How to Find Cheap Flights to Europe

Transatlantic fares move more than almost any other long-haul market, and the difference between a well-bought ticket and a badly-bought one on the same flight is routinely several hundred dollars. Most of that gap is down to a handful of decisions.

When to go, which matters more than anything

Europe's peak is mid-June to late August, plus Christmas and new year. Fares in those weeks are two to three times the shoulder.

The cheap months are roughly late October to mid-December and January to March, excluding the holidays. The best combination of weather and price is late April to early June and September to early October, which is also when Europe is at its most pleasant.

Shifting a trip by three weeks in either direction out of the peak is the single largest saving available to you, and it is bigger than anything a booking trick will achieve.

Be flexible about where you land

Do not search for a city. Search for a continent.

The cheapest transatlantic gateways are usually Dublin, Lisbon, Madrid and the big hubs with the most competition. Landing at one and taking a cheap intra-European flight or a train onward is frequently much less than flying direct to a smaller city.

Use a map-based or "everywhere" search on a flight comparison site to see where the fares actually are before you decide where you are going.

Open jaw tickets, into one city and out of another, usually cost about the same as a return and save you backtracking. Ask for them.

How far ahead to book

For transatlantic, roughly two to six months out is the usual sweet spot. Earlier than that and airlines have not released the cheaper fare buckets; later and they are gone.

Set a fare alert on the route the moment you start thinking about the trip, and watch it for a few weeks before booking. That tells you what normal looks like, which is the only way to recognise a genuinely good price.

What does not work

Some of the received wisdom is wrong or has stopped being true.

Clearing cookies and browsing privately does not lower the price. Airlines price by route, date and demand, not by whether they recognise your browser.

There is no magic day of the week to book. There is a cheaper day to fly, and it is usually midweek, Tuesday and Wednesday, rather than Friday or Sunday.

The low-cost long-haul question

Budget transatlantic airlines come and go, sometimes abruptly and mid-season. When one exists it can be genuinely cheap.

Two rules if you use them. Add up the total: bags, seat selection and food often close the gap with a full-service fare entirely. And never build a tight connection onto a separate low-cost ticket, because if the first leg is late nobody is responsible for the second.

If you are going further than Europe

Worth knowing: if Europe is one stop on a longer trip, a multi-stop or round the world fare is often cheaper than assembling separate returns, because it is priced on the shape of the route rather than on individual flights.

That is worth pricing up properly before you buy a Europe return and then start adding to it.