abqandrea

I live in a non-hub city, and was wondering if there are general recommendations when planning a trip to central Europe as to which US city is the best to fly "out of" and which European city is best to fly "in to".

Essentially, are there US cities (Detroit, NYC, etc) that tend to have good options and good fares to Europe? For example, maybe flights from JFK-Paris are stupid expensive, but Detroit-Rome is awesome. That kind of thing. If I found an amazing fare out of some major city not my own, I could probably get myself to that city pretty easily with my SWA points.

Thank you so much!

Gamecock

I think it is fairly fluid and seasonal.

Best strategy is to follow the Mileage Run forum to see what pops up over there.

BThumme

Do you mean best by best experience or cheapest?

I've really enjoyed flying into Oslo and Zurich; you would need a connecting flight to wherever you're going, but it doesn't raise the cost by more than $10-20 usd.

skibum85

You can find deals in/out of Munich

Forrest Bump

Take a close look to flight in and out WAW and BUD.
But if you regularly follow MR thread will notice that often bargain fares (either mistake or not) involve FCO/ZRH/MXP/AMS etc.

fleedc

I see good deals on flights from JFK and IAD to CPH on a fairly regular basis.

AJCU

DEN to any of the Scandinavians are usually pretty good with iceland Air. It is pretty close for you. I just came back from a $700 ticket to Switzerland from Vail, CO which came out to 6 CPM which is not bad from a premium market.

chuckd

One constant is do not fly out of LHR. Taxes and fees generally kill any savings.

Kay_nyc

Follow the flight deal blog.

Right now, I'm seeing good fares out of NYC to Norway and Copenhagen. Norwegian Air Shuttle (? - not sure of the exact name) is offering low fares, and the legacy carriers are price matching. Last year, I saw good fares from the east coast to Istanbul, I think that was partially driven by Air Canada opening a route from Toronto to Istanbul. I still see those deals, but not as often.

So I very much agree with Gamecock - it is fluid and seasonal. If you keep your eyes on airfares for a while, good deals will stand out to you. A lot of the time, I see good deals when a new route starts up. There are good fares on the airline that starts up the route - and I also see good deals on competing airlines. Those fares to Norway and Istanbul are an example of that.

Domestically, I've gotten great deals to Charleston and Savannah in the last year. JetBlue started flights to those cities from New York, UA and DL dropped prices, and I got two weekend trips with flights for under $200. I paid $170 for my ticket to Savannah. Those fares used to be $400+.

ryandelmundo

AirLingus out of Boston to Dublin can often have great fares. If you can scrape together 12500 British Airways miles (or Chase Ultimate Reward Miles) that'll get ya there one way.

From Dublin it's a cheapskates delight on RyanAir, just remember you pay for everything except taking a leak.

There's only two airlines I've found that don't seem to penalize for one-way tix to Europe from the USA: AirLingus (usually out of Boston/NYE) and AirBerlin (I think from Miami).

lhgreengrd1

I got a taste of this when I tried to book an AA award ticket to either Lisbon or Madrid - all of the available flights went through LHR, and the taxes and fees for the "free" round trip ticket were in the neighborhood of $650. Scratch that idea.

sfx

Air Passenger Duty (the tax charged by HMRC, gov) is the same across UK airports. Rate table

UK Passenger Service Charge is set by the airport.

beachmouse

While award tickets are frequently messy going into LHR, paid tickets, while not as cheap as going into Dublin, paid tickets are often really not that bad. My Skyteam captive self can usually find flights cheaper into there than a lot of European cities unless someone's having a fare sale ala the fare war with Norwegian this year or Turkish's cheap routings through Istanbul in 2013.

My theory is that, while BA has a ton of gates at LHR, there's enough genuine competition for those flights into London that that airlines end up taking a slightly lower profit margin on that route per flight than some other common European destinations with fewer transatlantic options and hope to make up for it in terms of flight volume.

Wilzor

Also PRG is a cheap destination when it comes to ticket prices

EmailKid

From WHERE

I am making my fifth trip to Prague in five years, and I've ALWAYS had to buy (miles or ca$h) a separate ticket to Praha.

First was to BUD, and train to Bratislava and Praha, next three to MAD with separate flights on ČSA or Lufthansa, and this year DUB (Aer Lingus to PRG) which seems to have consistently low fares, and some of the lowest ones especially when a competing airline does a hub attack