christineshen

Hi All---This is my first time booking a trip to Europe. Any advice you might share to save the most money booking a non-stop flight to Switzerland, France, Germany or Italy for late summer (August 2016) travel time. I am visiting my boyfriend's family in Zurich and can fly into Zurich directly or any other near-Zurich European country on the cheap and find transportation into Zurich (train, bike, and/or drive into Switzerland if that saves the most money. I'm flexible, willing to do the research and have plenty of time to plan for a wonderful trip wherever I land first. My main goal is to save money and nay help would be greatly appreciated as I begin my search.

Thanks in advance! C

UAPremExecflyer

Welcome to FT!
A couple of things: FT is not a travel agency.
If you want to search for cheap airfares, try www.kayak.com, www.google.com or www.orbitz.com or www.cheapoair.com or www.priceline.com
Also if you want help, it's going to be easier if you say where you are traveling from.
Right now, I'd suggest go look at those travel sites and plug in your dates and see what fares you come up with.
Once you have some comparisons, folks here will offer their advice on your options.

FLYMSY

As you start your research for air fares, you'll start to learn the airport codes for the cities. For example, the airport code for Zurich's airport is ZRH.
Welcome to FT.

bhomburg

Monitor the Mileage Run Deals forum and jump when something cheap comes up.
But keep in mind that while the Swiss public transport system is excellent, it is not cheap. There are sales and special fares which can be a bargain, but they are unpredictable.
So carefully check out your options before committing to a cheap flight into Germany, Italy, or France (or Ireland, or Scandinavia, for that matter).

fassy

Next to what was already posted, what is your budget (for some $1000 is cheap, for others $200) and where do you start?

And why do you want to look for a non-stop flight? Flying with connections is the best thing you can do to save money. Direct flights in/out of the main hubs are always the most expensive ones...

David-A

Some general concepts:

How geographically close somewhere is to Zurich does not necessary have any correlation with the cost of getting to Zurich from that place.

If you can get yourself to somewhere well connected with Zurich (either by train, or perhaps by cheap flight, etc - hence it is really not location dependent).

You don't say where you are based, but look for cheaper long haul flights to various places in Europe, then look at where you see good prices to, and compare that to cost of getting to ZRH from there.

Also check where you actually ultimatly need to get to in Switzerland, if it is a distance from Zurich there may be other airports.


Switerland is part of the Schengen Area, this removes imigration border controls (but not customs border controls) when you travel between Switzerland and other Schengen Area places.

Accordingly, if you flew AAA - BBB - ZRH, where BBB was inside Schengen, you would go through imigration (passport control) there.

If on an official connection, you are protectedin the evnet of misconnects, if on separate tickets you are not.

So, if the goal is saving money, and you are flying somewhere else, make sure you have a good time window before your low cost flight to ZRH.

If booking fligths with different airlines, always look at their baggage policies and allowances. Don't assume common practices you might be familiar with at home apply, or apply the same way, elsewhere.

stut

Welcome to Flyertalk and the Europe forum, christineshen.

For ease of reference, I've modified your thread title so it uses the correct code, ZRH. Hope you get the answers you are looking for!

stut
Moderator
Europe Forum

christineshen

Thank you for sharing these resources and protocol for getting advice from the FT community. I will check these sites out now. Thanks!

christineshen

You are completely right. I need to be more flexible and consider multiple options in order to save money. I am hoping to get a ticket there for about $700-1000 for a single person leaving LA. Thanks!

fassy

Prices for August 2016 are not loaded yet. The airlines will load the prices about 330 days in advance.

$700 to $1000 during August will be a challenge. You will need to look for real rare promotions. I guess you will end up $1300 to $1500. It is imho not worth saving $500 on the airfare flying to e.g. MUC as the transport to ZRH may then easily add up that money...

Also regularly check http://www.kayak.com/flights/LAX-ZRH...08-15-flexible

And then select [] include near by airports for out- and inbound and vary the days by +/- 3 days.

MarLim

from most major German cities you find very cheap bus fares to Zurich, you could for example fly into STR if this would be cheaper and then take a bus directly from the airport to downtown Zurich for as little as 9 EUR

mimiray

Sorry to stray a bit off-topic. I did a general search for my question but couldn't find a thread with the answer. I'm flying JFK-WAW-ZRH. I'm laying over in WAW, so I arrive on 8/30/15 and don't fly to ZRH until 8/31/15. Assuming that I clear immigration in WAW on 8/30, I won't have to go through border patrol in ZRH on 8/31/15, right?

I only have carry on luggage, so will customs be an issue in ZRH? How long does the process typically take?

Most importantly, given the above circumstances, is it feasible to think that I could catch the train from ZRH to Basel BB and then the bus from Basel BB to BSL within 2 hours of landing in ZRH? I arrive in ZRH at 11:40am (God willing) and I would like to catch as Easy Jet flight to Nantes at 3:00pm (15:00).

Doable? Dreaming?

Thanks!

mimiray

Oh, and christineshen, you might want to look at LOT. Not sure where you're originating, but LOT recently had a really good sale to Zurich. Good luck.

greg5

You shouldn't have to go through passport control again at ZRH.

You will have to clear customs as Switzerland is not part of the EU. This is easy, as if you've got nothing to declare, you just go through the green exit. Even if the customs guys pull you to the side, you won't be there more than about five minutes.

If everything goes right, theoretically you could make a train-bus connection to Basel SBB and then further to BSL. But I wouldn't do it. You would have to catch the Zürich Airport to Basel SBB train a just the right time to make everything happen right. Direct trains run hourly at 4 minutes after the hour. It also makes several stops along the way. No train changes though. The train takes 1 hour 20 minutes. IIRC the bus to BSL runs about every 7-10 minutes or so from Basel SBB, it takes about 22 minutes to get to the airport. So, figuring in the time it'll take you to get down to the train station, and ticketed, you're already over 2 hours.

But if you miss the flight, EasyJet only has 4 flights each week BSL-NTE.

Alex71

The best TATL rates usually become available about 6-9 months out. It's best to subscribe to the newsletters of the different airlines and to jump onto a good rate as soon as you see it. Going through the hub of one of the competing alliances is usually the cheapest alternative.