Budget Travel - Going to W. Europe on budget

Hey all --

I'm looking for 2 tickets to almost anywhere in western Europe for cheap. Time of year doesn't really matter too much. I was looking right now for travel to LHR and found $253 fares that bumped to $450 with taxes. :td:

I was looking for something in the $250-350 range with all taxes. Is this possible??

With taxes, probably not.... It's not impossible, but taxes will kill you. Definately would be on the up end of $350. $400 though is realistic w/ taxes depending on your origin.

Taxes alone are ~150 to London, touch less to continental Europe.


Where are you starting from? Are you a student?

As civicmon pointed out, taxes kinda kill the deals :mad:

That said, there is Travelocity'sLow Fare Alert
(http://travel.travelocity.com/relevance/ShowLowFares.do) page where you can type your departure city, and you get a list of fares to cities around the world.

There are many other similiar tools in the Mileage Run forum at the top of the page stickied.

In fact, last year I was cruising Travelocity's Dream Maps (my bookmark is not current as they move it from time to time, but I'm sure it's in one of the MR stickies), and found cheap IAH-MAD LH fare. Lo and behold, as I went through the pages to "book" the flight, at the end Travelocity told me that there's a lower fare available :confused:

How could that be? Well, it was the after tax price on KLM connecting through AMS instead of FRA, and it turns out that the connect fees killed the deals.

I posted about this in the MR forum, i.e. that connecting in London and Frankfurt greatly increases the all in price, but was generally poo-pooed. Nonetheless I still maintain that if you can connect in AMS your final price will be lower ^

And while I wasn't actually looking to fly, in the end KLM gave me enough EQMs on CO's NonePass program (just over 12,000) to push me to Gold status after I flew one more flight to visit mom (already booked and paid for). So all that for under $400 and a great weekend in and around Madrid ^

EmailKid

I found SAN-AMS for $375 but I consider that more of good timing than anything else (Feb 04).

Fare Alert's a real good idea too, but I think it's limited to 5 fares but to the western Europe hubs, that should be adequate.

emailkid, LH/BA add on those $100 fuel surcharges onto the $150 in taxes. Alitalia, KL/NW, DL all are 'honest' in the sense that their fares show up better on travelocity, but they're a touch lower or as competitive, as those stealthy LH fares.

I have had great luck getting cheap winter fares to Scandinavia (yes, there is limited daylight during winter). Currently IcelandAir has some $355 flights all-in for BWI-ARN. Now Scandinavia isn't great for budget travel but there are cheap flights to continental Europe from Sweden.

Then again you can try and wait it out for one of the "gotta be a mistake fares". I'll be going to MUC for $266 all-in thanks to the US Airways sale couple weeks ago. Then again there was the NW/KL "surchage-only" flights, which I missed out on :mad:

Condor (http://www.condor.com) has from time to time sales for 120 USD all-in to Germany (240 $ round-trip), but only from Las Vegas, Fort Myers and Orlando, in summer from various canadian destinations as well.

If you can depart in Canada Zoom Airlines (http://www.flyzoom.com/), Air Transat (http://www.airtransat.com/) or Canadian Affair (http://www.canadian-affair.com/) may be cheap alternatives.

You can also watch out for fares on asian airlines who have to fill seats on flight segments between USA and Europe, for example:
New York-Frankfurt: Singapore Airlines
New York-London: Air India, Kuwait Airways
New York-Manchester: Pakistan Airlines
New York-Stockholm: Malaysian Airlines
Los Angeles-Frankfurt: Air India
Chicago-London: Air India
Chicago-Frankfurt: Air India

Sometimes these airlines have amazing specials.
If you are afraid of nothing, you may consider Biman Bangladesh Airlines from New York to Brussels which can be booked here (http://www.airticketsdirect.com/) for 280 $+tax.