How To: Get favorably priced flights to the US

For European destinations or flights within Germany, cheap tickets are almost standard. The low priced flights usually depart from small or mid-sized airports, especially to destinations around the Mediterranean. It all looks kind of different if you are flying across the pond to a destination in the US. The "usual" cheap airlines hardly ever fly this route. However, even for flights to the US there are a few tips and tricks we can offer you to save some money.

Since no general easy solution, the concept of price-conscious shopping applies - get as many offers as you can and - if you're not bound to a certain date - check other dates (or weeks) as well to see how the prices change.

You will almost always find a USA Special on one of the big airline companies' homepages (provided you start looking in good time!), that will secure you a flight at a lower-than-usual price.

So, our advise: check the homepages of Lufthansa http://www.lufthansa.com, Northwest Airlines www.nwa.com, Delta Airlines de.delta.com/, KLM www.klm.com, and Air France http://www.airfrance.com one after the other. USA specialist www.skybooker.de is also very helpful if you're looking for cheap flights to the US and also offers hotels and rental cars.

By the way, did you know that the cheap scheduled flights were invented by Southwest Airlines in the US in 1971?Ryanair was the first to adapt the business concept for Europe at the beginning of the 1990s. The reasons why a low-cost airline can offer tickets for less money than Lufthansa and others, are the following:

- No or very limited service on board and on the ground. You will often have to pay extra for the obligatory snack or coffee on board. Hence the name no-frills airline.

- Flights can only be booked via the internet or a call-center. Therefore, the airlines don't have to pay any fees to travel agencies, on the other hand, you do not get any independent advice.

- Only point-to-point connections, and those often to smaller airports with lower starting and landing fees. They are, however, also further from the center (e.g. London Stansted, Frankfurt Hahn, Milan Malpensa etc.)

- Higher productivity, meaning a low-cost airline has one plane flying the same route one or two times more often than a traditional airline.

- The low-cost airlines usually use only one type of plane in their fleet, meaning they have significantly lower maintenance costs than a full-service airline.

In addition, we have found some low-cost providers for flights inside the US for you:

- www.midwestairlines.com: point-to-point connections on the West Coast.

- http://www.airtran.com/: Numerous point-to-point connections on the US East Coast and from the main airport in Atlanta, you can get flights to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Cancun (Mexico).

- www.frontierairlines.com/: Currently, this low-fare airline is offering flights to 48 destinations in the US and 8 in Mexico. From the main airport in Denver, Colorado, you can get flights to several winter sports regions in the Rocky Mountains.

- http://www.spiritair.com: Cheap flights to and from Florida, Detroit, Chicago and New York.

Find more low-cost airlines on www.itravelnet.com/transport/lowcostairlines/northamerica.html

We wish you a pleasant flight. Have fun!