With budget Iceland airlines Icelandair and WOW Air infiltrating Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in May, other airlines offering trips to Europe are stepping up their pricing game.
You can now find significantly cheaper flights to Europe than this same time last year, according to Hopper, a budget travel company who recently worked with Cleveland.com to crunch fare numbers from June 2017 to June 2018.
That analysis found that passage from Cleveland to Europe dropped a whopping 36 percent on average. Flights to Paris went from $1,052 to $588, while fares to London went from $1,159 to $796. Madrid and Rome fares were down 17 percent and 19 percent, respectively.
"There's a big decline and that's specific to Cleveland," Patrick Surry, the chief data scientist for Hopper, told Cleveland.com. "We haven't seen huge differences to Europe as a whole. It's primarily due to the introduction of these new carriers. We've seen that in other cities, as well."
Corrine Smith, a travel agent with Independence Travel, says she can't be sure why tickets to Europe are so cheap right now — be it Brexit, better weather or competition from other airlines — but she says these are the best prices she's ever seen in her 34-year career.
Since the start of the new year she says more clients are already booking flights to Europe than they did this time last year. She says fares under $1,000 were once nearly unheard of.
"Before if a flight was $1,100 or $1,200, I'd say you got a great deal," she says. "I hope the airlines do keep these prices, it makes my job easier."
© 2023 Cleveland Scene
