Cheap flights to
Europe

Despite what you might have read elsewhere, there isn’t a specific day of the week or exact moment when airfare is magically cheaper to buy. What years of watching fares rise and fall has taught us, though, is that there’s a period of time before a flight when fares tend to be at their best prices. For domestic flights, it’s 1-3 months before a trip. For international flights, it’s 2-8 months before. We call this the Goldilocks Window.

The exceptions here are big ones, though. If you’re traveling during a holiday or a peak season, or your travel dates are set in stone and can’t be adjusted by even a day or two, we suggest you add a few months to the schedule. If your heart is set on a summer European adventure, you’d best book those trips the winter beforehand. And remember, airlines usually raise prices on tickets 21, 14, and 7 days before a flight, so book before those dates when possible.

One of our favorite ways to save money on airfare is something we call the Greek Islands Trick. It can come in handy when all the fares you’re seeing to your dream destination are giving you sticker shock. Instead of giving up, look for the cheapest flights to a different destination that’s close to where you really want to go. From there, it’s a matter of booking a flight on a low-cost airline (or a train ticket, or even a ferry ride) to where you want to end up.

We call it the Greek Islands Trick because it works so beautifully for trips to the Greek Islands, but it works on plenty of destinations around the world, too. If you want to take a vacation in Croatia from New York, you might be shocked at the $1,200+ cost of tickets. Instead, see if you can find a deal on flights from NYC to London, and then book a separate roundtrip ticket from London to Croatia on a budget European carrier. You might save $500 or more, which makes the extra planning required worth it.

Just as the Greek Islands Trick suggests you think about flying into a different destination to save a little money on airfare, this tip is about flying from a different departure airport than you might ordinarily use. We see pretty fantastic deals on airfare all the time, and they’re not all from the major airports—sometimes they’re from smaller airports that you might overlook.

Travelers in Philadelphia who want to visit Paris, for example, might be dismayed by nonstop fares that are $1,000 or more roundtrip. If you’re looking at more than one departure airport, though, you might find a fare from NYC to Paris that’s less than $350 roundtrip—which certainly makes the train trip into the city worth it.

You may already know that being flexible with your travel plans is a good way to save money—aiming for shoulder season vacations instead of the high season, for instance. Even if you can look at airfare options over a span of a few days instead of only having one day when you can fly, you stand a much better chance of finding a cheaper flight.

But flexibility isn’t always an easy option. The summer is Europe’s high season for a reason. The weather is reliably sunny, and that’s when your kids are out of school, after all. If summer is your only option, you may find cheaper fares in the first two weeks of June and the last two weeks of July.

And, if you want to take advantage of days when your office is closed, you might find killer deals on international flights over Thanksgiving weekend—most people are flying home for the holidays, not overseas. And, no matter when you’re traveling, try to avoid the days when it’s more expensive to fly (Fridays and Sundays) and aim for the days when it tends to be cheaper (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays).

We’ve been tracking airfare on a near-constant basis since 2013, and one of the things we’ve learned is that it takes time—sometimes a lot of time—to stay on top of it all. Luckily for folks who don’t look at airfare as a full-time job, technology has a solution. You can sign up for fare alerts for any itineraries you’re looking at, and then you’ll get an email when the fare gets into the price range you want to pay. If your plans are still flexible, just note that you’ll need to set up an alert for each trip option. Or? You can join Going and let us do all the searching for you.

Europe remains the most popular continent for travelers, so getting there from the United States is pretty easy. Major international gateways like London, Paris, Amsterdam, Milan, Frankfurt, and Munich are extremely well-connected to the US with nonstop flights on multiple airlines, and there are a number of smaller airports around the continent that also have nonstop flights from the United States.