July 24. Before the selfies in front of the Eiffel Tower, the sunset meals on the Mediterranean and the breathtaking rail journeys across the Alps, there’s the small matter of the transatlantic flight.
For North Americans, unless you plan on sailing over on the Queen Mary 2 or grabbing a spot on a repositioning cruise across the Atlantic, you almost certainly will arrive in Europe on an airplane.
Even if flight prices stay high on average, there will always be significant fluctuation, and if you’re savvy, you can score yourself the least expensive flights to Europe available at the time.
So how do you find cheap flights to Europe?
Flexibility Rules
If you’re tied to travel dates, then the airlines have you right where they want you. This fact cannot be stressed enough: besides traveling in offseason, the number one thing you can do to save money on your next flight to Europe is to be open to a variety of arrival and departure dates.
Open-Minded Arrival
Europe is home to an incredible intracontinental public transportation system and you can use that to your advantage.
Broaden your horizons on potential entry points and you just might save big time.
Sign Up for Alerts
Time is money, so why not let someone else do all the searching for you? Many websites and flight clubs exist solely to find cheap flights and pass the word along. Sometimes, there can be «freemium» type fees associated with them, but each one operates a little differently from the next.
Book Budget
Semi-related to our second tip: buy the cheapest round-trip transatlantic flight you can find with a major airline and then connect to your destination of choice using one of Europe’s many budget airlines.
Go Incognito
Okay, so this one is a little more out there, but stick with me: many people attest to the fact that searching for a flight in Incognito or Private mode on your browser will help score you a cheaper flight.
Why? As the theory goes, if you repeatedly search for a particular flight on a website without booking it, then the site knows you are really intrigued and so then they might just raise the price on you, figuring that you’ll just buy it anyway.
Source: Travel Pulse
