Once upon a time, before Canada's discount airline boom, a popular local "travel hack" involved driving from Toronto to either Detroit or Buffalo, flying from one of those American cities to Seattle, and then driving up to Vancouver.

It was a pain in the butt, to be sure, but cash-strapped, mountain-hungry students were keen on saving what equated to thousands of dollars at the time.

Paying $400 to fly from Detroit to Seattle in 2007 felt a lot better than paying $2,400 to fly from Toronto to Van, even with the added expense of rental cars and border tolls.

Fifteen years later, Canada has finally caught up — or is at least starting to — with the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world where flying from one city to another within the same country costs less than taking a train.

Flair Airlines, a leader in the Canadian low-cost airline space, is currently offering up some of the best prices this writer has ever seen for flights between the two most-expensive housing markets in the country at just $69 each way.

Cheap flights abound in November, December, January and February on Flair's website. You can even book a handful of $69 flights from Toronto to Vancouver in October right now. Image via flyflair.com.

That's right, you can currently book a flight from Toronto to Vancouver for $69. That's YYZ to YVR and back again for less than $140 bucks (unless you plan on bringing anything more than one personal bag. Checked luggage will cost you up to $84 a piece).

And the deal goes both ways; you can score a $69 flight from Vancouver to Toronto as early as Oct. 25 of this year and throughout the majority of November.

While booking a flight across the country with the Edmonton-based carrier today for like, next week, still costs a pretty penny, you can currently purchase $69 flights from Toronto to Vancouver as early as Oct. 18, 2022.

Most days in November and December (excluding the holiday rush) also have $69 flights available from YYZ to YVR, which is pretty wild, given how pricey this exact flight route used to be.

Lucky for us, as more and more ultra low-cost carriers enter the Canadian market, they're all being forced to compete for business (though not always with great success).

Flights to Calgary, Halifax and Montreal from Toronto now start at less than $50 with Flair, similar to the rates offered by competitors like Swoop and Lynx.

You might literally spend more money on crappy sandwiches and magazines at the airport than you did for the actual flight.

If you're looking to go a bit farther, trips from Toronto to Vegas, New York and Orlando are all going for just under $100 — still less than the price of parking your car at Pearson for the week, and a small fraction of what you would have paid to fly pretty much anywhere from Toronto even three years ago.

Yay, progress!