youranut

This is a general question that has been lurking in my mind for a few years now. Which cities in the U.S. would be the most advantageous (low fares) to be close to if you were interested in international travel? Chicago? Atlanta? LA? etc?

EmailKid

A lot of it depends on where you want to fly @:-)

SFO has some cheap fares to Asia, MIA has some cheap fares to Latin America and general NYC area has been known to have cheap fares to Europe.

Generally speaking, the more airlines that fly into an airport / areea, the lower the price due to competition.

But there are some hubs where it's hard to find good fares. I used to fly from Houston, but until Southwest started to fly to Latin America, those fares used to be very high.

Then work took me to Dalas where AA prices are high, but DL and UA will at times launch a "hub attack," and I scored some major deals to Asia and Europe

Right now there is an oversupply of flights from Vancouver, BC to Asia, so if you are in SEA you can fly from there, but I believe that with DL starting a new hub there there are some deals there as well (new hub, DL is not selling enough tickets, so I've seen them price very aggressively). Used to be folks in lower mainland (greater YVR area) used to go to SEA for deals, but it may be the other way around now.

LA has some low fares to Asia, Chicago is hub for UA and AA so there are deals from there, but Atlanta has only one major, DL, so that would probably not be the place to be. Lots of nonstops, but you probably pay "hub penalty," aka nonstop premium. Great if you don't have time, not so great if you don't have money

Big4Flyer

I'd say LAS is among the best for cheap domestic flights, especially if you leave on the weekends when all the planes are full coming in but few people are leaving.

OAK and SFO have been fantastic for cheap international flights with the low-cost long-haul carriers proliferating.

EmailKid

But OP specifically asked about Int'l

Don't recall too many to SFO, but yes, Norwegian is flying to OAK. And at least US airlines are starting to offer Basic Economy in order to compete on price.

Big4Flyer

Ever since WOW has started flying out of SFO we've seen sub $400 flights to Iceland, most of Scandinvia, Switzerland, and Spain. In the past year I've also seen r/t to China for around $320 and plenty of error fares i.e. New Zealand/Australia for $550.

EmailKid

Didn't know WOW started flying to SFO, but there does seem to be a glut of seats to China. And Chinese carriers have been known to slash fares .....

GUWonder

New York. Between JFK and EWR, I get lots of non-stop coverage to Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. It far exceeds what I would get out of IAD or ATL or ORD.

New York is to the US what London is to Europe.

SFO, LAX and SEA just don't cut it for me; but if Asia were the primary focus, then they do better in that regard but still end up weaker than JFK/EWR when it comes to Europe, the rest of the Americas, and Africa.

EmailKid

OP isn't asking about ease of travel, but lowest cost. I am assuming cost trumps nonstop flights. It does for me.

Then again, I've taken Megabus to Austin and Houston to position for a flight .... and most likely will take public transportation to YVR to position for my Asia flights ..... in Biz

youranut

Thanks for all the info guys. Cost does trump nonstop for me, at least when we're talking international. Non-stops are nice when you only have the weekend to travel though.

GUWonder

The more options/competition there are from an airport or co-city/co-terminal airports, the lower the cost of international travel on average. And the more non-stop flights there are from a given city, the more aggressively the one-connection and two-connection players compete on cost.

TravelingNomads

Definitely not ATL. I would say IAD, JFK and MIA for trips to Europe.

RustyC

Hate to say it, but I'd have to concur because ATL does not often get the deals that ORD, JFK, IAD, LAX, SFO and MIA get. I've had to do lots and lots of positioning flights over the years. Atlanta almost never gets the $500-600 Asia deals, and if there's a Europe deal then it's likely a short-lived hub-attack fare. Those used to be a lot more common, BTW, with 6 airlines, and some years you could wait around for something like an ATL-HNL RT sub-$300 on someone like NW or CO attacking DL. The miles also made it appealing.

If you have a pile of DL miles there are lots of possibilities there, but we know the DL program isn't what it was and you pay more to get less now.

OTOH, the ULCC presence for domestic and some international is surprisingly robust. You'd think NO ONE would want to set up where DL had its biggest hub AND WN had a fair-sized one, but Spirit, Frontier and (with a tiny toehold) Jet Blue are operating, with Spirit the biggest of those. The ATL-MCO route is especially chronically discounted.

Romelle

Living in Delta-dominated MSP, I'm chronically jealous of Chicago international rates (usually ORD, but occasionally MDW).

I sometimes can force a routing over CHI and discover a lower rate. Or even tack on a separate flight there and still save money over what I can do simply from MSP.

With Chicago roughly in the middle of the US, eastbound might not beat east coast deals, and westbound might not beat west coast deals, but both are still quite good. If one's travel plans are roughly split between the two directions, Chicago's serious competition should make it a good contender for advantageous fares.

danielonn

SFO OAK SJC.

I live 35_40 minutes from SFO ,20 minutes from SJC and 45-50 minutes from OAK so I can get the best domestic and international flights with a plethora of nonstop options.

KBellock

I live in San Diego and sometimes fares are much cheaper out of LA. For Travel to South America though I can go across the border and fly out of Tijuana for usually about half the cost.