Missing the Boat for Cheap Flights to Europe

Finnair is the cheapest? For Chicago to London? Really? What? No!

I've been looking at tickets for a long time. Finnair isn't cheapest. To anywhere. I don't want to get into the whole "airlines supported by government funds aren't exactly cutting fares to stay afloat" discussion. Oops, guess I just did kind of let the cat out of the bag on that argument. Sorry.

O.K. So forget about Finnair for a minute (yes, they are one of the oldest and safest airlines in the world, I know). $876 for Chicago London in the dead of winter on Tuesday to Tuesday travel is NOT Cheap Travel to Europe! Maybe on June 22 or July 4 or August 5, but NOT in November! OK, so we aren't seeming to find anything "cheap." from the midwest. Let's look at NYC London. There's always a steal out there.

Why can't we find cheap travel to Europe anymore? There are a couple reasons.

1. Consolidation of the websites. One used to be able to go online and see a battle of the big sites to get the lowest price. Now many of those sites (expedia, lowestfare, travelocity, priceline, to name a few) will pop up a window that leads you to "booking buddy" or any number of other comparison tools (kayak, etc.). They then ask you if you want to look at a site that used to be their sworn enemy or competitor! This "globalization" effect makes it seem like the best price is coming up over and over again. When, in fact, that price may be the price that is triggered by the cookie in your browser. Try to go in with a "privacy" setting on your browser and see if you get a different option or price.

2. Consolidation of the airlines. I give Finnair a bit of a hard time, but they are now part of the Star Alliance. They have sold their soul to one of the big groups of airlines. So Finnair is Lufthansa is United is Austrian. So most of the airlines have contractual agreements that they can't set their own fares without consultation with their worldwide consortium of partners. Even if British Airways wanted to run a special on NYC-LON flights, they couldn't do that to American and their other ONEWORLD (sounds really menacing!) alliance. So $849 is the best that BA will do right now. The good news? Icelandair has cut in on Finnair and beaten them by about $10.

One of the websites (already mentioned it above but won't single it out) is bragging about not charging you for "drinks on the flight" and for (drumroll!)... hand luggage. I read it wrong, too. I thought it said luggage at first. No. They still will charge for luggage. But not for carry on.

So they added luggage fees, they added a "fuel surcharge" when oil was twice it's current price and they never took any of those back. And now the fares are climbing toward $1000 to see the old continent, even on a hop-skip-jump flight from the East Coast.

How can you get cheap travel to Europe? Ask family members for tickets for Christmas (then it will at least be cheap for you). Whose family gets each other tickets for Christmas? Not yours? Well, not mine either. But it wouldn't hurt to try. Sing a song... All I want for Christmas is my two front seats.