Finding Cheapest Flight to Europe

It is too early to look seriously for flights. I would wait until 6-7 months before the trip unless you are trying to use miles. One of the cheapest way for you to get to Europe would be Aer Lingus to Dublin with a JetBlue connecting flight from Atlanta to Boston (JetBlue is an AerLingus partner). From Dublin you could make connections anywhere else in Europe. Aer Lingus has a nice feature whereby you can go through US customs and immigration in Dublin on the way home. I use Google flights for preliminary searches, then book directly o the airline website.

First, I wouldn't start looking this early because you won't get a good answer. I use http://matrix.itasoftware.com to track fares over a few weeks/months, depending how early out I want to buy the fare. You can also use Kayak. There are tons of variables that cause variations in prices even within the same day - so the more flexible you are in your travels, the better. That means the day of the week, the season (off-peak vs peak), the time of flight, the connections, etc. You'll have to play around with all the things you can change/vary from your end to see their affect on the fare.

The "most affordable cities" are the ones for which your airport in Atlanta has competing airlines vying to serve that destination (more airlines means less monopoly power to set pricing). You can look at major hubs in Europe to get an idea how many (and which airlines) serve that hub from ATL...major hubs are typically Frankfurt, London/Heathrow, Paris/CDG, etc. Also, don't overlook Turkish Air, it's a great airline that flies out of Atlanta. Hands down, I bet it will come in at the most competitive price although that low price may come with a long layover in Istanbul. It's always a matter of tradeoffs.

You're a little early to be looking for European flights for next year. Who knows what the future will hold for airfares.
You're right about ATL not having any budget carriers at the present time, and none are expected in the near future.
But you can often catch a cheap Southwest flight down to Orlando and hop a Norwegian Air Shuttle flight to London Gatwick, Copenhagen or Oslo. You'll still beat ATL's present fares to Europe. You could also easily drive to Orlando to catch the flight.
Last time we flew to Italy, we booked Norwegian Air Shuttle from Orlando and used their connecting flight out of Gatwick to Rome.

We're flying from Budapest to the U.S. on Norwegian Air Shuttle next month from Budapest--$238 each.

From my location on the west coast, I tend to choose between European airlines that fly through hubs in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Reykjavik. From eastern parts of the US, you might also find direct flights to Milan, Rome, Madrid, and more.

But the bottom line is that tickets to any major city in western Europe tends to cost about the same when you book the whole route on one ticket through one airline and its partners. Similarly, you need not return from the same airport, but can search for a "multi-city" itinerary, such as Atlanta-Amsterdam and Rome-Atlanta. If I test that request for some random summer dates, I find British Airways quoting $857, while their Atlanta-Amsterdam roundtrip rates on the same dates are $833 or $843. British does those routes with one connection each way, in varying places. Flying Atlanta-Amsterdam nonstop on Delta/KLM is more expensive, around $1100 for summer, but connecting home from Rome with Delta/KLM again doesn't add anything to that price quote.

Don't pick a rock-bottom roundtrip to a city you don't want to visit (and then especially don't visit it twice). Don't under-estimate how intra-European flight or train connections will eat up any perceived savings in ticket price or travel time.

See also more itinerary planning tips from Rick.

It was announced on the CBS affiliate on the radio over the week-end that Norwegian Air would start flying the SFO to London Gatwick route...fantastic.

I would highly suggest you start tracking prices with Google Flights. There are search functions there that will allow you to see which cities are the cheapest ones to fly into. (Use the map). You also can see flights out for about 10-11 months so that you can begin to get an idea of what the cheapest flights would be at any time of the year. I use this to gauge what the "best" deal can possibly look like, then if I find something close for my dates I am confident I have found a "good" price. For example, if I see that off-peak prices average around $600 and for my chosen dates (the prior year) they average $1500, I will feel pretty good about any fare below $1000 and will grab any fare below $800. Those are just example prices, so you get the idea.

I do not agree that you should wait until 6 to 7 months out. If you have a good sense of what a good price is, then you should start looking as soon as the airlines release fares (at about 11 months out). I found our last tickets for what I considered to be a phenomenal price at just about 10 months out. The prior year I bought about 8 months out and the year before that about 4 months out. The point is you just do not know when the best fare will show up, so do lots of searching on Google flights so you recognize that good fare when you see it.

Google flights will also allow you to set-up alerts for a specific route so that you will know if the price is dropping or going up.

Good luck! I think you are smart to start researching now.

Here in Chicago I always find Copenhagen and Dublin and all the way to Istanbul are cheapest direct flights to Europe.

Thanks so much for all this great info everyone... headed to Google Flights right now to start tracking :)

The cheapest flights are most likely the ones bought with air mile bonuses. Apply for a credit card with generous (50,000+) mile bonus, then use those miles with usually modest fees to buy a round trip ticket. There are a lot of things to watch for when doing this. So not really free, you need spend some time to research the details. Things like: bonus depends on charging $3-$5,000 in first 3 months, annual fees, extra fees to book flight, available dates to use miles for the flight. Here are a couple sites: points guy, million mile secrets, there are probably many more. If you have the time and patience to understand the ins and outs of these offerings, then you can save most of the cost of a flight. Just be sure you understand what the limitations are before you make too much of a commitment.

Fred, Is that non-stop?

I will second the Google Flights recommendation. I recently used it to find a $399 flight on Delta to Europe.

Our daughter lives in southern Sweden, so I have booked a number of Seattle/Copenhagen flights for her or for us. The Scandinavian cities are usually the cheapest to fly to from Seattle. Copenhagen has pretty reasonable flights to a lot of European cities. You can also check the flights out of Malmo, Sweden which is about a 30 minute train ride from the Copenhagen airport. This past February, the cheapest airfare from Seattle to Copenhagen was Icelandair.

Well, Susan, KCBS did not say it was non-stop but also made no mention of lay-overs. I don't know exactly but if Oakland to Oslo is any indication, SFO to Gatwick could very well be non-stop.

After my May/June 2015 I was once in this conversation and topic turned to traveling to Europe, a woman mentioned about having had a great trip roughly the same time frame as my trip, and she paid only $800 plus Oakland to Oslo, no frills, bare bones. She flew Norwegian Air, (can't recall if she said non-stop), I told her I had paid $1500 plus in Economy SFO-Frankfurt. on Lufthansa What struck me was that for the same length of trip, same time frame roughly, dep from the Bay Area, landing in Germany or northern Europe, she paid ca 45-50% less...a very good deal for her.

Fred, that's good news!

I just used Googleflights for the 1st time because of this thread. It's amazing. We just flew WOW so I went there 1st, then to Norwegian. On all three, WOW was by far the cheapest. But both WOW and Norwegian would not show flights for 10 or 11 mos out (when I want them). I had to look at earlier dates.

Dumb Question: if the ailines themselves are not showing that far out, Googleflights can't either, right?
ie, Info on Googleflights that far out is incomplete...

Keep something in mind. Where do you want to visit? If the cheapest flight lands in a city that's far from what you want to see, you may chew up quite a bit of money (and valuable vacation time) in-transit. If you settle for the lowest possible fare and it's in a location that doesn't interest you, do factor in the extra costs of getting to where you actually want to go.

I have occasionally found excellent fares 9-10 months out. Start tracking ASAP to get a sense and it's possible you will see a great deal soon. Or not - it's a roll of the dice, but don't hesitate on something spectacular because you think it's too early. Assuming your dates are set and you can afford it now, that is.

There is a downside to booking very early. You'll convince yourself you have certain flight times locked down and, low and behold, they can change multiple times by the airline before your trip (including substantial changes where you have to call the airline and rebook from scratch, although at no additional cost). I've had something like 6 changes once and one of them was enough to screw everything up, so I had to call and straighten it out. That doesn't mean that something like this won't happen if you book late(r), but the likelihood of schedule readjustments is higher over a longer timeframe.

I don't believe Google Flights allows you to purchase airlines tickets from them, it just sends you to the airline site to do the purchase. If a "cheap" ticket is no longer available, that means the price has changed and there was a lag in Google Flights in getting the up-to-the-moment price.

Google Flights does send you to the airline's webpage to make the purchase. What I have found is that by doing the search and planning on Google Flights you are given options that you may not find directly on the airline's webpage. For example, for the last open jaw tickets I bought, our primary airline is AA although segments of the trip are on British Airways and Alitalia. I could not find the same itinerary for the same price trying to build it directly on AA's website. I was able to add in all kinds of options including a 24 hour layover in London at no additional cost (since we were being routed through there.) It was cheaper for me to build it on Google Flights and then allow them to direct me to the AA website where my chosen itinerary was preloaded at the price I was quoted on Google. Plus, I had what I consider the bonus of booking directly with the airline and not a third party supplier.

I agree, if the airlines have not released the fares yet, then any fares you find more than 10-11 months out on Google Flights are incomplete.

The algorithm for Google Flights and Matrix ITA Software (another Google product) comes up with some really zany combinations when the flights have complicated connections. Some of those results can't be replicated by the airline website because they probably wouldn't work in the real world (due to incompatible fare restrictions and the like) and/or many airline website search engines only show a sliver of combinations when codeshare flights are involved - probably just the "most likely" combinations, not totally infeasible combinations. Google Flights seems to treat this as a pure math problem (computer just cranks out matches) and may not have all the "rules" inputted so its search engine treats everything it spits out as legitimate and bookable (when it's not). I hope that makes sense. I've looked at many results enough to notice they just don't work, or you'd have to call an agent to try to replicate the exact combination of flight numbers. With very straightforward flights involving one carrier, the results are quite useful and accurate most of the time.

mrp, thank you for answering my question, I appreciate it.

Let me say I am incredibly impressed with google flights and a huge thank you to you all for introducing me to this. I am floored at how easily I can find open jaw flights and how seemlessy it integrates with the airlines sites. I used to use kayak and it was a disaster. All the great rates were lies and half the time the price was wrong. Thanks again!!

Also there seems to be a sale going on the one world alliance carriers from Atlanta. May move my trip up to September the prices are so good. Atlanta to Amsterdam and then Rome to Atlanta is 1200 for three people. That's what I was seeing for just one person round trip.

I really like using one of the features found on skyscanner.com. You can punch in your home airport and then type "everywhere" in the destination field. Put in your dates and see what comes up! I found round trip from LAX to Iceland for $320 on WOW. It's fun to see what's available especially if you are still in the planning stages!

This year I decided to go to Normandy in September, rather than my normal pilgrimage in June. In November I found a non-stop on Delta for $600 (BOS-CDG), with a $100 rebate if I signed up for one of their credit cards (which I'll cancel before the first annual fee hits). That was 10 months out. Fast forward to February, and I see a non-stop on American in June for $370 (3-1/2 months out)! So for the price of one typical RT trip to Europe, I got two. And both are on major airlines with seat assignments, and free checked luggage.

Has anyone suggested a website called Farecompare? You can sign up and set your trip. You will get regular emails with prices for your trip.

If the cheapest flight lands in a city that's far from what you want to see, you may chew up quite a bit of money (and valuable vacation time) in-transit. If you settle for the lowest possible fare and it's in a location that doesn't interest you, do factor in the extra costs of getting to where you actually want to go.

Tom beat me to it, so I'm putting what he wrote in bold because it's so important. One poster here got a cheap flight to Stockholm (probably on Norwegian), but had no interest in Stockholm, or Sweden, or even Scandinavia; she wanted to go to Italy on that trip. She may have "saved" on her flight to Europe, but spent a lot of extra time, money, and aggravation getting to and from Stockholm to Italy - a very bad deal, in my view.

So, don't just look for a cheap flight to "Europe," unless you really don't have a more specific destination in mind. Do keep in mind that for a particular trip, you may do better using airports that don't get nonstop flights from the US. For instance, when going to the France, you don't have to fly into or out of Paris if that's not part of your itinerary. There are major airports in Nice, Marseilles, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Lyon, all with connections from various European cities (you don't need to change through Paris); that's not to mention smaller airports in the country that mostly get service from Paris and could also work (like Montpellier).

If you want to know who flies where nonstop from an airport, look at that airport's Wikipedia page. Here's the one for ATL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartsfield%E2%80%93Jackson_Atlanta_International_Airport#Airlines_and_destinations