Getting to Bangkok from New York City was more of a challenge. One-stop flights in June started at $991. Knowing that the airfare prediction app Hopper found that the lowest international fares fall within a two- to three-month advance booking window, I pushed the dates back to mid-August, or about three months out, and found the sweet spot. Rates dropped to $528 on a United flight stopping in Tokyo en route to Bangkok using Google Flights’ calendar showing the Wednesday-to-Wednesday deal, which bore out the advice I’d seen on FareCompare.com that midweek travel is cheaper than weekends .

Putting the two together came to $616 round trip — $336 less than the China Eastern flight (and far fewer hours spent traveling), and roughly $1,300 less than Aeroflot.

Europe: Take a two-nation vacation

Legacy carriers like Lufthansa and British Airways may offer more perks, including meals, but other carriers are making big inroads on their routes. JetBlue recently announced it will begin service to London in 2021. Norwegian Air will introduce new New York-to-Athens and Chicago-to-Barcelona routes this summer.

Once fliers get to Europe, there are low-cost carriers with large networks, such as Ireland’s Ryanair and England’s easyJet and Flybe, that often don’t appear in searches.

To test the strategy of connecting to low-cost carriers abroad , I made my destination Zadar, a coastal town in central Croatia that offers a lovely old town and Adriatic beaches, and has a fraction of Dubrovnik’s crowds. A baseline search on Expedia came to $1,284 on a two-stop flight through Amsterdam and Zagreb in August, and $1,612 on a one-stop flight through Vienna.

From London, easyJet has $220 round-trips in August for the two-and-a-half-hour flight to Zadar from London Luton Airport. Google Flights turned up a $543 nonstop from Newark to London Heathrow on United, putting the baseline airfare at $743. Factoring in bus fare between the airports (National Express has buses from 15 pounds one way, or about $20), the round-trip comes to $783, a savings of at least $500. But the flight schedules don’t align on the outbound trip, meaning you would have to spend a night in London, which would likely eat up some of the savings.