I have read that flying open jaw is a good idea but was curious as to if there is a resource for finding good target cities to look at or if I just need to try every major European city to figure it out.
Hey Mark,
For the cheapest flights into Europe, I would recommend London, for flying out of the USA. This is, unless you are going to a place far away from London in Europe, and then I would recommend the largest airport in the area. This usually saves you money because you aren't paying a lot to travel overland, which can sometimes be more expensive than flying, depending on who you are flying with and how you are travelling overland.
As far as places online to compare cities, I have no idea. Do you mean which city to fly into in order to get the cheapest ticket? Well, to start, I guess, I would look at prices on travelocity, expedia, orbitz, hotwire, priceline, one travel, best fares, cheap tickets, cheap flights, kayak, sidestep, and airline's homepages. All of them, I believe, have dot com addresses.
Well, good luck.
Steph
The UK is usually the best destination for the cheapest flights out of the USA to Europe, but not always. Not just the 3 big London Airports (Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted), but also look at Manchester. Depending on where you are going to after arrival, Manchester and London offer between them, hundreds of destinations across the continent. Normally US airlines are cheaper than British Airways from the USA into Britain, but I believe BA and BMI have more departure and destination points.
Lot (Polish) can often get you from numerous USA and Canada airports to Warsaw, cheaper than a USA/GB airline into Britain and Wizzair fly right across Europe for just a few €'s each way including tax from 5 Polish airports, with connections to many other European countries.
Open jaw is not always the best option within Europe, as the the whole of Europe has the cheapest 'Across countries' fares of anywhere in the world. It's so often cheaper to get a return from and to the same departure point/destination and get further flights with European budget airlines.
I find that contacting airlines after you've seen a ticket price quoted by most agents, often results in a better offer being put up. It works both ways though, so get a price from both the agent and the airline directly.
What is more, for international flights out of the USA you should use one of the big intercontinental hubs. In your case this would be LAX in LA. There might also be good deals from Las Vegas.
The big intercontinental hubs in Western Europe are Paris, London, Rome, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. London is usually the cheapest, but coming from the West Coast of the USA prices to the other hubs can be a good deal. It all depends on which airline you fly with. Last year I saw some good offers on LAX-Paris with United for example.
Flying open jaw also depends on which airline you fly with.
Here is a list of all the airline hubs in the USA:
http://www.airlineroutemaps.com/USA/airline_hubs.shtml
To fly open jaw USA-London and Paris-USA (for example) without paying through your nose you'd need to fly with an airline that has a hub east of the Rocky's and flights directly from that hub to both London and Paris. (This includes codeshare flights.)
Codeshare is also a good thing to look at: it is much cheaper to fly into Amsterdam than into London when you come from the Northwest. This is because Northwestern Airlines cooperates with KLM (Dutch national carrier) on all flights within Europe and the Middle East. Thus flights from say, Salt Lake City and Portland, OR to Amsterdam can be cheaper than flights to London.
The big difficulty in your case is that you are flying from the place in the USA that is the farthest away from Europe, thus you are looking at relatively expensive national flights in the USA. Expect to pay around 1000 USD for a return flight to Europe, more in high season.
What is more, for international flights out of the USA you should use one of the big intercontinental hubs. In your case this would be LAX in LA. There might also be good deals from Las Vegas.
The big intercontinental hubs in Western Europe are Paris, London, Rome, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. London is usually the cheapest, but coming from the West Coast of the USA prices to the other hubs can be a good deal. It all depends on which airline you fly with. Last year I saw some good offers on LAX-Paris with United for example.
Flying open jaw also depends on which airline you fly with.
Here is a list of all the airline hubs in the USA:
http://www.airlineroutemaps.com/USA/airline_hubs.shtmlTo fly open jaw USA-London and Paris-USA (for example) without paying through your nose you'd need to fly with an airline that has a hub east of the Rocky's and flights directly from that hub to both London and Paris. (This includes codeshare flights.)
Codeshare is also a good thing to look at: it is much cheaper to fly into Amsterdam than into London when you come from the Northwest. This is because Northwestern Airlines cooperates with KLM (Dutch national carrier) on all flights within Europe and the Middle East. Thus flights from say, Salt Lake City and Portland, OR to Amsterdam can be cheaper than flights to London.
The big difficulty in your case is that you are flying from the place in the USA that is the farthest away from Europe, thus you are looking at relatively expensive national flights in the USA. Expect to pay around 1000 USD for a return flight to Europe, more in high season.
In that case, if you're in New Jersey or Florida, WestJet will fly you to the west coast for a couple hundred dollars. It may not be worth it but there's no harm in comparing, right? Here's the website, if you're interested: www.westjet.com
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