Breaking Down the Going Grade: How It Works and How To Use It To Book Cheap Tickets

At Going, our mission is—and has always been—to help make your travel dreams come true for less money. This has meant scouring the web, using internal technology and a team of super-savvy flight experts to unearth the very best deals for you. 

Going deals vs. all available fares

We deliver deals via push notification (if you have the Going app downloaded) and email. Frankly, all of the deals we send are very good. They tend to be 40–90% cheaper than the normal (or average) price. For reference, the average Going-curated deal sent in 2024 was 45% off. 

This percent discount off of a normal price is useful information, but airfare is much more complex than just normal prices. Airfare fluctuates all the time, so when figuring out how good a deal is, while taking the normal cost of airfare into account is important, it’s also important to take into account all potentially available prices at that moment. In other words: how big or small the fluctuations in fares are on any given route. 

So, we started doing some science. For months, we’ve been pulling in millions of data points, determining the average available prices for thousands of routes. These numbers are constantly updated based on the latest searches submitted by travelers throughout the world as they search for their next trip using a wide variety of search tools. 

Using these numbers, we’ve verified what we already knew: Going deals are really freaking good. Specifically, the average Going deal in the first quarter of 2025 was about 2.2 standard deviations below the average price. What does this mean? The average deal our flight experts delivered to members was cheaper than 95% of all prices found for that route. 

Long story short, if we ping you about a deal, it means it’s good.

Here are some examples of deals that came in right around our average: 

• San Francisco to Tokyo for $582 roundtrip
• Boston to Rome for $429 roundtrip
• Atlanta to Fiji for $890 roundtrip
• Austin to Argentina for $565 roundtrip

All of these deals were around the average Going deal score—in the middle of the pack as far as Going deals are concerned, but better than about 95% of all available fares on these routes.

Introducing: The Going Grade

Now that we’ve proven all Going deals are among the cheapest flights out there and, therefore, worth booking, we’re taking it a step further. 

Think of all of the hot deals that we send members via the Going app and email. Even among these top-shelf deals, some rise above the rest. And so our members never have to guess which deals are the best of the best compared to all other deals that we send, we’ve created deal badges. 

First, we scored every single hand-picked deal we delivered to members and ranked them relative to one another. Now when we put together a deal, we not only show you how the price relates to the normal price on these routes, we also call out if the price is among the very best in the grand scheme of Going deals—using a scoring system we call the Going Grade. 

The Going Grade tells you where a deal ranks compared to all other Going deals. As a general rule of thumb, we won't bother alerting you about a deal if it received a Going Grade less than 5/10. 

How do Going Grades work? 

If a route from one of your followed airports has a price that puts it between our average deal price and the 65th percentile, it receives a Going Grade of 5 or 6—displayed as 5/10 or 6/10, respectively—depending on where exactly in that range it falls. 

Deals within the 65–74% of Going deals range will receive a Going Grade of 7/10. 

If a deal is better than 75% of all Going deals, it gets a Going Grade of 8/10. This is getting into the territory of "absolutely-can’t-miss" deals. 

What does this mean in scientific terms?

From January through March 2025, a deal score of -2.34 (meaning 2.34 standard deviations below the average price) or better indicated a deal in the top 25% of all hand-picked deals—deals that would've been tagged with 8/10. 

Here are some deals that fell in the Going Grade 8 range based on deal scores:

• Los Angeles to Paris for $420 roundtrip
• St. Louis to Puerto Rico for $219 roundtrip
• Houston to Tokyo for $652 roundtrip
• Portland to Maui for $237 roundtrip

The best of the best: Going Grades 9 & 10

To get a Going Grade of 9, we’re talking about a deal score of -2.8 or better. This puts a deal in the top 10% of all deals Going finds. These are the kinds of deals that are worth snagging now and asking for PTO later. The top 10% of Going deals barely even register on a scale of all fares—they’re that good. A data scientist would call them “statistically anomalous.” To that we say, “we’re just doing our job.”

Here are some deals that qualify for a Going Grade of 9: 

• Atlanta to Brazil for $287 roundtrip
• Minneapolis to Iceland for $427 roundtrip
• Albuquerque to Kona, Hawaii for $389 roundtrip
• Washington DC to Brisbane, Australia for $716 roundtrip

Finally, a deal that earns a Going Grade of 10 is the kind of thing you drop everything for and book yesterday. With a price 3.64 standard deviations below average, our data scientists say these fares literally shouldn’t be findable. And yet, 1% of the time we manage to dig them up. 

Here are some examples of actual deals we’ve sent that hit this threshold: 

• Nashville to Iceland for $299 roundtrip
• Houston to Fiji for $746 roundtrip
• Premium economy Washington DC to Paris for $749 roundtrip
• Business class Miami to Sweden for $1,420 roundtrip
• Santa Fe to Tokyo for $695 roundtrip

Note: These scores are determined based on the historic pricing of each individual route. So, sometimes a better price may actually get a worse score. 

Here’s an example: A recent widespread deal to Italy that we sent included both a flight from Santa Ana, California, to Venice at $497 roundtrip and a route from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Venice at $592 roundtrip. 

The score at the time of publication for that Santa Ana route was -1.77—a tiny bit worse than our average curated deal score of about -2.2. 

However, if you were following Cheyenne, you would have seen a Going Grade of 8 on your deal, as that route came in at -2.53. This is because fares from Cheyenne to Venice tend to be habitually higher than those from Santa Ana, so when the $592 roundtrip deal popped up, it was a steal compared to what you’d typically find on that route. From Santa Ana, the same deal would have gotten a Going Grade of 5.