Travel Hack: How to Save Hundreds on Your Flights to Europe by Buying Two Separate Tickets
Stop! Don't book that $1,000 flight to Lisbon before you hear about this travel hack that can save you hundreds on your flights to Europe!
Dakota Smith - Tue Jan 27 2015
OK, so you want to go to Europe, but you don't want to spend a lot of money getting there. What can you do? There are a few tips to get good deals on flights: you can check alternate dates, alternate departure airports and choose the best month in which to fly. You can also use this travel hack and a little flexibility to save hundreds on your next flight to Europe... by buying two separate tickets.
How can two tickets be cheaper than one, you ask? Well, because the first ticket is to an intermediate city and the second ticket is to your final destination.
Let's illustrate how this travel hack works using New York as the departure city, Lisbon as the destination and Oslo as the intermediate city.
How the travel hack works:
Flights from New York to Lisbon are currently selling around the $1,000 mark on TAP Portugal.
Travelers can instead buy a round-trip ticket from New York to Oslo for as little as $330 on Norwegian Air Shuttle.
A round-trip flight onward from Oslo to Lisbon goes for around $214 on Lufthansa.
By purchasing both the round-trip flight from New York to Oslo and the flight from Oslo to Lisbon, travelers can fly from New York to Lisbon for only $544 – a savings of $456!
And because it's two separate tickets, anyone taking advantage of the intermediate city travel hack can enjoy a two-city holiday for the price of one! Which is a good idea, actually, as it's smart to schedule a healthy amount of time between your connecting flight considering it's with a different airline and they will not be sympathetic should your flight be delayed.
Free international stopovers are another option to look into for cheap multi-city European vacations, as many airlines offer travelers the ability to schedule a stop on their connecting flights at no extra cost.
If you don't have enough flexibility in your travel plans to use this travel hack, there are still some things you can do: use Hopper's when to fly and buy reports to see the cheapest days to fly to Europe, the cheapest days to book your tickets and to see which airlines are the most affordable.