Travel 2019 – Can We Fly to Europe for $99?

I wrote previously about how 2019 is going to be a big travel year for us, after our younger child goes off to college in August. One of our trips is expected to be to Spain, Portugal and France in September and October, and we are starting now to think about an itinerary.

Our intent is to ‘slow travel’ and stay at reasonably priced AirBNB’s off the beaten path, so the airfare is really the most expensive part of this kind of travel. With the proliferation of budget airlines (including those serving Europe), and our potential flexibility to travel based on when fares are the cheapest, I have been wondering how cheaply we’d be able to fly to Europe.

As luck would have it, last month I was driving my daughter to a college in upstate New York for a musical theater audition, and we passed a bus on the highway that was advertising $99 flights from Stewart airport to Europe on Norwegian Airlines. That definitely caught my eye and I decided to investigate further.

Flying To Europe On Norwegian From Stewart Airport

Stewart Airport is a small regional airport located about 60 miles north of New York City. Norwegian Airlines is a European budget airline headquartered in Norway, and operates several hubs in Europe under regional airlines branded to Norwegian.

One of the things Wikipedia is great for is being able to see at a glance all of the airlines and destinations served from a particular airport. When you are wanting to visit a particular place, that is a great way to see all of your airline options. For Stewart airport, we can see that there are only about 5 airlines operating out of Stewart to about 10 destinations.

One of those airlines is Norwegian, serving destinations in Ireland and Norway. Their operation out of Stewart, a small regional airport, is part of a larger trend of budget airlines using small regional airports outside of major cities as a way to keep costs down, since the gate fees are much less at those airports.

Stewart is an example of one such airport near New York City. Another example is Sanford International Airport, which is about 45 miles outside of Orlando, and is a major hub for Allegiant Airlines. Sanford Airport also houses TUI Airlines, which offers flights to several destinations in the UK as a cheaper alternative to flying to Orlando International Airport. So, depending on how flexible you are, it might pay to look at flights at regional international airports outside the large cities.

The question is, can you really fly to Europe from Stewart for $99? In the time since I saw the sign last month, I have periodically checked in on their prices, and here is what I found.

• The only time I found flights as low as $99 was during their recent St Patrick’s Day sale. Without a sale happening, you will not find $99 flights. Cheap flights were available, but they tended to be in the $113 to $153 range. Still pretty inexpensive, but not $99.
• The return flight seems to be more expensive. When I found a $99 flight to Europe during their recent sale, the cheapest return flight was $152. So perhaps the flight to Europe might be $99, but the flight back likely will not be.
• That lowest price (ie: $99) is for their LowFare level, which does not give you any checked bags, seat assignments or meals. You’ll need to upgrade your ticket to get these items. This is a trend becoming more common with airlines and not a particular downside to Norwegian.
• Getting to Stewart is more challenging. The cost to park there is low at $10 per day and $60 per week, but for say a 6-week trip, that would be $360 and more than the cost of the flight itself! It is possible to take an inexpensive shuttle bus from Port Authority in New York City as well the Metro North train and a shuttle bus, but both of those public transportation options take a long time and have the potential for delays and missed flights.

My verdict is no, you cannot quite fly to Europe on Norwegian for $99. But if you don’t mind the limitations on the cheapest fare and traveling to the airport on public transportation, you can get pretty close.

It wouldn’t make sense for us to fly Norwegian on our trip this year because our destination is likely Spain, France and Portugal, so flying to, or through, Ireland or Norway makes no sense. We will take a close look at TAP airlines, which serves that region, and in my early research seems to have very competitive pricing.

One awesome Norwegian feature is their online booking tool

Hands down, Norwegian has the fastest and easiest online flight research and booking tool I’ve seen from any airline. They make it really easy to see all the places they fly to, and to find the cheapest flight for a given timeframe and route.

First is the route map, which can be selected from the main menu. You select the airport you will be leaving from, and the month of your trip, and it shows a graphical view on a world map of all the locations you can fly to, and the cheapest price during that month.

I selected JFK airport (read end of post to see why JFK and not Stewart) and September 2019, and selected non-stop flights only, and it shows me the map below. I can very easily see the various destinations and prices. The map is a bit small so that I can fit it into a screenshot, but hovering over each price will show you the city. Madrid comes up as $189.90, and Paris as $164.90.

Then, clicking a destination shows a calendar view of the month and the price for each day:

The other way to easily search on the Norwegian website is by using the main booking screen, but selecting Show Low Fare Calendar instead of picking specific dates. Then you’ll see a calendar view with the departure calendar on the left and the return calendar on the right, with the prices for each day. It is also very fast and easy to navigate.

Using these tools, it was very easy to find the cheapest dates to travel to Madrid. For example, leaving on Sept 10 will cost $189.90 and returning on Oct 23 will be $159.90, so the round trip price would be $349.80 per person before paying for upgrades. To get the upgrades, (assigned seat, checked bag, meals) it will cost another $180 per person, taking the total up to $529.80 per person. For a budget traveler who doesn’t care about the limitations of the base fare, $349.80 round trip from New York City to Madrid sounds pretty awesome!

Buyer Beware With Budget Airlines?

Perhaps I’ll write in more detail in another post, but 2 recent stories might push me to buy plane tickets from more established airlines:

1. Norwegian has been affected by the recent world-wide grounding of the fleet of Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, which is the type of plane they operate out of Stewart. While they have been accommodating passengers via a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, as part of that plan they are actually busing other passengers to Stewart from Providence, Rhode Island and combining flights for those two airports. That bus trip is almost 200 miles! As a result of this uncertainty, currently the flights from Stewart to Europe are very expensive, a minimum of $1000. I’ve also read about how Norwegian was already in big financial trouble, so their future is quite cloudy.
2. This week WOW airlines has completely ceased operation, stranding passengers, and is not offering refunds or alternate arrangements. It is a little scary to think that a budget airline can simply go out of business, and as a customer, I would simply lose my money.

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Bottom line is that there are a lot of flying options these days, and while perhaps risky, you can save money on budget airlines and being flexible with your dates and amenities.

I might not fly Norwegian on our trip this year to Europe, but I’m glad I’m aware of that option for the future, and I can dream that other airlines take a page out of Norwegian’s playbook and improve their ticketing and flight research tools.