Finding Cheap Travel to Europe Case Study

OK,

Let's have some fun right now... We want cheap flights to Europe, right?

Putting the gateway city theory to the test, let's do a little case study on getting Cheap Travel to Europe :

I'm going on a travel web site to check for fares to London. Just pick your favorite for now... I may have some recommendations on best web sites in the future. But let's keep it neutral for now.

So I'm going online today and searching for cheap travel to Europe on a specific date with specific destination in mind and find some cheap flights to Europe if it's possible today. Hey sometimes it is better to wait for a sale.

Ok...

Let's say I'm from... Indiana and I want to take a trip from there to London, and I want to go in the Summer.
I go online -sorry that some of this will be super specific to today =( I see that Continental has a special on airfare to Europe. Wow! I can go for as little as $168! There's always a catch, right. Wrong! There are always several catches. Nobody is going to just GIVE away cheap flights to Europe. You're going to have to work for it. But I'm ok with that! The first catch is that it's from the East Coast, Newark. The second is that they are showing the one way fare, so I have to double it, but hey $336 is still a great deal, right? Catch number three (working our way up to catch 22!) is that taxes aren't in the price and the taxes and fees are outrageous especially since Sept. 11 fees etc. The final price for March dates is $406 Round Trip from Cleveland to London. The final catch is that it's a Spring sale and it won't last until June. May quotes are around $665 and June goes up to $882 before taxes, which will put me at around $1100. USD in summer from the East Coast. So I will have to find cheap travel to Europe somewhere else!

So I see that United is having a sale specifically on flights to Europe, so I go to their web site. Those stinkers want me to enroll (incidentally I already am but don't feel like looking up my numbers), so it takes a few minutes, but I finally get to the "book travel" page and I can begin to look for cheap flights to Europe. They are bragging about a good sale. So I work on a flight to London from June 10 through July 7, 2009. I try my gateway city (see Last blog post for the whole nine yards). In this case, I start with Chicago, the windy city and it blows me a $1293.20 not-a-deal. Cincinatti is $1327 and St. Louis is $1329. Louisville was even more, but Indianapolis comes in at $1096. including the taxes. Base fare is 718 and taxes are $378 (50% taxes?? Are we already in Europe?). Cleveland also comes in at that rate (though I'm not driving there, thank you very much, since Indy is the same. So maybe I look like a moron, but wait a minute. I check another gateway city, Los Angeles. Wouldn't you know it? It's $1141, almost $150 cheaper than Chi-town! Since Chicago is a United hub, this makes sense in the sick sort of way that alot of what the airlines do make no sense! So our cheap flights to Europe today are out of Indy and Cleveland.
Don't get excited if you are trying to get last minute flights near the summer and you find this post. These cheap flights to Europe have several restrictions and rules, so you DON'T qualify. I am using this as an example of the process to get cheap flights to Europe. The restrictions were basically, 7 day advance purchase by Jan 28 (today I believe) with a 30 day max stay and minimum Saturday night stayover. In my opinion, we can beat these rates, but it doesn't hurt to keep your ear to the ground. Play around and find a couple good sites that you can use when you are ready to book your cheap flights to Europe. That way you're familiar and have a password. BTW, I would just an email account for the junk mail like JohnDoetravel@yahoo or whatever and even sign up for updates on trip destinations (LONDON) you are planning to take and have them send you a heads up when there are what they consider cheap flights to Europe.

Now, here's where the fun begins. On one of the main sites (I'm still keeping it under my hat, huh?) where I know I can look up any flights, including cheap flights to Europe, I click nearby airports and see some flights out of Chicago going to Birmingham via Dublin. Now because I know a bit about travel within Europe and I'm going to get to that on this blog, but not today, I know that if I can find a cheap flights to Europe that arrive in Dublin, I can get out of there to the rest of Europe really reasonably as well. So I look at CHI to DUB and find a non-stop flight on Aer Lingus for my exact dates for $799 including the taxes ($679 + $120). That my friends is one of the best cheap flights to Europe I've seen in a while. And it's non-stop. Am I driving up from Indiana? At this point, at almost $300 cheaper, yeah (since I have friends in Chicago who will drop me off =).