every large one we know. Their features change; the shape of the question does not.
How a meeting search works, step by step
The steps are the full meeting search, as it runs with a live price source.
Step 1
Name the members and where each one lives
Two to eight people. Each entry is a home airport and, if they would drive to another, the alternates — CDG or LHR, LGW. The first code is the home the detour is measured from; every alternate is searched. A member with a different party than the rest — two adults and a child, business, a checked bag — carries it on their own row.
Step 2
Say where the party is going, and when it must be together
A destination airport, a meeting day and the hour everyone must be there by (18:00 unless you say otherwise), and the day home. The destination is where the trip is spent; where the group first meets can be somewhere on the way.
Step 3
The search picks the meeting airports
The destination's own city first — both airports if it has two — then the hubs that lie on every member's way toward it, ranked by how far out of everyone's way they are, one airport per city, up to the number you allow. A hub only one member can reach is another party's answer and is never suggested. You can also name the airports yourself, and then nothing else is tried.
Step 4
One round trip per member, to each candidate
For every candidate airport the engine prices every member's round trip from home — out on the meeting day in time for the hour, back on the day home. Each member's ticket is shown all-in for their own party, bags and cabin included; the party's headline is the fares before extras, with each member's all-in figure beside their ticket. A candidate where any one member has no way to arrive in time is reported as exactly that, not dropped in silence.
Step 5
Meetings are ranked, and each one is drawn whole
Every meeting is one airport, one hour, and a ticket per member: the group's total and the dearest ticket, who lands last and with how much slack, who lands first and how long they wait, total hours in transit. Cheapest total is the default order; fairest, least travel and earliest together are one click away.
Step 6
Ride on together, if you want to
Add a spine — the shared leg from the meeting airport onward — and the search also finds the departures the whole party can make together after the last arrival, and prices that leg once for everyone.
Step 7
Keep it, or hand it to the seller
Every ticket's button goes to the seller's page for that exact fare; a2bflight sells nothing. On a stack with the crew planner on, a meeting can be kept as a candidate on a crew plan, where the group votes, a chosen option is re-priced by the watcher, and a price drop is mailed to everyone.
An example, without the numbers
Four people: one in Saint Petersburg, one in Paris who would also leave from London, one in Barcelona, one in Athens. The party wants a long weekend in Istanbul, together by six on Friday, home on Monday. With a live price source, the search considers Istanbul's two airports and Izmir — a hub on everyone's way — and reports, in so many words, that nobody can have all four at Sabiha Gökçen or Izmir by six; every meeting it finds is at Istanbul's main airport, and the two airports that failed are listed as tried, not dropped in silence.
For each meeting the page shows the group's total and the dearest ticket, that Saint Petersburg lands first and waits most of the afternoon, that Paris lands last with two hours and twenty minutes to spare — tight, on separate tickets, and said out loud — and, one click away, the same meetings re-ranked by the dearest ticket, by hours in transit, or by who lands last. Whichever the group picks, each member's button goes to the seller for that exact fare. The fares themselves are not printed here because they are the sellers' and change daily; the page dates every one.
From a meeting to a crew plan
A meeting is an answer for today. A group trip is a month of "are we still doing this?" — and that is what a crew plan holds: the trip's name and window, the people and where each one starts, the legs they share, a grid of who is busy when, the fares somebody kept as candidates, yes / no / veto votes, one chosen option per leg, and a calendar feed the company calendar can subscribe to. Members join by a link — one browser, one member — and nobody needs an account with anyone.
The part that earns the name: a watcher re-prices every chosen option off the same search this page describes and mails the group once a day at most, only when a price moved. Nothing is held, nothing is booked, and a "mark booked" is a note a traveller leaves for the others, not a transaction.
Your crews lists the plans on this browser; start one takes a minute.
Questions people ask
- What is a meet-in-the-middle flight search?
- A meet-in-the-middle flight search takes several travellers, each with their own departure airport, and a destination, and finds the airports where the whole group can be together by a chosen hour on a chosen day — pricing one round trip per person from their own city and ranking the meetings by what the group pays in total. a2bflight's /meet page is built for it, for two to eight members. Until a live price source is connected it answers from fares it has seen, for a destination you name: each member's cheapest fare side by side, the group's total when every member has one, and the scheduled landing where the fare shows it; finding the meeting airport waits on the live source.
- How is this different from Google Flights or Skyscanner?
- A single-origin search prices one departure at a time. For a group starting in three cities that means three searches, three result lists and a spreadsheet to add them up — and the sum is only right if everyone picked the same airport and the same days. a2bflight's /meet takes every member's home airport in one form and puts each person's cheapest fare it has seen to one destination on one page, dated, with the group's total when every member has one and, where every fare shows its scheduled landing, when the last person lands. Choosing the meeting airport and ranking whole meetings against each other wait on a live price source.
- Does a2bflight book the flights for the group?
- No. a2bflight sells nothing and holds nothing. Every price on /meet is a fare with the day it was seen, not a quote, and every button hands that member to the seller's own page, where the booking happens and the current price is shown. A group on separate tickets is a self-transfer: nobody is protected by an airline if one flight is late, so leave room before the hour the group must be together.
- What does “fairest” mean when ranking a meeting?
- Cheapest total is the group's sum; fairest is the meeting whose dearest single ticket is the cheapest, so nobody carries the trip for the others. Least travel is the fewest hours in transit summed over everyone, both directions; earliest together is the meeting where the last person lands soonest. Ranking whole meetings this way waits on a live price source; until then a2bflight's /meet uses the order to pick each person's fare to the one destination you name, and for one destination the cheapest total and the fairest are the same fares. Commission never enters any order on a2bflight.
- Can one member fly from more than one airport?
- Yes, in the form: a member's entry is a home airport and the alternates they would also leave from — Paris, London Heathrow or Gatwick — and can carry their own party, cabin and bags. With a live price source, the meeting search tries every alternate and prices each member as the people they are; until then a2bflight's /meet prices each member's first airport from fares it has seen, one traveller's fare each, and adds up no total while anyone brings company.
- What is a crew plan?
- A crew plan is where a found meeting goes next: a trip with a name, the people on it, the legs they share, the days each person can travel, the fares somebody kept as candidates, votes and vetoes, and one chosen option per leg. Members join by a link, one browser each; a watcher re-prices the chosen options and mails the group when a price drops — nothing is ever held or booked on a2bflight.
Try it on your next group trip
Two to eight people, their airports, a destination and an hour. One page, every ticket, the total — and no account, no card, nothing sold.
Nothing is held. Every number on /meet is a fare with the day we saw it, not a booking; with a live price source it is what a member's ticket costs today, and the party's price is the fares before bags and extras. The seller's page shows the current price.