Winter sun, measured

The price on each card is a return fare for one person with taxes included, found today on a real search rather than quoted from a brochure. The airport named is whichever of the ten we track came out cheapest — which is usually London, and sometimes is not. If you are flying from elsewhere, the airport comparison will tell you what your local one costs on the same route.

The struck-through price is the median of the thirty cheapest fares found on that exact route at the same moment. It is a conservative figure by construction: those thirty are the cheapest of thousands, so the real shelf price is higher and the percentage shown is smaller than the truth. Anything under twenty per cent is not shown at all. On this band the fares are cheap outright rather than marked down, and a six per cent badge beside a fifty-eight pound flight reads as an apology for a number that needs none.

The temperature is the average daytime high for the month of departure, not the annual average — a distinction that matters here more than anywhere. It is also why some destinations disappear from this page for part of the year. Antalya in December is fifteen degrees with the sea at sixteen and half the resorts shut; a cheap fare there is cheap for a reason, and we would rather show you eleven destinations than twelve with one that cannot deliver what the page promises.