Airfare is probably the most scrutinized cost of any trip. There are travelers that see anything that is hundreds of dollars and are scared off and other travelers believe it’s always several thousand dollars to fly and quit before it’s started. 4 round trip tickets, bag fees, food here, transportation there and suddenly, you’ve talked yourself out of the trip, again. Understandably there’s validity to those concerns, but with modern tools and services out there, the prices have never been fairer and accommodating to travelers. Whether you’re a solo traveler or it’s you, your wife and kids, there’s an affordable flight ready to take you to a dream destination. An important step to being able to stomach the cost of airfare is to relate what you’re getting for the money you’re spending. Let’s put a flight into perspective. Chicago to Zurich is almost 4,500 miles away and that airplane is holding over 300 people plus luggage and you can get there at times for under $400 round trip. To me that’s incredible. Compare that to Uber or taxi fares from the airport to get back into the city or home. For us, it’s $60 one way in an Uber for a 30 minute, 30 mile trip. Hoping that perspective piqued your interest and you’re considering to finally purchase those tickets. So, let me help seal the deal by sharing our airfare shopping experience for our upcoming trip to Switzerland, in the middle of high tourism season. The flights we were able to find are astounding.
A bit of background for our search. We are flying out of either Milwaukee or Chicago to Geneva, Switzerland or Zurich, Switzerland. Preference is always a direct flight, but we have no issues having a layover. Most of our flights have a layover, but we make sure to pick one that isn’t very short or super long in length of time and location makes sense for our trip. Having a 7-hour layover in Istanbul when we are heading to Munich is out of the question. Baby Fuller is traveling with us and will be 18 months when we fly, so she still qualifies to sit in a lap. Great for the budget but knowing a lot of you must pay for your child’s seat, we will have the perspective of paying for the 3rd seat. Now that we have our targets, I use my two favorite tools to start my research. Google Flights and Scott’s Cheap Flights. If you’re unfamiliar with Scott’s Cheap Flights, I welcome you to read our blog, “8 Pieces of Advice to Help You Save On Your Next Trip,” that breaks down their service. These are best way to save money on airfare, but also the most user friendly in my opinion. Now that we have our destination, the type of flight, number of seats and tools at our disposal, time to move to the results, starting with the Milwaukee search.
Milwaukee is a smaller airport, but much closer to our home. If you are patient and stay on top of your searches, typically just a daily search, you can strike a nice deal out of Milwaukee. Truthfully this practice should work at most smaller US airports. There are some negatives. You will rarely have a direct flight over seas and traditionally can be more expensive. The search started out very blah. Especially in the age of COVID, vaccinated travelers were JUST starting to be allowed in certain countries and demand was very pent up. As we searched, we were finding flights for $1,200-1,400 to either Geneva or Zurich. That is way too much, especially knowing that Chicago and Zurich have direct flights for typically a much cheaper price. Knowing this we were able to sit back and wait. Low and behold a major price drop out of Milwaukee became available. $600+ in savings per ticket, with only one layover. At the time, $625 out of Milwaukee was cheaper than similar flights out of Chicago. We were very tempted to buy, but knowing that it was early, and we stayed patient to see what else was out there. The global prices haven’t been set and demand was trending to be very high. To see rock bottom prices out of Milwaukee was a great sign of things to come and one of the reasons we held off, but they were still a very good price. To keep score at home, here would be the overview of savings and the best flights we found. For 3 seats, at what was roughly $625 a ticket compared to the $1,250 we found originally, the price drop would have saved us $1,875 just in airfare. Here are the best flights we saw out of Milwaukee.
Milwaukee:
American Airlines. Milwaukee to Philly to Geneva
- $625 a ticket for economy
- Typically, $1,200+ a ticket
Air Canada. Milwaukee to Montreal to Zurich
- $800 a ticket for economy
- Typically, $1,200+ a ticket
I know it’s beating a dead horse, but staying patient opened the doors for us. We have traditionally flown out of O’Hare when it comes to international flights. The drive isn’t too bad, just over an hour from the Milwaukee area and the flight options are more plentiful. To start, we weren’t sure how prices would fluctuate flying out of O’Hare. In fact, the cheapest flight we saw was the same flight connecting in Philly and arriving in Geneva that we found in Milwaukee but for $100 more a ticket. It’s another reason why we almost bought that Milwaukee flight. Luckily, we sat back, and several deals started popping up one, right after another. As more countries started opening to tourists, airlines jumped at the potential to collect much needed revenue. TAP Air Portugal, came in immediately with a round trip flight for $275. We’ve flown TAP. Despite a couple goofy ways of purchasing seats, it’s a decent airline. The planes are newer. You have as much room as you would on United, Delta, etc., they seem to just have rock bottom prices to bring tourism to Portugal. For a family of 3, that’s less than $1,000 for airfare. SAS Scandinavian followed with a $450ish flight. That’s under $1,400 to get your entire family overseas. Comparing this to the flight out of Milwaukee we almost purchased that’s over $1,000 in savings for TAP and roughly $500 for SAS in just that comparison. Liken that to full priced tickets which are normally around $850-900 round trip per ticket, the TAP airfare is over $1,700 in savings and SAS would be around $1,200 in savings. I also don’t want to make it seem like the TAP and SAS flights are flukes. These types of airfare are frequent. We’ve flown over to Europe for under $500 a ticket several times. We also found other flights around the same time searching that popped up, so here is all we found out of Chicago in our initial search, including an premium economy seat that was between $700-900 off of what the normal price could be for those.
Chicago
TAP Air Portugal. Chicago to Lisbon to Geneva
- $275 a ticket for economy
- Typically, $750 a ticket
SAS Scandinavian Airlines. Chicago to Copenhagen to Zurich
- $450 a ticket for economy
- Typically, $900+
Aer Lingus. Chicago to Dublin to Zurich
- $639 a ticket for economy
- Typically, $850+ a ticket
American Airlines. Chicago to Philadelphia to Geneva
- $650 a ticket for economy
- Typically, $800+ a ticket
United or Swiss Air. Chicago to Zurich
- $1,100 a ticket for a Premium Economy
- Typically, $1,800-2,000 a ticket
So which flights did we go with? The obvious choice would have been TAP. Any given day we’d fly TAP in a heartbeat and at $275 a ticket you’d think we’d be crazy not to, BUT with over a year of being sidelined we had a few extra dollars still saved up and we went with the dark horse flight of the Premium Economy, direct flight tickets from Chicago to Zurich. One, for it just being above $1,000 and us only having to purchase two tickets, we decided to go with the bigger seat and extended leg room. It’s Baby Fuller’s first long haul flight and having the added room and easier accessibility in and out for an 8-hour flight made it an easier decision. These are tickets during high tourism season that can be $2,000 a pop. So, to continue keeping score, with the mindset of being a family of 3. TAP Portugal had the cheapest airfare we are at a grand total of $825 for 3 economy tickets. That’s a $1,700 savings compared to an average price ticket of $850 round trip.
A couple tips to wrap this up. Use the modern tools like I mentioned above. BE PATIENT, which is the toughest thing to abide by. If you see that the flights around $600s out of a major airport, there’s a good chance it will dip below that. For us, this trip is unique, filled with unknowns about what travel would be like so we started looking at airfare earlier than normal. For international trips, I wouldn’t really start looking for flights until you’re close to 6 months out. If you want to get a lay of the land at 7 to 8 months out, knock yourself out, but unless you’re finding mistake fares into the low hundreds, hold your horses on booking. Two of our cheapest flights we booked were 3-4 months in advance. Next, if you can, build your days off around the airfare. If you can leave on that Thursday because it’s cheaper or fly back on that Monday because it saves you money, do that. Building airfare around designated dates can limit the ultimate savings you can find. Lastly, pay attention to the type of ticket you’re purchasing. If you’re okay with Basic Economy, great, but it’s a very limited ticket vs a traditional economy. Now that we have found our airfare, time to find a place to stay. Having been to Zermatt twice before we knew how expensive it is for lodging, so were quite surprised with prices we found and can’t wait to share in our next blog. Read Part 3 now! Hotels were how expensive?