How to Fly in Europe on a Budget
Finding cheap budget flights on low-cost airlines in Europe is easy with Rick Steves' travel tips.
 |
| Budget flights can save you time and money, but beware of luggage restrictions and penalties. |
By Rick Steves
For most of my traveling life, I never would have considered flying point-to-point within Europe. It simply wasn't affordable. But today that kind of thinking seems so 20th century.
With the deregulation of airlines and the proliferation of extremely competitive discount carriers, suddenly Europe's vagabonds are jet-setters. More new no-frills airlines take off every year, and even some of the well-established carriers are following their lead. Before buying a long-distance train ticket, first visit a few budget airlines' websites to compare prices. You might be surprised. Even some major European airlines (including British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France, Alitalia, SAS, KLM, LOT, and Croatia Airlines), faced with competition from budget carriers, have joined the discount-airfare game.
Flight vs. Train?
With the abundance of cheap flights within Europe, travelers can choose how to connect far-flung cities: hop a flight, or ride the rails?
Flying can save both time and money, especially on long journeys. A cheap flight can help a light sleeper avoid spending the night on a rattling train. In fact, the availability of inexpensive flights is changing the way travelers plan their itineraries. A decade ago, it would be folly to squeeze Italy and Norway into a single two-week trip. Today that plan is easy and cheap.
But if you're focusing on a single country or region, and connecting destinations that are closer together, the train is still more practical. Europe's high-speed train network is getting faster and faster, covering even long distances in a snap. From London to Paris, the Eurostar Chunnel train can be faster than flying when you consider the train zips you directly from downtown to downtown. Train and car travel, unlike flights, keep you close to the scenery, to Europe, and to Europeans. Ground transportation is also less likely to be disrupted by bad weather, mechanical problems, or scheduling delays.
If you're environmentally-minded, you already know that the greenest way to move your body around Europe is by train. Taking the train leaves a carbon footprint that's 70 to 90 percent smaller than if you fly. For that reason alone, some travelers choose to spend more time and money to ride the rails.
Budget Airlines
Most of Europe's low-cost airlines operate user-friendly websites with interactive flight maps and straightforward online booking. To get the lowest fares, book long in advance. The cheapest seats sell out fast (aside from occasional surprise sales), leaving the pricier fares for latecomers.
Many budget airlines offer flights between major European cities for about $100, but you can find some remarkable deals if your timing is right. A tour guide on my staff recently booked an easyJet flight from London to Amsterdam for less than $50. Ryanair routinely flies from London to any one of dozens of European cities for about $20. And you might occasionally find it-must-be-a-typo promotional flights for less than $2. Even after adding in taxes and airport fees, these flights are a great value.
While new budget airlines are continually being launched, a handful of them have been around long enough to be considered old-timers, including easyJet and Ryanair. But there are dozens of other carriers (see below).
To quickly narrow down your choices, use a website that specializes in searching for cheap flights on several budget airlines: Skyscanner.net is the best, but you can also try wegolo and WhichBudget. Be aware that these sites may ignore some budget carriers, and might not check with the major carriers (which can offer just-as-cheap promotional offers); to find the right connection, you may need to search several sites. You can also try searching on the big-name sites (such as Orbitz, Kayak, and Mobissimo), though these are less likely to catch all the little, upstart budget airlines. After finding fares on these sites, make sure there's not a better one shown on ITASoftware.com, which supplies the search technology used by many airline and travel web-sites (though you can't book tickets through this site).
Many budget airlines have hubs, such as Ryanair, with a hub in Dublin. It can make sense to check fares with an airline that uses either your starting point or your ending point as a hub. For example, for a trip from Dublin to Oslo, I'd look at Ryanair and also at Norwegian, which has a hub in Oslo. Several Britain-based "leisure airlines" specialize in connecting the British Isles to Spain, Portugal, and other popular holiday destinations in southern Europe. If this fits your itinerary, try Monarch or Thomson.
Some budget airlines aren't as hub-focused, and even offer direct flights between cities they're not based in. For example, Air Berlin has extensive flight schedules in and out of more than a dozen different German cities — not just Berlin.
Europe by Air is another good budget resource (tel. 866-478-1810). They work with 13 European airlines, offering flights between more than a hundred cities throughout the Continent. Using their "flight pass" system, each coupon for a nonstop flight costs $99 plus tax (which can range from $50 to $90). Note that if you make a connection through one of Europe by Air's many hubs, you pay double — $99 for each flight to and from the hub.
Other budget-airline information sites — which have destination maps and recent airline news — include flycheapo and Attitude Travel.
When exploring low-cost airlines, be creative. For example, let's say you need to get from Amsterdam to Rome. After a quick search, you may not find quite the flight you need, but you discover that a low-budget airline flies from Brussels to Rome for $130). It makes good travel sense to take a three-hour train ride from Amsterdam to Brussels ($45 second-class) to catch the two-hour flight to Rome. The train from Amsterdam to Rome would have wasted 19 hours of your valuable vacation time, and cost you $325. The train-plus-flight connection gets you there in half the time (including transfers) for nearly half the price.
All of these low-cost European airlines offer one-way flights without a cost increase or penalty. Consider linking cheap flights, either with the same or different airlines. But be very careful to leave plenty of time for the connection — since you're on your own if the delay of one flight causes you to miss another flight. This is especially risky if that "other flight" is your transatlantic flight back to the US. If you're using a budget carrier to connect to your US-bound flight, allow time to absorb delays — maybe even an overnight. Advance check-in deadlines are strictly enforced.
What's the Catch?
With cheaper airfares come new pitfalls. These budget tickets are usually nonrefundable and nonchangeable. Many airlines take only online bookings, so it can be hard to track down a person to talk to if problems arise. (Read all the fine print carefully, so you know what you're getting in to.) Flights are often tightly scheduled to squeeze more flying time out of each plane, which can exaggerate the effects of delays. Deadlines are strictly enforced: If they tell you to arrive at the check-in desk an hour before the flight, and you show up 10 minutes late, you've just missed your flight — and have to buy a new ticket for the next flight. And, as these are relatively young companies, it's not uncommon for budget carriers to go out of business unexpectedly — leaving you scrambling to find an alternative.
Since budget airlines are not making much money on your ticket, they look for other ways to pad their profits — bombarding you with ads, selling you overpriced food and drinks on board (nothing's included), and gouging you with fees for everything, whether paying with a credit card, checking in at the airport, or carrying an infant on board. There are also expensive baggage restrictions. For instance, Ryanair charges a $50 fee for each checked bag (less if you pre-book online). If your checked bag weighs more than 15 kilograms (about 33 pounds), you'll also pay $30 per extra kilo. Don't assume your bag qualifies as carry-on — many budget airlines, such as Ryanair and Air Berlin, use smaller dimensions than other airlines. To avoid unpleasant surprises, read the baggage policy carefully before you book.
Another potential headache: Budget airlines sometimes use obscure airports. For example, Ryanair's England hub is Stansted Airport, one of the farthest of London's airports from the city center. Ryanair's flights to Frankfurt actually take you to Hahn, 75 miles away. Sometimes you may wind up in a different (though nearby) country: For example, a flight advertised as going to Copenhagen, Denmark, might actually go to Malmö, Sweden, while a flight bound for Vienna, Austria, might land in Bratislava, Slovakia. These are still safe and legal airstrips, but it can take money and time to reach them by public transportation.
Budget Airlines Within Europe
These are just a few of the many budget airlines taking to the European skies. To discover more, check out www.skyscanner.net, or simply Google "cheap flights" plus the cities you're interested in. Note that new airlines appear — and old ones go out of business — all the time.
| Airline | Contact Information | Hub(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Aer Lingus | US tel. 800-474-7424 Irish tel. 0818-365-000 |
Dublin (and other Irish airports) |
| Air Berlin | US tel. 1-866-266-5588 German toll tel. 01805-737-800 |
Multiple German cities |
| bmi (and subsidiary bmi baby airports) | US tel. 800-788-0555 British tel. 0844-848-4888 |
London (and other British airports) |
| Brussels Airlines | US tel. 516/740-5200 Belgian toll tel. 090-251-600 |
Brussels |
| Cimber Sterling | Danish tel. 70 10 12 18 | Copenhagen (and two more Danish airports) |
| easyJet | British toll tel. 0870-600-0000 | Multiple cities including London, Berlin, Paris, Liverpool, Geneva, Basel & Milan |
| Germanwings | German toll tel. 0900-191-9100 | Multiple German cities |
| Norwegian | Norwegian tel. 81 52 18 15 From the US, dial 011-47-21-49-00-15 |
Oslo, Bergen, Copenhagen, and Stockholm |
| RyanAir | Irish toll tel. 0818/303-030 From the US, dial 0871-246-0002 |
Multiple cities, including London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Shannon, Brussels, Frankfurt, Milan, Pisa, Rome, Stockholm, Barcelona |
| SmartWings | From the US, dial 011-420-255-700-827 Czech toll tel. 900-166-565 |
Prague and Budapest |
| Transavia | Dutch toll tel. 0900-0737 From the US, dial 011-352-2700-2728. |
Amsterdam |
| TUIfly | German toll tel. 0900-1000-2000 From the US, dial 0049-180-542-4140 |
Multiple German cities |
| Vueling | Spanish tel. 807-001-717 | Multiple Spanish cities, and Paris Orly |
| Wind Jet | Italian toll tel. 89-2020 | Catania, Sicily |
| WizzAir | Polish toll tel. 0703/503-010 Hungarian toll tel. 0690/181-181 |
Multiple Eastern European cities |
| For other options, consider airBaltic (Baltic capitals), Air One (Rome, Milan, and Turin), Baboo (Geneva), Blue1 (Helsinki and Stockholm), Blue Air (Bucharest), Condor (Germany), Estonian Air (Tallinn), Flybe (southern England), Helvetic.com (Zürich), Meridiana (Turin, Verona), NIKI (Vienna), Thomson (Britain), City Jet (London City Airport), Widerøe (Oslo), and XL Airways (Frankfurt and Paris; site in German and French only). | ||
Updated for 2011. For lots more tips, check out our best-selling Europe Through the Back Door travel skills guidebook.