Tips for booking cheap tickets to (and within) Europe
*Update: Norwegian Air stopped doing long-haul flights during the pandemic. But we have since found affordable flights to Europe with Delta (‘21) and Iceland Air (‘22). Plus, there's a new budget airline called Norse that we are itching to try. So, don't worry. You can still fly RT to Europe for $400-500 with a little effort & the help of Google Flights.
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I’m new to this and NOT a full-time traveler, but even I have purchased nonstop tickets to Europe for as low as $170 (each way + bag) — AND I’ve seen cheaper! I have gotten great prices with both round-trip flights (i.e. flying to/from London) AND flying into one city (Copenhagen) and out of another (Stockholm).
It does NOT require a subscription to a flight tracking app or email list, or any crazy-difficult research. I’ve just learned to follow a few basic guidelines:
Book with Norwegian Air. They’re a young, environmentally friendly, budget airline, based out of Scandinavia. My husband and I have flown with them lots of times now, and have always liked the planes and had an overall pleasant experience. They offer the best value that I have found, by far.
Book well in advance (4–7 months out). Note: Norwegian only offers so many tickets in a particular price-bracket, so buying early is generally the way to save (not true for every airline)!
Book during “shoulder season.” My husband and I always plan our trips for the “shoulder season” (i.e. April → early June or September → early October). This is the time that the weather is still nice-ish most places, the costs of flights and lodging are affordable, and tourist destinations are not quite as crowded compared to summer.
Lastly, fly out of one of Norwegian’s hubs. I live in Tampa, but flights out of my home airport are often limited and/or expensive. So, I search for flights out of Orlando or Ft. Lauderdale, instead. To us, the money saved (hundreds of dollars) is worth the inconvenience.
Booking with Norwegian Air
A great way to search Norwegian’s options is to use their “Destinations” feature, where you can see the lowest cost flights from your airport of choice to anywhere in Europe, any time of year. So far, I have only ever selected nonstop flights (the cheapest destinations consistently being London, Paris, anywhere in Norway, anywhere in Sweden, Copenhagen, and Barcelona).
Another potential money-saving hack is to make your purchase in another currency. This only applies if you have a credit card that won’t charge foreign transaction fees (if you’re traveling internationally, you should have one of these anyway)! For the current trip I’m planning (RT to Barcelona), I saved almost $100 purchasing in euros rather than US dollars. For our previous trip to London, I purchased in GBPs. Unexpected, I know, and probably not always the case, but it doesn’t hurt to check before you submit your payment!
To upgrade or not to upgrade?
We have NOT found it generally worth the money to upgrade for the meal, bag, and pre-selected seat package (though, one huge perk with this upgrade-option is that you CAN select the exit row for more legroom if you book early enough). We typically just add one checked bag (to share) and pack our own food for the flight. You may want to do it differently, and that’s fine! My philosophy is: 8–10 hour flights suck no matter what (UNLESS, like our friend Andy, you can sleep literally an-y-where. I cannot.). So, I just plan on some discomfort…and it’s all worth it once I arrive!
Traveling within Europe…
Landing at El Prat (Barcelona)
If you fly nonstop into a hub-city (i.e. London), you could spend 3+ days sightseeing there, and then fly literally anywhere else you may want to go for cheap. There are a bunch of budget European airlines to choose from too! We have used Vueling, Ryanair, SAS, and AirFrance with no issues.
Keep in mind that flying is typically the most annoying way to travel within Europe, due to the fact the airports are sometimes quite a ways out of the city, you have to get there an hour or two early to go through security, and public transport/an Uber to the airport will often cost you an arm and a leg. In other words, try to fly ONLY between long distances. My rule of thumb: if a journey on land will be more than 5 hours, that’s a good occasion to fly.
If you opt for train or bus travel between shorter distances, your future self will thank you. It is so much less hassle. You do not have to arrive early in advance to check a bag/go through security, and these stations are usually inside the city, saving you both money and time. Also, the seats are MUCH BIGGER and, on a train, you can move around!
Omio.com, Raileurope.com, and Flixbus.com are some easy sites to use for searching/comparing basic costs of traveling city → city.
A few words of caution…
Avoid super early flights, unless you can confirm that public transportation will be running early enough to get you to the airport. The metro in Copenhagen runs 24/7, for example (which is great!), but most don’t open until 5:00 or 6:00 am. A taxi or Uber is NOT the way to go if you’re on a budget, especially in the early, early morning. You are usually better off just booking a later flight, even if it’s a few more dollars. AND, you’ll get more sleep that way (again, your future self will thank you)!
If you will be using public transportation to catch a flight (or anything on a schedule), give yourself PLENTY of time. We have had several VERY close calls, almost missing a bus, a train, or a cruise due to delays or route cancellations. Plan on everything taking longer than you think it should!
Make sure that you buy tickets in advance! A sad story: the day we were leaving Florence to go to Rome by train (our very first time in Europe), we planned on taking a bus to the train station. We did not have bus tickets, because we assumed we could buy them ON the bus, as we had done coming from the train station just a few days earlier. But we were VERY wrong. It was hard to tell how wrong we were at first, since we didn’t speak/understand Italian. We thought the bus driver motioned for us to get on the bus, and assumed that we could buy the tickets from him when we got to the destination. We were in a hurried frenzy, afraid of missing our train, so we put our cash away and didn’t think too much of it. Well, as you probably guessed, the “ticket-police” found us out (we think the bus driver was in on it!), and we were fined 50 euros…each!!! *We could have bought the bus tickets in advance for about $4 each!* Boy, did that hurt! We didn’t have that much in cash at the time, so one of the policemen escorted us to an ATM in the train station to pay the rest of our fine. Once he left, Gabe (my husband) bought us some coffee and pastries for breakfast, and I cried of humiliation and disappointment. It’s a comical picture looking back — a truly classic, touristy, travel-fail!
Moral of the story: Learn the rules before you ride. Don’t ride any form of public transportation without pre-buying the right kind of ticket and validating it!!! I mean, you might be fine, but you also might “be fined” (see what I did there?).
I hope all of this has helped you to think through how to go about searching for low-cost tickets to and around Europe!
