Cheap flights with Kiwi.com saved me US$1,500 but was it worth it? My 41-hour journey from Asia to Europe
- A seasoned travel writer used Kiwi.com to find the cheapest flights for a budget trip from Indonesia to Romania after the one-way fare had more than doubled
- His route, which took him via Vietnam, India and the UAE, involved lengthy layovers, little sleep and long security queues – so would he recommend it?
Before Covid-19 struck, I flew around the world to produce travel stores for about 10 months of every year. But for the past two-and-a-half years I haven’t set foot far outside my home in Indonesia. As things slowly returned to normal, I decided to fly to Europe to reboot my career, starting in Romania.
But I was shocked to discover the going rate for the most direct one-way fare from Denpasar, on Indonesia’s Bali island, to Bucharest, the Romanian capital – with only one stop – had skyrocketed to US$2,200. That’s more than double what I paid when I took the same route in 2019, caused by a perfect storm of surging oil prices, limited flights, sudden demand, supply-chain shenanigans and the war in Ukraine.
I didn’t have to knock up a spreadsheet to deduce that with airfares this high, working as a travel writer in Europe or any other long-haul destination no longer made financial sense.
But then I stumbled upon Kiwi.com – one of a new breed of online travel agent that uses artificial intelligence to scour the web for the cheapest flights and creates complex itineraries that will take you anywhere you want for a fraction of the price that legacy airlines are now charging.
The route Kiwi.com built would take me on separate flights to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Mumbai in India and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates before depositing me in Budapest. With lengthy layovers, including 13 hours in Mumbai, the journey would take 41 hours compared to the 17 with a legacy airline. But it would only cost US$430 – representing savings that more than justified the inconvenience.
