Your transatlantic flight will probably be the biggest single expense of your European trip. Get it wrong and you’re starting your holiday £300-500 poorer than you need to be. Get it right and you’ll have that money for a few extra nights, a rental car, or significantly better restaurants.
The good news: cheap flights from the US to Europe are more available than ever. The bad news: finding them takes some strategy. Here’s everything that actually works.
Where to Search
Start with a search engine, not an airline website. You want to see all your options before narrowing down.
Google Flights is the best starting point, full stop. It’s clean, fast, lets you click forward and back by day to see price changes, and covers most major and budget carriers. The “Explore” feature — where you enter your departure city and leave the destination blank — shows the cheapest flights to everywhere on a map. For transatlantic travel, this is gold.
Skyscanner is excellent for finding budget carrier options that Google sometimes misses, especially for intra-European connections. The “Everywhere” search and the “Cheapest Month” view are both genuinely useful tools.
Kayak and Momondo are worth checking as cross-references. No single search engine catches every fare, and sometimes Kayak surfaces deals that Google doesn’t, particularly on codeshare flights and obscure routing.
Important: Use these sites to research, then book directly with the airline. Third-party booking sites (Expedia, Orbitz, etc.) can make it harder to select seats, add extras, or rebook if things change. Unless the third-party fare is significantly cheaper — and it usually isn’t — booking direct is worth the minor effort.
When to Book
Timing your purchase matters more than most people realise.
The sweet spot for transatlantic flights is 2-4 months before departure. Book too early (6+ months out) and airlines haven’t released their competitive fares yet. Book too late (under 3 weeks) and the cheap seats are gone.
Tuesday and Wednesday are still marginally cheaper days to fly, though the gap has narrowed. The bigger savings come from flexible departure dates — shifting by even one or two days can swing the price by hundreds of dollars.
Shoulder season is where the deals live. April-May and September-October offer warm weather across most of Europe at significantly lower airfares than June-August. January-February is the cheapest time to fly but the weather limits what you can do (though cities like Helsinki, Prague, and Vienna are excellent in winter).
Set fare alerts. Google Flights and Skyscanner both let you track specific routes. Set them up for your preferred dates and you’ll get notified when prices drop. Fares fluctuate daily — a route that costs $800 today might be $550 next week after an airline releases sale inventory.
Which Airports to Consider
Your departure airport makes a massive difference. The cheapest transatlantic fares almost always originate from hubs with heavy competition between airlines.
Best US departure cities for cheap Europe flights:
– New York (JFK/EWR/LGA) — By far the most competitive transatlantic market. Norwegian, PLAY, Icelandair, Aer Lingus, TAP, and the major US carriers all compete aggressively. Sub-$300 roundtrip fares to Europe appear regularly.
– Boston (BOS) — Strong competition, especially on TAP Portugal, Icelandair, and Aer Lingus routes. Often cheaper than New York for destinations in Portugal, Iceland, and Ireland.
– Miami (MIA) — Good connections to Southern Europe and Iberia. LEVEL, Iberia, and Norse Atlantic have driven fares down.
– Los Angeles (LAX) — More expensive than East Coast departures (it’s further), but competition from Norse Atlantic, French Bee, and budget options via Iceland makes sub-$400 roundtrips achievable.
– Chicago (ORD) — Hub for American and United, with seasonal competition from budget carriers.
On the European end, think flexibly about arrival airports. Flying into Dublin, Lisbon, or Reykjavik is often hundreds cheaper than flying into London or Paris directly. Budget carriers and discount airlines make connecting from these cheaper gateways to your final destination inexpensive.
Budget and Low-Cost Transatlantic Airlines
The transatlantic budget airline landscape has changed dramatically. Several carriers now offer genuinely cheap fares if you understand their models:
PLAY — An Icelandic low-cost carrier connecting US cities to Europe via Reykjavik. Fares from the US East Coast to European cities start absurdly low (sometimes under $200 one-way). The catch: Reykjavik is a mandatory stopover, which adds time. The upside: you can stop in Iceland for a day or two at no extra flight cost.
Icelandair — Similar Iceland-stopover model but a full-service carrier. Fares are higher than PLAY but include more amenities. The free Reykjavik stopover is a genuine selling point.
Norse Atlantic — Direct flights from US cities to London Gatwick, Berlin, Oslo, and other European cities. Barebones fares are competitive with the Iceland-via carriers.
TAP Air Portugal — Connecting via Lisbon, TAP regularly offers some of the cheapest transatlantic fares. Lisbon as a gateway works well if you’re heading to Southern Europe, Spain, or even Africa.
Aer Lingus — Dublin connections with preclearance for US customs (you clear US immigration in Dublin, making arrival back in the US seamless). Fares from East Coast cities are often excellent.
French Bee — A French low-cost long-haul carrier flying from a handful of US cities to Paris Orly. Base fares are very competitive.
Condor — German leisure carrier with direct US-to-Frankfurt flights. Good for reaching Germany, Austria, and Central Europe.
The Positioning Flight Strategy
If you don’t live near a major hub, a “positioning flight” — a cheap domestic flight to a hub with better transatlantic fares — can save serious money. A $100 Southwest flight from your home city to New York, combined with a $350 transatlantic fare, beats a $700 direct flight from a smaller airport.
The key is booking the positioning flight and the transatlantic flight separately. Don’t try to combine them on one ticket — the domestic leg inflates the international fare in the booking system.
Points and Miles: The Basics
If you have credit card points or airline miles, transatlantic flights are one of the best redemptions:
Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer to United, Air France/KLM, and British Airways. Economy flights to Europe typically cost 30,000-60,000 points roundtrip.
American Express Membership Rewards transfer to Delta, Air France/KLM, and ANA. ANA’s roundtrip booking to Europe for 88,000 points in business class is one of the best value redemptions in the game.
Airline credit cards with sign-up bonuses often give enough miles for one or two transatlantic roundtrips. A single credit card bonus can save you $400-800 on flights.
The details of points strategy go deep, but the headline is: if you’re going to Europe once a year, one travel credit card’s annual bonus pays for itself many times over.
Open-Jaw and Multi-City Tickets
Don’t assume you need to fly in and out of the same city. An “open-jaw” ticket — flying into one city and out of another — often costs the same as a roundtrip, and it saves you backtracking.
Example: Fly into Lisbon, travel overland through Spain and France, fly home from Paris. On Google Flights, search “Multi-city” to price these out. Sometimes it’s even cheaper than a simple roundtrip because you’re using different airline routings in each direction.
This also works with off-the-beaten-track destinations. Fly into Krakow (cheap) and out of Prague (also cheap) and see two countries without retracing your steps.
Mistake Fares and Deal Sites
Airlines occasionally publish fares that are clearly errors — business class to Paris for $300, that kind of thing. Most get honoured if you book quickly. Deal sites track these:
Secret Flying — Posts mistake fares and deals in near real-time.
Scott’s Cheap Flights (Going.com) — A paid membership that sends curated flight deals from your home airports. The free tier is limited but the paid version regularly surfaces fares 50-80% below normal prices.
The Flight Deal — Another deal aggregator focused on US departures.
The trick with deal sites is having flexibility. The best fares appear and disappear within hours, and they’re usually for specific dates you can’t change. If you can drop everything and book when a deal appears, they’re incredible. If you need to fly on fixed dates, they’re mostly entertainment.
Booking Within Europe
Once you’re in Europe, budget airlines within Europe make multi-country trips affordable. Ryanair, easyJet, Wizz Air, and Vueling connect European cities for fares that sometimes cost less than a taxi to the airport. But book carry-on only — checked bag fees on European budget carriers can double the fare.
Trains are often a better option for shorter distances. The train from Paris to London (Eurostar, 2.5 hours) or Amsterdam to Brussels (Thalys, 2 hours) is faster than flying when you factor in airport time, and often cheaper.
The Checklist
Before you hit “purchase” on any transatlantic flight:
– Have you checked at least two search engines?
– Have you tried flexible dates (shifting by 1-3 days)?
– Have you considered alternative airports on both ends?
– Is the fare on the airline’s own website roughly the same? (If so, book direct)
– Have you checked the baggage policy? (Some “cheap” fares add $60-100 for a checked bag each way)
– For budget carriers: have you priced in seat selection, meals, and baggage to compare total cost?
– Is an open-jaw routing cheaper or more convenient than a roundtrip?
The difference between a well-researched transatlantic fare and a hastily booked one is often $200-400. That’s a lot of dinners in Milan or Mykonos.