Chapter 1: Hopping the Atlantic Without Going Search Crazy For some people, buying a flight is the first migraine in a series of walloping headaches that comes with travel. “Shoot me now!” they beg to the Travel Booking Gods, as William Shatner’s obnoxious Priceline commercial alter ego does cocaine-fueled kung fu chops in the background and laughs like a madman. Booking flights was never something I looked at with apprehension; in fact, I welcomed the challenge of finding the cheapest airfare between point A and point B. When I left my hometown of San Diego to study across the country in Boston I told my parents I would handle the ticket-booking process each semester—they handled the payment, of course--and tackled the many online booking sites with gusto. If you happen to be one of those people who would prefer to poke a nest full of rabidly angry koala bears (I would be curious to see what that looks like) or ingest PCP (also curious) rather than spend time trawling the internet for cheap airfare, you have my sympathy. Googling “cheap flights from Smithtown to Whoville” brings up a gazillion different websites claiming they offer the best deal, value for money, shortest layover times, etc. So I can see why a lot of people shrug their shoulders and stick with what they know best. I’ve conducted a scientific survey (which means I’ve asked my baby boomer parents plus assorted friends, family, and random people I’ve met on planes) how they usually book their plane tickets and if they feel they’ve put much effort into exhaustively researching potential booking websites. Most people go to the effort of shopping around a little bit, and they’ll compare a couple sites here and there, and the rest of them seem to rely on one go-to site. There’s nothing wrong with preferring a certain booking site—unless it’s the wrong one, and most of the time, it is. Here’s a really good hint that you’re not on the best website: did you see an advertisement for it? Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Priceline all have TV ads purporting that they offer the cheapest fares. Maybe they spend too much money on making those commercials, because their prices suck. I wish I could slap William Shatner’s face every 1|Nathan Mizrachi

time he does a commercial for Priceline, because he’s ripping off tens of thousands of people. Why are these websites terrible? Apart from over-inflated PR budgets, one reason might be that they have agreements with the major airlines and their partner alliances to only display their flights. Or maybe whoever is in charge for these companies figures people won’t care. Either way, fear not and cry no more: the search is over. Over the course of my adventures in Europe I have spent countless hours scanning the web for the best sites to use, and there is at least one that you should keep in mind. I know it’s not comforting to hear that you still might have to do some comparison shopping, but I’ve minimized the pain for you. Without further ado, our contenders for cheapest airfare booking sites are: Skyscanner, Google’s ITA Matrix, JetRadar, and Momondo. Depending on where you’re trying to go, one site might be better than the others, and I’m going to explain how; we’ll cover getting to Europe now, and revisit intercity travel in Chapter 3. For the sake of simplifying things let’s assume that you’re flying out of New York; JFK, La Guardia, and Newark have more direct flights to Europe than just about anywhere else in the USA. From there, I used one of Skyscanner’s distinctive tools for finding the absolute cheapest flight to anywhere: the “Everywhere” destination. Yes, that’s right: you can actually direct Skyscanner to look up flights from one distinct location (a city, a state, or even an entire country!) to literally the whole freakin’ world. There’s a reason that Skyscanner has been my goto airfare sight while abroad.

When I did this, the cheapest flight that Skyscanner showed was NYC-Oslo for $499. From there, I checked the other three booking sites to see what they came up with; then I added Paris, London, Madrid, and Rome on the basis of their popularity with US travelers. July 22, 2014 is more or less a random date, but I had two primary reasons for choosing it: 2|Nathan Mizrachi

1) July 22nd falls on a Tuesday, which along with Wednesday is the cheapest day to fly (and definitely the cheapest to book on) 2) I ran these prices about 6 weeks in advance. There’s a school of thought that says booking more than 60 days out won’t actually save you any more money; I’m not completely in agreement with this, but I’m more concerned with finding the best website than I am the best time of year to book, and it sort of takes into account the general spontaneity of booking one-way flights to Europe.

This is what the results looked like: 900 800

700 600 500 400 300 200 100

Skyscanner Google Jetradar Momondo

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Surprise, surprise: despite being the omniscient knower of all things, Google’s matrix finished dead last. Momondo had the lowest price or was tied for lowest every time but one, when Jetradar found a flight for $497 to London. So when you look for cheap airfare from the USA to Europe, I recommend using Skyscanner’s “everywhere” feature to search, and then double-check the price on Momondo and Jetradar if you’re feeling extra skeptical. Before we move on to the headache-inducing topic of intercity transportation, I think there are a couple of other super useful things you need to know about Skyscanner. That means it’s time for (drumroll, please):

Ch. 1.5: A Brief Skyscanner Interlude 3|Nathan Mizrachi

Like I said before, Skyscanner is my go-to flight booking tool, despite yielding slightly higher fares in search results on trans-Atlantic flights (we’ll get to inter-European flights in Chapter 2). Sure, the interface is simple to use, but that’s not why I love it. You already know about Skyscanner’s “Everywhere” feature; there are two more which will change the way you look for flights. One of them allows you to designate an entire country—instead of a specific city—as your point of departure or destination. The other one is so cool I’m not going to spoil the surprise for you. First we’re going to look at the departure/destination settings. You’re feeling adventurous and have your heart set on Italy, but don’t care where exactly you arrive; let the Travel Booking Gods decide!

Once you have selected Italy (or whichever country you’re interested in), click search. This is what happens next:

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Basically, this feature is awesome because it saves you the trouble of having to make multiple searches for different cities that you’re interested in visiting; it does it all in one shot. The amazing thing about Skyscanner is you can even make your departure point an entire country.

While it might not be so useful to use that particular feature when flying out of the USA—that flight from Los Angeles isn’t so appealing if you’re in Miami—when you’re in, say, France or Italy, it’s extremely helpful and in some cases will give you an incentive to pass through a city you might otherwise not have cause to visit. So now you know how to broaden your search for any conceivable destination; the next step is learning how to find the cheapest possible date to fly out. Before Skyscanner (BS) I used to do countless searches with various permutations within a day or week. I shudder at the hours I wasted BS, writing down flight costs and then going back one page on a search engine and changing the date before searching again. Thankfully, Skyscanner gives us an amazing tool that renders the old method of search obsolete.

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Oh. No. They. Didn’t. We have a few options here: we can find a flight today, tomorrow, a week from today, the entire month, or THE ENTIRE YEAR. Skyscanner has invited us to a smorgasbord of awesome flight savings and we shall feast. It’s pretty fun to play around with— let’s see what happens if we look for a flight a week from today (which happens to be June 5th):

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OK, so Milan it is. Let’s click on the fare for $609 to Malpensa and see what happens.

Whoa! $593! I thought it was going to be $609? One thing to keep in mind with Skyscanner is the engine is constantly looking for the most up-to-date prices (when I compared all the airlines in Chapter 1 I made sure all the entries were live, so don’t worry about the results being off) and sometimes they will change. But remember that we have Momondo to refer to when we decide where we’re going. Probably my favorite aspect of the Skyscanner calendar is choosing a whole month to fly out. Let’s go with New York to Italy for the entire month of August.

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Wow! Prices really went down a lot! But we’re not done yet—we don’t know when that flight to Milan is. When you click on a flight that you’re searching for a whole month, this happens:

The Travel Booking Gods smile upon us! Skyscanner offers a chart, which is a good start, but the calendar is what we’re really looking for:

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It looks like the two cheapest dates to fly are August 26th and August 31st—perfect for a late summer getaway. Keep in mind that if you’re looking for roundtrip flights a separate calendar will pull up when you look for the return flight.

So there you have it: all the tools you need for finding the cheapest flight possible from the US to Europe, with the flexibility to choose limitless destinations and departure dates. The Brief Skyscanner Interlude is over; normal programming will now resume.

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