Do any airline search sites allow "flexible departure cities"?"
 

I thought I read something about a site that allows you to choose airports over a large geographic area (as opposed to "All NYC airports") when shopping for airfares.

My daughter wants to fly meet us in Istanbul, and will be in Nice, France on the day before she flies. She has a railpass and doesn't mind going as far as Munich, but a closer airport would be nice (not the city, the feeling). She tried plugging in random cities on Kayak.com-- Nice-IST, Genoa-IST, MUC-IST. So far Munich seems the cheapest, but involves a long rail trip. .

Is there an easier site to hunt this way? Or, perhaps I should just ask, is there a "best" gateway to Istanbul from southern Europe?

if you use the matrix at ITA software (now owned by Google0 they will let you ask for airports in a wide range

then you have to go to an actual airline site to book.

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/di...prego/calendar

Has she checked the low costs - Germanwings fly to Istanbul Ataturk from Marseilles, Air Baltic from Nice and Pegasus flies Marseilles to Istanbul Sabiha

mztery,

I just made a Fodor's account for the express purpose of telling you that the matrix at ITA site you posted is probably the single greatest site that I have ever found on the internet.

You just saved me approx $1500-2000. And that is just for this summer.

So thanks!

skyscanner.net might work for you that way. It has an everywhere option.

mzterry, I want to second Jbarzel in thanking you for the link to the ITA matrix site. It is exactly the tool I needed!

You should be careful with multiple cities on ITA. I find that, if you input too many possible combinations, you will get fewer results for each city pair than if you searched them separately.