We Flew Cheap Airlines to and From Europe to See if You Should, Too
7 min read 19 Apr 2023, 05:11 PM IST - Flying budget carriers across the pond requires some trade-offs, but they might surprise you—our columnist tried three in four days
PremiumI flew to Paris last week from an out-of-the-way New York airport on an airline you probably haven’t heard of with Spirit-like fees, no seat-back screens and a predawn connection in Iceland.
And I’d do it again to save money.
Flying to Europe affordably this summer requires more strategy than ever. Prices can easily top $1,000 given pent-up demand for international travel. Delta Air Lines said it has already sold 75% of its seats on international flights this summer.
Travelers without piles of miles or unlimited funds are searching furiously for a deal to Europe. Often topping those search results: Play, Norse Atlantic Airways and French Bee.
These small, budget carriers have been adding flights between the U.S. and Europe, dangling introductory fares as low as $169 one way from New York to London and about $300 from Los Angeles or Miami to Paris. (Don’t expect those prices for summer flights at this late date.)
To size them up, I took three trans-Atlantic flights in four days last week. I flew from London to New York on Norse; New York to Paris on Play; and Paris to Los Angeles on French Bee. The Wall Street Journal paid for the flights and airlines weren’t notified of my plans.
The verdict from my small sample: These relative newcomers are worthy contenders at the right price for those of us not spoiled by lie-flat beds and fancy amenity kits.
Unlike these three airlines, major U.S. carriers like Delta, United and American generally offer free meals, drinks and alcoholic beverages on trans-Atlantic flights. All passengers except some basic-economy fliers also get a free carry-on bag and one free checked bag when flying across the pond in economy.
Another factor to consider: the budget airlines’ limited schedules. My three flights went off painlessly. But a cancellation by one of these airlines could easily delay a trip by a day or more. They typically offer one flight a day on each route, if not fewer.
My other major takeaways from the international budget airline adventure:
The price is often right.
By the right price, I mean a big enough gap between the budget ticket prices and those of the major airlines to cover fees for everything from carry-on bags and seat selection to meals and drinks.
Brittany Brown is a 36-year-old financial controller from Hamburg, N.J. She treated her 10-year-old son to a trip to Iceland after spotting cheap fares on Google Flights. She had never heard of the airline and called the prices—$1,060 for two tickets—“nuts" (in a good way) for a nonstop.
David Parry lives close to Newark Liberty International Airport. For a last-minute trip to London with his 18-year-old son, he schlepped to John F. Kennedy International Airport to fly Norse. The tickets were each about $300 cheaper than those on other airlines, he says.
Mr. Parry, who works in banking technology and grew up flying standby because his father worked for Pan Am, liked the modern plane and friendly crew, including a flight attendant who scoured his son’s seat for a missing AirPod. (It turned up in his sweatshirt’s hood.) His only knock against Norse was a slow response when he tried to change his ticket. He says he would fly the airline again.
“I was more than pleasantly surprised," he says.
It may not be right depending on when you book for.
For the best shot at scoring a deal on these airlines, book early. And don’t expect the lowest bargain-bin fares during the height of summer travel season.
I did get a deal when I booked my Norse flight last-minute. JetBlue charged about three times the $493 I paid one-way, including fees.
For a mid-July trip from New York JFK to London Gatwick, Norse charges $832 round trip before fees, compared with $954 on JetBlue. I’d probably pick JetBlue then unless I were traveling light and didn’t care about food or drinks.
A budget airline doesn’t always involve multiple stops, tiny planes or no amenities.
Norse and French Bee fly nonstop across the Atlantic on wide-body jets. My 11½-hour flight from Paris to Los Angeles on French Bee was on an Airbus A350 with more than 400 seats and seat-back entertainment that included 52 movies and an external camera the retired French engineer next to me couldn’t stop watching. Norse uses Boeing 787 Dreamliners complete with mood lighting, seat-back entertainment and power ports. Both offer optional meal service.
Play is the outlier. The Icelandic carrier uses smaller Airbus A320s, a domestic flight staple that JetBlue also uses for European flights. Play also requires a change of planes in Iceland. The guy behind me on my first Play flight drove 2½ hours to Newburgh, N.Y., from western Massachusetts to save hundreds on his flight to Dublin. He complained that the seats were uncomfortable.
I was lucky enough to snag an exit row to myself on both legs of my trip, scoring a few hours of sleep in my makeshift lie-flat bed. Play doesn’t offer catered meals (plenty of a la carte items are available), have in-flight entertainment or power ports—and doesn’t take American Express.
Don’t knock alternative airports until you’ve tried them.
Play’s flights between New York and Europe fly out of tiny Stewart International in Newburgh. Getting there was far smoother than I’d imagined. I paid $29 for a nonstop bus ride from the Port Authority bus station in Midtown Manhattan and arrived in the promised 90 minutes. My bus was full when I arrived 15 minutes before departure, so get there early.
In Paris, my French Bee flight took off out of Orly, which is closer to the city center than giant Charles de Gaulle and cheaper to reach by taxi or Uber. In London, my Norse flight took off from Gatwick instead of Heathrow.
Don’t expect TSA PreCheck or free in-flight Wi-Fi.
None of the three carriers offers TSA PreCheck, which can lengthen that trip through security in the U.S. (It wasn’t a problem at Stewart because the airport had a whopping three flights going out when I was there, including mine.)
French Bee offers Wi-Fi for a fee (my $9 package basically let me send a few emails and play Wordle before running out). Norse and Play don’t offer in-flight internet packages.
Beware of strict carry-on bag policies that make Frontier and Spirit look lenient.
On each of the three airlines, I was stunned at the rigid carry-on bag policies. I’m not talking about the free personal item below your seat, though they monitor the size of that, too. I’m talking about standard carry-on bags that go in the overhead bin.
Just because you paid a fee to bring it on doesn’t mean it will pass muster. The airlines have size and/or weight restrictions—between 22 and 26 pounds for carry-ons. They hand out tags if the bag made the cut. No tag, and the bag gets checked.
The Norse agent at Gatwick let my slightly overweight Away bag—one I’ve carried on countless domestic and international flights with no issues—go through, but warned me they might still weigh it at the gate. (No one did.) Norse baggage fees start at $45 for flights booked between the U.S. and Europe after late January, but many tickets include a baggage allowance.
French Bee agents in Paris gave me the toughest time, forcing me to squeeze the hardside bag into its sizer twice. I can see this on a small regional jet, but can’t comprehend why it was necessary on a jumbo jet with 100 empty seats. (An airline representative said they limit carry-on sizes to speed check-in and boarding and says the agents must have misjudged the size of my carry-on, which the airline allows passengers to bring aboard for free.)
It was the most unpleasant part of a mostly pleasant trip.