How to get good flight deals?

February 10, 2008 4:51 PM

Need guidance to make travel plans from DC area to Amsterdam in a low cost way.

I have relatives living there for about 9 months or so and would like to take my oldest child to visit them (early teens). Ideally, the family of four should go but I think airfare and the euro vs US dollar would kill me financially. That said, we won't have to worry about hotels, but need cheap airfare and still have money to do some touristy things and maybe hit another country.

When I look online for flights, it seems like a good price then it doubles when fees/taxes are added. Where should I start to find a great deal? We can be flexible on timing as to when to go and would like to spend 6-10 days there.

Any other hints about travel would be great. It has been 14 years since my last trip overseas so lots has changed! (many of my searches here are turning up old questions/answers ie 2006)

posted by maxg94 to travel & transportation (6 comments total)

It might be cheaper to fly in to London and buy a ticket to Amsterdam from one of those consolidator places that pepper the Victoria Station area. I have always been able to get cheapo rates to other countries once in London. www.statravel.com has always had good deals for me. You might pay more if you are older than 26, but it is usually still cheaper than most other agencies.
posted by 45moore45 at 4:55 PM on February 10, 2008

Find the cheapest ticket you can to a London airport. Do not leave the airport, because you will walk back in bankrupt. Connect to a cheap, internal European flight from the same airport on EasyJet, Ryan Air, Jet Blue or whatever to get to Amsterdam.

Be aware that even for a 1 cent seat, you will have tax and ground charges to pay.

SkyScanner.net is one place to reliably look for good internal flight prices. I've never used them for international flights but they might have something.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:37 PM on February 10, 2008

I've had good luck with ITA.
posted by harmfulray at 6:12 PM on February 10, 2008

Ignore the above advice about flying into London, as there's a London tax (it might be a "fee" or a "tariff" instead of a "tax") that adds about $200 of unnecessary expense, even to many connecting flights. United and Northwest/KLM fly direct between Dulles and Schiphol. With other airlines, you can connect into Schiphol (I once flew US Airways via Philadelphia, and on another occasion flew Delta via JFK), or you can fly directly into other continental airports (Paris or Brussels would be your best bets -- pick almost any airline out of Dulles).

If your dates are at all flexible, sign up for the last-minute airfares email at SmarterTravel.com, and start looking at United's E-Fares (they also have an email alert -- but I've never signed up for theirs as their deals always show up for me in the email from SmarterTravel.com). United's most recent e-fare was $468 roundtrip. I'm also now a big fan of Kayak -- you can create fare alerts with different email preferences (say, round-trip to Amsterdam below $400) and any time somebody searches for a fare with Kayak that includes a matching result, it'll show up in your inbox the next day. It's not instant, but it's a great way to know the zeitgeist. Also, wherever you do your searching (and it's best to search multiple sites) remember that most international flights are most expensive on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Thursday might be in the expensive bin, depending on the airline and the season. For best results, do flexible searches and be prepared to fly Monday - Thursday, with a Saturday layover (which should be a natural anyway since you want to stay 6-10 days).

There used to be another cheap connecting option, with Icelandair out of BWI via Reykjavik (usually with a stopover on one leg), but they've ceased operations in Baltimore. So much for that idea.

I used to fly to Schiphol once or twice a year (once during the Christmas season, and maybe once more in the spring or fall). The trick is to check fares regularly and to buy either way in advance or at the last minute. The best fare I ever got was around $260 roundtrip, the mode (most common) best fare was probably $360 or so, and the best I was able to find the last time I flew into AMS (before my sister moved to England) was about $425, due to higher fuel costs and more dedicated attempts by airlines to be profitable.

If you want to do anything complicated like arrive in one airport and depart from another, your best bet is to call a travel agent. Now that everybody has access to internet fares with all their restrictions, travel agents are really proving themselves with their ability to solve oddball problems.
posted by fedward at 10:35 PM on February 10, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

We live in London but are in Amsterdam once a month, and generally get tickets for twenty pounds or less; with taxes / fees / etc return flights cost us a little under one hundred pounds each. We've booked as little as one week before departure but the cheap seats go fast. These days we're flying VLM, but KLM prices are similar.

As we live in The East End, we fly out of London City Airport. You might pay more flying from Heathrow or Gatwick to Schiphol but as you wanted to visit a second country this would be a perfect itinerary - take your transatlantic flight into one of the huge airports, spend a few days in England then leave from a relatively small (and hassle free) airport for chapter two of your holiday in The Netherlands.
posted by Mutant at 12:24 AM on February 11, 2008

Looking briefly at the flight options it seems that Dulles is your biggest cost problem.

Leave from JFK or Newark instead. Continental, for example, flies to almost every airport in the UK and Ireland and you can get an onward flight to Amsterdam for pennies from almost all of them. Don't fly to Heathrow. Dublin's a good option. Looks like you can do that trip for about USD500 inclusive.

Bear in mind, too, that there's more than two ways to skin this particular cat. Amsterdam is served by nice, clean, punctual and fast trains arriving from a number of other nearby cities with airports, including Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris-CDG.

Hell, you can get there by train from London in three and a half hours these days (change at Brussels-Midi), which is rather less time than flying'd take once you factor in getting to and from the airports and all the endless waiting around. Eurostar has offers from London sometimes: a couple of years ago, all destinations in the Netherlands used to cost your fare to Brussels plus £7.

But if you don't fancy plugging variables together, Newark-Dublin-Amsterdam is probably the cheapest flight option. Don't book a connecting flight - get to Europe on one ticket, and go to a no-frills service (Ryanair, Easyjet, BMIbaby, Aer Lingus [in Europe it's cheap these days], Aer Arann, Globespan) for the last hop.
posted by genghis at 8:20 AM on February 13, 2008