Hello I am looking to plan a Summer/Fall 2015 trip to Europe. In an effort to expand my travel options, and possibly reduce cost, I wanted to look at city destinations other than London or Paris for flights from the USA. Possibly even flying through an East coast Canadian city is an option. I assume some air flight websites may do this automatically but if you have any ideas on this please advise!
Thanks in advance,
Rob
Check out AirTransat from Montreal or Toronto.
JFK to Milan has some very good pricing recently for much of the remainder of 2015. Check on google flights. Less than $700 pp in September.
You might try Kayak.com In the black banner on the top, in the right hand corner is a little checkerboard square. Click on that, and choose "Explore". You can then enter your departure city and choose the time you wish to depart to get an idea of where you can fly for how much. I don't know how accurate it is...I can rarely find the 'fantastic low rates' anyone advertises once I start searching, but it might be a beginning. Good luck.
Rob,
Your airport options will probably depend on your destination in Europe. Some airports have frequent flights to some locations, but not to other popular spots in Europe. For example, you'll likely find good flight options from Toronto to Rome or Montreal to Paris. Air Canada has the greatest number of possibilities, however in some cases they transport passengers to a major hub (ie: Frankfurt) and then use one of their Star Alliance partners for the final leg.
Air Transat mostly operates seasonal flights to Europe, but switch to the sun destinations (Cuba, Dominican Republic, etc.) in the fall. Whether you'll be able to use them will depend on "when" in Fall 2015 you plan on travelling. They offer flights to some less visited locations such as Lamezia-Terme in southern Italy, if that's of interest. Also, A.T. typically only offers flights one day per week to some locations, so your travel schedule would have to be somewhat flexible.
WestJet is now offering seasonal flights (beginning 1 May, I believe) to Dublin or Glasgow from St. John's, Newfoundland. At the present time, they'll be using newer generation 737's on that route, but they have some 757's on order so will probably be using those on Europe routes in future. WJ offers connecting flights from many parts of Canada to St. John's. As I recall, they do fly to Arizona and points in the south, but under the current rules I don't think they're able to sell tickets originating there.
There are LOTS of possibilities!
From western Colorado, I often find that the cheapest places to fly are Frankfurt, Zurich or Geneva. One year it was Brussels, another year Nice. Sometimes I find the cheapest airfare and then plan the trip from there! Paris is usually among the most expensive from here.
Let's see. From Phoenix, you have direct (non-stop) flights to London Heathrow on British Airways and that's about it.
You could fly Southwest over to LAX for about $200 round trip, and then take the very budget air carrier, Norwegian Air Shuttle, to Europe. They can get you to many places through connections in London-Gatwick, Copenhagen or Oslo. From Gatwick, EasyJet can also get you cheap to virtually anywhere in Europe, too.
If you can reposition yourself to one of their North American departures cities cheaply-
Icelandair
Wow Air (Iceland discount carrier) they go out of BWI, so may be possible to reposition to there cheaply on Southwest
Norwegian- often quite cheap to Oslo and Copenhagen Just note that Oslo is quite expensive once you get there and pick up another LCC flight to your final European destination
Turkish- occasionally runs specials that connect through Istanbul which can be helpful if you're thinking Southeastern Europe (Italy, Greece, the Balkans)
From PHX the only non stop flight directly to Europe is, I think, to LHR with British Airways.
That would be my first choice to any destination in Europe, unless going through an extra stop saves me a lot of dinero.
Thank you all for the excellent advice! I am working on using all the websites/apps, ideas, etc to help my travel planning.
Rob
Don't overlook Turkish Airlines-we just returned from going to Paris and Provence and 3 days in Istanbul at a cost of $832 each RT from IAD to CDG through IST. You can fly from PHX or LAX with them.
The savings over a U.S. carrier paid for our 6 day apartment stay in Paris.
