Thursday, November 5, 2015

High airfares to Europe in summer 2016 getting you down?

Yup, it's true. At this moment, round trip airfares to Europe from the U.S. West Coast are pricing in the $1,850 to $2,000 range on the major U.S. carriers. (This was actually the case in the summer of 2015 when one of our travelers paid better than $2,000 for a one-stop routing from Portland, OR to Munich with a return to Portland from Lisbon.)

Options? As of now the best deals to Europe from the U.S. West Coast appear to be on Icelandair. Icelandair's routings are showing up about $300 cheaper than the big U.S. carriers (United, Delta, American).

For example as of today:

  • Portland-Seattle-Reykjavik-Munich RT on Icelandair for June 14 departure and July 21 return in 2016 is pricing at $1,582
  • Portland-Reykjavik-Munich RT on Icelandair is $1,655 (using June 15 departure from Portland since Icelandair doesn't serve Portland everyday).
  • United Airlines for the routing Portland-Houston-Munich RT is pricing at $1,872
Icelandair serves the following U.S. cities with non-stop flights to Keflavik Airport (Reykjavik) from where connections are available to many European destinations:
PORTLAND, OR
SEATTLE
DENVER
MINNEAPOLIS
CHICAGO
BOSTON
NEW YORK (JFK and NEWARK)
WASHINGTON DC (DULLES)
ORLANDO
ANCHORAGE

You can check out options are Icelandair's website at http://www.icelandair.com/

Or use the ITA Matrix (Google-owned) at http://matrix.itasoftware.com