Finding airfare deals to Europe: The gateway city strategy
— -- If you're planning a trip to Rome this summer, you're probably only pricing flights into Rome, and maybe flights to relatively close airports such as Naples, Florence, or Pisa. But did you know you could save hundreds of dollars by flying into another airport and taking an intra-Europe flight or train to Rome, or wherever your final destination may be? You might find a cheaper intercontinental flight, and you can also take advantage of cheap intra-Europe flights and rail tickets.
Of course, the strategy involves legwork on your part—pricing flights into several out-of-the-way airports and figuring out how to get from the airport to your final destination—but as airfares rise, it may be worth looking into before you book.
The cheapest gateways
According to data compiled by Farecast, London is typically your best bet for the cheapest flights to Europe, followed by Frankfurt and Amsterdam. This year, however, Frankfurt is actually cheaper than London for August departures, so be sure to look at both cities before booking a summer trip.
Historically, Rome and Paris are among the most expensive gateway cities, and so far this summer is no different.
Of course, these are general trends and may not apply to every departure city. Luckily, one of Farecast's features is an easy-to-use tool that will help you identify the cheapest gateway airports from major U.S. cities. From Farecast's homepage, select your departure city and destination city in the drop-down menu below "Graph Fares over 30 Days" and click "Go."
On the resulting page, you can add up to five cities, which makes it easy to find out which gateways are cheapest for your departure city in a given 30-day span.
Intra-Europe flights
Once you've determined which departure city is least expensive, head to WhichBudget.com, a handy tool for determining which airlines offer service to which airports. To use the site, first select the country you want to fly from and then click on the specific airport. WhichBudget will then provide you with a list of the airlines serving that airport from various cities.
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