Cheap tickets to Europe
 

I will be doing a San Francisco to Stockholm to Vienna to San Francisco trip in the spring. The best price I have been able to find is $1507.

Any tips for buying Euro tickets?

Re: Cheap tickets to Europe
 

I bought roundtrip tickets from SF to London for December 24th (departure) and January 21st (return) for $597 on cheaptickets.com

Re: Cheap tickets to Europe
 

[ QUOTE ]
I will be doing a San Francisco to Stockholm to Vienna to San Francisco trip in the spring. The best price I have been able to find is $1507.

Any tips for buying Euro tickets?

[/ QUOTE ]

First of all, did you check on less popular days like Tuesday for departure and return days? Also, instead of entering and leaving Europe from different cities, it might be cheaper to buy a roundtrip flight from SanFran to Stockholm, and buy a 1 way ticket from Vienna to Stockholm on a European discount airline (Ryanair, Easyjet, Wizzair, Snowflake, etc.) In many cases you get get a 1 way ticket on these airlines for under $100 (sometimes under $50).

If you go the discount route, you may need to research which airports they use (I think most Sweden discount airlines fly into Malmo, and Austrian discount airlines might use somewhere like Salzburg). Usually, there's a cheap shuttle betweeen the main airport and the discount airport.

Re: Cheap tickets to Europe
 

Eh, Malmo and Stockholm are at least a 10 hour drive from each other. Somehow I doubt there is a shuttle.

Re: Cheap tickets to Europe
 

I use a variety of tools to check for low prices, including but not limited to, kayak.com, farecompare.com, priceline bid checking forums, etc etc.

Also, on Travelocity you can do a flex search (if your dates are flexible by even a few days) to see on a grid what date combos are cheapest on what airlines, then go to the airline's website and mess with things there.

http://kelly.cybr.org/pics/2p2/travel.png

(click on "more search options" bottom left of this screen capture, then enter the range of months you want to fly out on. You can click on a day and it will look in the surrounding four days for the cheapest flight. You may not get exact dates, but atleast you will know when the cheap days for that airline might be)

If you are doing a multi city stop or open jaw, that can jack up a price quickly. Look for cheap stopover or on a flight in and out of Stockholm and fly another airline (hopefully cheaper?) to Vienna. I think United does a free stopover and I got a $11 6 day stop over on a flight to Bangkok via Tokyo on Northwest recently, sort of out of luck. Sometimes you have to call their 1-800 number and talk to an agent to get a cheap or free stopover with them, though.

As a final resort, try searching out of airports nearby. I think kayak will let you do this, try Oakland or LA? You might find better prices, and still be able to make it there on SouthWest or whatever other cheap carriers are around your area these days.

Re: Cheap tickets to Europe
 

Fly round trip into London and then do the rest on your own through low cost airlines. This will be less convenient because you maybe have to shuttle between airports, but if cost is your concern its the way to go. Also depends on how much time youre willing to spend on buses and whatnot.

For example you'll could go Stansted to Stockholm (Skavsta 2 hours+ away) and then Skavsta to Bratislava (just across the border from Vienna) on ryanair. A quick search shows flights available for both for literally pennies (plus taxes of course ~$20)

SkyEurope also has hubs in Vienna and Bratislava. Heres a full list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...irlines#Europe

Re: Cheap tickets to Europe
 

Your cheapest alternative might be what ChromePony suggested:
SF - LON roundtrip, plus two seperate tix, LON-VIE and LON-STO

but I think it is better if you buy one round trip ticket from SF to either Vienna or Sthlm, and then purchase a separate round trip ticket VIE-STO or vice versa.

Unfortunately you don't have the best low cost air connections between STO and VIE. Air Berlin does connect them with a stopover in Germany, but alternatively SAS and Lufthansa both have started offering fairly cheap tickets in an attempt to compete with the low cost airfares. The prices are reasonable, I flew STO-VIE-STO in Sept for $175, and have the same trip booked a couple months from now for about the same price. You can expect to get the roundtrip fare for about $150 - $200 including taxes.

Re: Cheap tickets to Europe
 

http://www.travelzoo.com/

Subscribe to the top 20 on here, they always have random deals for flights and cruises and stuff. Usually pretty cheap.

C-Dog