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  Airfare Booking Strategies

When you are flying internationally, the key flight is the one that gets you across the ocean.

Due to arrival of new discount airlines, transoceanic flights to Europe have dropped significantly in price. Prices to Asia have dropped due to increased competition from expanding Chinese airlines. Not only do the flights on these new airlines cost much less than what was common a few years ago, they have forced down the prices from more traditional airlines.

While it is always considerably better to fly directly to where you want to go, don’t be overly concerned whether a discount airline offers tickets directly to the specific city you want to visit in Europe or Asia. Once you’ve found a good price to get you across the ocean, you can often tack-on additional low-priced tickets as necessary.

1. Using Skyscanner to find the cheapest options to a specific destination

Skyscanner is the only tool we’ve found that lets you search for all the flights to a destination, such as all the flights TO Paris. All the other generally useful tools, such as Google Flights, Kayak Explore, etc., only search for all the flights from an airport, such as all the flights FROM New York.

Just enter “United States” (or “Canada”) in the From box and your destination in the To box and you’ll see the lowest fares from a variety of gateway cities. If you are building up a trip segment-by-segment, you'll usually want to use the checkbox to filter to the non-stop options.

2. Checking gateway cities one-by-one

The drawback of doing a simple search on Skyscanner is that you won’t uncover even cheaper flights that can get you “close” to where you want to go. If you are trying to get to Paris, it may be cheaper for you to fly to London or Oslo or Barcelona and then connect from there.

To uncover additional low-cost flight options, you can search all the flights from each likely gateway city using a tool like the Google or Kayak Explore map.

The set of cities to search depend on where you live and where you are going. For example, if you are flying to Asia and live on the West coast, you might try Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver. If you live on the East coast, you might add New York, DC, Chicago, Atlanta, and maybe Dallas.

Or if you are looking to fly to Central or South America, you probably want to try Miami, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Dallas.

Comparing that to your local flight options can help you evaluate whether it makes sense to depart from your own city or make your way to another city that has much better fares.

3. Directly checking each discount airline

Another approach is to directly look for fares from discount airlines that you know about. For example, you may know that Norwegian Airlines offers great rates to Europe, so you can see what is available on their website or by entering likely city pairs into Google Flights.

For example, here’s a calendar view of Norwegian Airline flights in the summer of 2018, from Los Angeles to Copenhagen.

Super low-cost carriers

A handful of airlines are pushing the limits on transatlantic fares. You can sometimes find fares under $300 round-trip from either coast. Often the cheapest way to get to Europe is to make your way to a gateway city for one of these airlines and take advantage of their rock-bottom prices.

• Norwegian Airlines. Flies direct to Oslo, Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, and Rome, and then onward to many destinations in Europe, often for prices less than $400 round trip. Smaller carry-ons are free, but with the cheapest fares, you’ll need to pay for checked baggage, $45 each way for assigned seats, between $10-25 for each connecting flight, and for any snacks or drinks.

Flights depart from Boston, JFK, Ft Lauderdale, Orlando, Chicago, Austin, Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco, although destinations vary for each departure city.


• Level Airlines. Flies direct to Barcelona, Paris, Vienna, and Amsterdam. Fares start at $400. You’ll need to pay extra for bags and seat selection, but you can utilize higher-fare options to get different bundles of additional services.

Flights depart from Boston, New York, Montreal, Las Vegas and San Francisco.

Unfortunately, the king of low-cost carriers, WOW Air, has recently gone out of business.

Other low-cost carriers

• Air Europa. Flies from Boston, Las Vegas, Miami, and New York City to Europe via Madrid. Prices to Spain start at under $500, prices to the rest of Europe are a bit higher.
• Aer Lingus. Has cheaper than average prices to Europe, via Dublin, from Boston, Chicago, Hartford, Los Angeles, JFK, Newark, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, and Washington Dulles.
• Condor Airlines.  Flies from many US Airports to Europe, via Frankfurt.
• Icelandair. The grandfather of lower-cost travel to Europe, it is now usually underpriced by more recent arrivals, but can still wind up being an inexpensive option, and uses some underserved US gateways. Flights go through Iceland, and you can add a stopover for free, or for only a small additional charge.
• Virgin Atlantic. Offers fares as low as about $500 to Europe via London. Gateways include Boston, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, JFK, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.

Low-cost carriers to Asia

The options for inexpensive long-haul travel are much worse to other parts of the world, although we expect to see much better options to Asia in the next few years.

• Tickets to China. An explosion of new routes by Chinese carriers to the West coast of North America, have dramatically lowered prices to China. These prices tend to be matched by other airlines as well.

• EVA Air. While not really a true low-cost carrier, this Taiwan-based airline has historically had the lowest prices to Asia from their gateway cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York.
• European Carriers onwards to Asia. The cheapest options to the Middle East, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia are often with the low-cost European carriers on flights that continue onwards from their hubs in Europe. These flights are inconvenient for people who live in the Western United States but can be a good option for people who live on the East Coast. 

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