cheap airline flights ()
The discounted fares offered by low-cost airlines allow Europe’s residents to travel affordably and often, and those who love travel and are new to the scene are delighted to discover the possibilities that have suddenly opened up to them.
In one’s search for the next distant horizon, the joy of finding a ridiculously cheap fare on one leg of travel is often tempered by failure to find a correspondingly inexpensive outbound or return ticket. Another issue can be the frequency of the route, with service offered only once or twice a week. Instead of jumping on that pricey fare or abandoning the idea of a trip altogether, pull out a map and get creative! Here are some ways to get there and back and perhaps even somewhere else in between.
Take advantage of different departure cities: Should your first-choice airport fail to offer the flight you’re after, cast your net further afield. Wiesbaden’s residents could fly out of Frankfurt International and back through Frankfurt-Hahn; those in Kaiserslautern or Ramstein can explore Zweibrücken or Luxembourg’s options; Stuttgart’s community can explore flights out of Karlsruhe Baden-Baden. If stationed in Vicenza, Italy, choose departures from Venice, Treviso or Verona.
Out on one airline, in on another: One-way fares mean you can commit to airlines in addition to the old standbys of easyJet and Ryanair. Condor serves various places Europeans enjoy taking their vacations, and Wizz Air will take you to some exotic and budget-friendly Eastern European destinations.
For budget flights in and out of Spain, explore Air Europa, Vueling or Iberian’s offerings; to get to or home from Portugal, try TAP Air Portugal; even Italy’s Alitalia has good offers from time to time. AirBaltic can have some tempting deals on flights to the Baltic states and Scandinavia.
Combine with bus or train: Fly to Milan to stock up on the latest fashion and avoid extra baggage fees by taking an intercity express train back home. Take an early morning FlixBus to any Swiss city, spend the day wandering and avoid exorbitant hotel bills by moving on aboard one of the bus company’s overnight routes. Fly back from your final destination.
Vary arrival and departure cities: Fly into Palermo, Sicily, for markets and royal castles, then take the bus or train to Catania and hike Mt. Etna before using that as your departure city. Fly into Bari, Italy, for its Old Town and the nearby beach resort of Polignano a Mare and then move on to the Baroque delights of Lecce before flying out of Brindisi. If traveling from Italy, fly into Frankfurt, rent a car and drive the Romantic Road before dropping it off and departing from Munich.
Don’t forget the ferry: Fly into Tallinn, Estonia, for the weekend, then take the hydrofoil to Helsinki and fly home out of the Finnish capital. Riga, Latvia, and Stockholm, Sweden, are two cities linked by an overnight ferry. Or island-hop through Spain’s Balearic or Canary Islands.
Fly back via a hub: It might prove possible to cobble together an itinerary with an intermediate stop in a hub such as Stansted in the UK or Dublin, Ireland. Some search engines are also notorious for throwing out a ridiculously long layover between legs; use your time in transit for a leisurely lunch in a pub just outside the airport’s premises or a whirlwind city tour on a hop on-hop off bus. Who knows, the place you never intended to go could end up being the highlight of your trip!
