"How do you find your flights?"
That is THE big question. Whenever I talk about travel with friends or family, it's one of the first things I'm asked.
I'm not an expert on flight pricing and routing, but I have spent hundreds of hours researching flights and booking options for various trips. That is not an exaggeration. Typically, I'll spend anywhere from five to ten hours researching flights for a trip. Multiply that by about the 30 trips that I've taken across the pond and the hundreds quickly add up.
Here are a few things I've found along the way.
Plan Your Search
I've always dreamt of throwing a bag together, sprinting to O'Hare, and buying a ticket on the next flight to Paris. But with three kids, flying off on a lark is not logistically realistic and would cost as much as a compact car. My approach to finding the most economical flight for your trip includes:
Timing
Place
Flexibility
People
Determine your window of timing for flying.
The first thing you need to be aware of when searching for flights is Economics 101. Good old supply and demand are the main determinants of flight pricing.
Generally speaking and unsurprisingly, flights are going to be more expensive during the summer than in winter. It makes sense...Kids are out of school. It's summer travel season. Thousands of college kids are flying for backpacking and study abroad trips. High season means high demand for flights to just about every corner of Europe.
By contrast, January and February have some of the cheapest prices you'll find all year. Which is great if you want to ski in Europe. Not so great if you want to take a dip in the Mediterranean.
Several years ago, I was searching for flights and found a small (about 15%-20%) dip in flight prices the weekend before Thanksgiving. This makes sense -- for Americans, Thanksgiving week is the busiest travel week of the year, and most American families are going somewhere within the US -- which softens demand for U.S. flights to Europe for a few days. This makes it a perfect time to change it up and head out of the country for the holiday.
Personally, Thanksgiving is probably our favorite time to travel to Europe. Sights are much less crowded than during summer and earlier parts of fall. It's usually light-jacket weather in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. In Scandinavia, Germany, and Austria, Christmas markets are starting to open up. Check out a round-up of our favorite itineraries for a Thanksgiving abroad.
Another factor in determining the ideal timing for your trip is thinking about what kind of vacation you want. Want to sail the sunny Greek Islands? Then your window is May through September. Ski the Alps? Then December through March is the ideal time. If your trip is more focused on museums and historic sights, you can travel just about any time of year.
Where are you flying?
It would seem obvious that you are going to fly to the airport nearest to your vacation spot, but opening the aperture on your destination city options can save some money and provide some intriguing possibilities for your trip.
Google Flights and Kayak have an easy way to search by region or worldwide for flights departing your airport of choice. Using the map feature, you can zoom in or out to see approximate costs for your exact dates or by month/length of the trip. This has helped us identify options we may have overlooked and spurred some more spontaneous adventures -- Oslo in December, Slovenia at Thanksgiving, etc.
For example, in late 2021, we wanted to spend Christmas in Austria. Flights to Vienna and Salzburg were around $800 round trip. We found flights in/out of Stockholm, Sweden for half that price. We then booked a Ryan Air flight to get from Stockholm to Vienna and back for a $35 round trip. Yep, $35 per person round trip. Ryan Air is notoriously no-frills but it helped us save $2,000 on that trip.
On a different trip, we wanted to go to Italy but the cheapest airfare anywhere on the Continent was to Munich. We nabbed the Munich flight. After landing, we took the subway directly from the Flughafen (airport) to the Hauptbahnhof (the main train station), locked up our suitcases in lockers, and toured the town for the day. After an early dinner, we boarded an overnight train bound for Florence. Mrs. AK booked a sleeper car so that each kid had their own bunk bed. It was a great adventure. We got to see two amazing cities and countries in 48 hours, and the kids loved the experience of an overnight train.
Determining your landing spot is also where the supply side of the economic equation comes into play. Major hubs like Heathrow, Paris CDG, Zurich, Frankfort, Milan, Munich, Madrid, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Rome logically have the most flights and often will be the most affordable.
London is a wild card in all this too. Generally speaking, more flights from the US go to/through Heathrow than any other airport. Once in London, you can find hundreds of flights on low-cost carriers to hundreds of smaller cities across Europe departing from Gatwick and Stansted. But...and this is a big but...getting from Heathrow to either of these smaller airports can be a multi-hour ordeal. I do not recommend booking an overnight flight to Heathrow and then tacking on two-plus hours to get over to Gatwick or Stansted and jumping on a connecting flight. It eats up your entire first day of travel, and everyone will be zonked. Instead, if you find yourself flying through London, consider booking a flight on out through either Gatwick or Standsted the next day and follow our 1 Day in London itinerary to get a bit of British flavor to start your trip.
Also, if you're considering cashing in your frequent flyer miles to book flights -- beware that flights in or out of the UK come with costly fees and taxes. So your "free" flight will feel far from low or no cost once you take that expense into account. Many airline websites have advanced search features that will allow you to deselect UK gateways when searching for flights.
Lastly, consider your planned itinerary and research open-jawed tickets that fly into one airport and out of another. These multi-city searches tend to be a little more time-consuming because you must search for your exact dates. So if you're considering a number of different options, it can take some time. But that investment is worth it if you save yourself time and money on the ground. For example, this approach works wonderfully if you fly into Rome and out of Venice, hopping the train to get south to north. It's also a great option for Paris-Barcelona, Munich-Prague, Stockholm-Copenhagen, etc. You get it -- you don't have to backtrack.
How flexible are your dates?
Most flight search apps let you see prices for flights across multiple days. If you have the flexibility to leave on a Wednesday versus a Friday, then you could save big. When I search, I always include three days before and after my ideal dates for both the inbound and outbound flights.
However, you also need to think about how much time you want on the ground in Europe. For example, say a flight to Munich is $100 cheaper per person for leaving on a Sunday versus the Thursday before. Sure you can save a lot, but then your vacation starts three days later. Don't forget that most flights to Europe are overnight flights. So that flight to Munich means that your vacation starts on Friday or Monday respectively. Time is money -- and vacation time is the most valuable time to me, so I'd probably opt for a Thursday flight.
How many people are flying?
It may sound silly to think about the headcount in the family, but this can be a big deal. If you have a child that is under age two, they can fly as a lap baby instead of buying their own seat. That's an entirely free ticket! We've taken advantage of that policy for each of our three kids when they were infants/toddlers.
If holding a kid on your lap for an eight-hour flight sounds terrible, then look for bulkhead seats or back-of-the-plane options. Many airlines offer a "bulkhead bassinet" which is a contraption that bolts onto the bulkhead wall and can be your little one's crib for the night.
If the bulkhead bassinet isn't an option, look for flights that have open seats. Typically, if a flight has open seats they are going to be at the back of the plane. You are playing the odds that the flight won't fill up, and that you will have an empty seat next to you for your lap child. You could even book two seats on either side of an empty seat hoping that no one takes it. It's a gamble, but the payoff is more room and a better night of sleep on the way out.
Seeking out back-of-the-plane seats is also a consideration even if you have older kids. Having a little bit of extra room to stretch out can be essential for kids, tweens, and teens to get a better night of sleep.
Once you are settled on where you are going when you are traveling, your flexibility, and the total number of seats needed, it is time to sit down and start researching and booking. This is when the real work begins. As mentioned previously, Mrs. AK and I will invest anywhere between five and twenty hours hunting and searching for flights for a trip.
If you prefer to go for it yourself, here are my favorite apps and websites.
Tools To Use
There are dozens of great resources for finding and booking flights. Here are my favorites:
This is usually our first stop to research options. You can search by specific dates and destinations (such as Chicago O'Hare to Paris CDG) or keep it vague and search just "Europe" for a 1-week trip in July. Zoom in or out to see the options for different cities across the continent and quickly update your dates to get a general sense of costs.
You can also opt-in to track specific dates and cities to see how flight prices will change over time. Being a Google product, the interface is simple and the information is deep. However, I typically don't book through Google Flights. I use it more as an information source for my preliminary research.
This simple app lets you search, review, and book thousands of flights from hundreds of carriers. It has a clean interface and provides a color-coded view of the relative costs of flights day-by-day over a few months. I think it's supremely helpful to identify the best dates to travel if I have flexibility over a span of time like the summer vacation season.
Plus, Hopper offers $10 off the top of most bookings, and they have a loyalty program where you can earn points to redeem vouchers and bigger discounts in the future.
This site has long been a go-to for booking flights. Simply plug in dates and destinations to begin exploring. Kayak also includes a feature to see flight costs for three days before and/or after specific dates so that you can get a large grid of options very quickly.
Kayak groups flight options based on cost (cheapest) time spent in transit (quickest) and "featured" which is a blend of the two. Beware that Kayak will often lace together cheap options that can have crazy-long transit times. As an example, the cheapest Chicago to Paris routing at the time of this writing is a three-leg, two-layover doozy that is 32 hours from wheels up in Chicago to touch down in Paris. Sounds like a nightmare in the making.
That said, sometimes those cheap options that Kayak laces together could turn out to provide a cool layover. In searching for flights to Rome for Spring Break 2022, the best option was Chicago to Philadelphia to Rome with a 20-hour layover in Philly. We booked that option and explored the City of Brotherly Love before hitting Italy. It was like having two trips in one.
Another watch out for Kayak, Hopper, and similar booking engines is to determine your preference in booking tickets issued directly by the airline or by a consolidator. eDreams, Kiwi.com and Flyus are some of the consolidators that may pop up in your search. Consolidators or "online travel agents" as they more typically call themselves will often have cheaper flights than those issued directly by the airlines. In booking a flight to Athens, eDreams had flights on Air Canada for about $75 cheaper than Air Canada was selling them. We went with eDreams, saved $375, and had no issues. However, these outfits can be extremely difficult to deal with if you need to change your flights or face a cancellation. We booked flights to Paris with a consolidator in 2019. Covid shut off all travel for that summer of 2020. It took us more than a year to get our refund processed. Long story short, consolidators can save you a ton of money...but consider opting for trip insurance and a big dose of caveat emptor if you go that route.
This service offers seat maps and ratings on every flight and plane configuration that you'll ever see. The simple green, yellow, and red ratings of every single seat can help you steer away from seats that don't recline or are butting up against the bathrooms. You should check it out before you finalize your seat selection.
Once you are booked, Flight Aware is a great source for tracking your flight. This app will be especially loved by any aviation enthusiasts or data geeks in your family. Simply enter the flight number and you can see all kinds of stats and trends about your flight. Where does the plane originate? How often is it late? What was the total flight time of the last five trips of a particular flight? All this and more is on the website/app. It even has a route tracker map and provides real-time information on a plane's location.
Wrapping it all up
Ok. Got all that? Good :) That's 2,300+ words on how to book your flights. It's an investment in time and quite frankly, will probably be the least fun part of your trip planning. But once you are wheels up watching the inflight tracker...maybe with a glass of wine in hand...you will smile knowing that your next European adventure has truly begun.
Or make your life easier and have Andiamo Kiddo do all of the research for you.
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