Does anyone know of a good site to look for cheap (or as cheap as possible) intercontinental european flights. We’re planning to go to Europe this summer and can get over there from the States via miles but are looking to maximize our $$$ on flights once we’re over there. Probably looking to do 2 round trip tickets from Rome to Zagreb but will consider Frankfurt or Paris (instead of Rome) if it’s considerably cheaper to fly from there.
Thanks in advance!
My .02 says that the longer you wait to make a reservation the cheaper your tickets will be. There are all kinds of fair guessing sites such as:
You should look at.
You kinda need to look at the individual budget airlines websites as they don’t generally have availability through agents or other sites, it’s one way they keep costs down and keep the revenue for themselves. It’s been a while but examples were easyjet, ryanair, bmi baby etc. Looks like this site has lists of airlines and routes:
http://www.low-cost-airline-guide.com/
The main issue you’ll likely encounter (aside from bankruptcies) is that the budget airlines use smaller airports that can be a long way from the cities that they nominally serve. This isn’t always the case as some use the big hubs and these alternate locations aren’t always a problem anyway depending on where you want to be.
Oh, and with most budget airlines the first tickets per flight are the cheapest (as cheap as 10 bucks pretax sometimes), as it fills up and the costs are covered the price per ticket increases substantially.
Thanks! We still have some time before we nail down the trips but want to start figuring out itineraries and flight options. Very much appreciate the advice.
Ryan Air, the cheapest
Everyone is right about the low cost airlines, be aware that they will all now charge you for any luggage at all, you get one piece of hand luggage free after than the price starts rising.
We travelled from Dubrovnik to London last summer by car (rentured a rental from Dubrovnik to Split for Hertz for >$20) then by plane from Split to Zagreb (I think it was about $30 a piece on Croatian Airlines with no luggage surcharges), then we travelled by train to Venice, Milan, Torino, St Moritz, Zermatt, Chamonix, Paris and home.
Unless you have some compelling family reason to go to Zagreb I’d suggest Dubrovnik as an alternative.
Thanks. We’re actually doing a group tour through Croatia with REI and it starts in Zagreb and ends in Dubruvnik. Then heading on to Tuscany by ourselves so we’re hoping that by flying in and out of Rome or Vienna we can get cheap flights into and out of Croatia and then take the train back and forth to Tuscany. At least that’s the plan right now, we’ll see how it pans out at the end of the day. 
x2 on Ryan Air. I know it’s been a few years, but I used to fly R/T from Montpellier, FR to London for 6 EUR. Total.
I’m not sure there are any cheap flights out of Dubrovnik, I did not like Zagreb in the least but Split was ok, your typical eastern block city though the Diocletian palace was cool, Dubrovnik on the other hand was amazing. You could also look at ferrys out of Dubrovnik up the coast to Italy, we used the sleeper train from Zagreb to Venice and pulling in to Venice as the sun rose was one of the coolest things I’ve done in a while.
Unless there is stuff planned, once in Dubrovnik, I’d hit up the islands, the Jazz bars and head out for sea food down by the harbour at the southern gate, absolutely amazing…also you want to check out Barsa 1 and Barsa 2 which are two bars outside the walls right on the water and they’re big spots to hang out and just check out whats going on…
Absolutely one of my favorite cities in the world…
Thanks so much for the info. We both love trains so perhaps we’ll look into taking a train into Croatia. Might help give us time to adjust to jetlag as well!
about 70% of the time, i get a better deal than websites by opening up the travel section of my local paper and calling the 800 #s and negotiating a price with the travel agents.
i even once bought a non-refundable flight to brazil and had it changed to 2 months later…for free!!