OK, flight mavens, I need some help. Because of a series of bizarre circumstances, I have a round trip ticket to LHR that I can use this spring. While I'm in Europe, I'd like to join a friend traveling around the world for a part of his itinerary, including Florence, Budapest, and Prague. Ideally, I'd like to fly LHR-FLR, FLR-BUD, and PRG-LHR or BUD-LHR, then hook up with my return flight and head back to SEA.

I've looked at the published fares and they are astronomical for one-way trips. My question is, what is the most cost-effective way to do this? I'd like to use Star Alliance carriers wherever possible, but not if it's going to cost five times as much!

Lion,

Have you considered Dresden (DRS)?

It is served by LH LHR-DRS with one stop.
Close by to Prague (2 Hrs by train).
And very nice in the spring to boot.

Just a suggestion.

Munch out!

I know the British offices of STA Travel and Campus Travel offer various air passes. Lufthansa, Air France and Alitalia are the main ones that offer these. Some of these are restricted to educators, students and ISIC card holders. Lufthansa would clearly be the best bet for you if you want to stick to Star Alliance carrier. Post a reply here is you want their details.

BA and British Midland also offer passes to the general public. Check out the business traveller site - they had a recent article on air passes recently. Their web site is http://www.btonline.com/cgi-bin/frontend.cgi?showlink~usbtonline~reports~100024~~

British Airways publishes an interesting brochure on its air passes - call them at 1-800-AIR-WAYS to get it!

You should also try contacting large London travel agents like Trailfinders - their web site is http://www.trailfinders.com - and Flightbookers. They may be able to offer you cheap one-way tickets.

Hope this helps ...

airpasses is the way to go (they are only available for overseas residents, not for europeans). Go to or call a LH-office - they have a leaflet with all the rules.

Also, have a look at some of the discount airlines web-sites:

-Easyjet (Luton Based)
-Go (Owned by BA, Stanstead based)
-Debonair
-Vigin Express

These can offer MUCH lower fares, although they are limited on routes and offer no frills.
Nick

Just another thought, I am not aware of a Budapest-Florence service, if the fare you looked at includes connections (expecially on different carriers) the fare will normally be very high - it may pay to look at the map and thing of alternative routings.
MF

Quiet Lion, The way to fly around Europe dirt cheap is to pair up your trans-Atlantic ticket with a visit Europe pass. For example, if you buy a ticket to Europe with Northwest, they will pair it up with a book of flight coupons to be used on KLM, etc. Each leg of a flight is one coupon. They are about $100 each and you can use up to 12 in one trip!

If Northwest does this, then maybe the Star Alliance carriers do it also. The key is ticketing the Europe pass at the SAME time as your trans-Atlantic ticket, in which case you may be too late. I tried to get one with Continental but they told me that they did not do the visit Europe passes.

Another option would be the EurAirPass--essentially a bunch of the low-fare airlines (easyjet and AB airlines among them, I also remember some AerLingus routes) have ganged together and for $90/segment you can fly them. They just changed their name (the website was eurairpass.com) but it seemed like a good way to get to some out-of-the way areas.

These are all good suggestions. YOu might want to consider this route:

LHN-Florence, then train it to Budapest then train again to Prague then take a plane back to London. This could reduce your trip cost somewhat.

I took the train between Budapest-Vienna-Vienna-Prague. It was not bad, But probably because I was in first class.

Just a suggestion.

------------------
CATMAN

Thanks...I really appreciate all the suggestions. I will look into them and report back!

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