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- iHaveNet.com: Travel
By Ed Perkins
With peak season airfares to Europe hitting the stratosphere, many of you are asking if any low-fare airlines offer some real price competition. The answer is that, at least so far, the offerings are meager, indeed: very limited routes and underwhelming fare breaks. As of mid-March, only four low-fare airlines have planned transatlantic flights from the United States this summer. I checked fares for a two-week round-trip starting mid-June:
--
-- Iceland Express is a new line that will fly from Newark to Reykjavik, then connect to several popular destinations. It is pitching "London for $275 each way," but the best London prices I could find for late June started at $785 round-trip. It flies 737s -- a very uncomfortable plane for an overnight flight. Flights to Reykjavik will operate three days a week. Big-line nonstops to London for that time start at about $900.
-- Meridiana Fly (www.meridiana.it/en) is another merger product, having absorbed
-- Sun Country (www.suncountry.com), a domestic low-fare line, will fly from its Minneapolis base to London/Stansted once weekly during the summer. Because the line's 737s can't make the trip nonstop, they'll make pit stops at Gander, Newfoundland, in both directions. The round-trip fare for my test period is $936. Big-line Minneapolis nonstops start at around $1,370, with one-stops available for $1280 on
Sun Country's promotion is interesting. As an old-timer, I remember the days when almost all transatlantic flights refueled at Gander or Goose Bay, Labrador -- many at Shannon, Ireland too. An early line to fly nonstop even advertised, "No Goose, no Gander." My first crossing on a PanAm 707-120 stopped at Gander.
More significant, however, is Sun Country's pitch for Stansted as a great airport to connect onward into the Continent because of its many low-fare flights on
© Ed Perkins
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Travel | Europe 2010: Low Fare Airline to Europe? Sort Of