angelarrudolph

I need to travel to Hamburg in mid-October for business and pleasure and am curious to know if it's true that Euporpean flights drop in price after Labor Day. Will be traveling from ORD with family and I am trying to be economical with costs. Is it also better to book a non-stop to Hamburg or book a flight to another gate way city and use a European airline to travel on to Hamburg? Any help would be appreciated, I'm a bit of a novice at international travel (It's only my second trip to Europe.)

Underhill

Flights to Europe generally drop sometime during September, although usually not as early as Labor Day. The summer travel season seems to extend further into September every year.

rkkwan

I don't think there's any non-stop from the US to Hamburg, so you must change planes somewhere in Europe. Or you can fly into Frankfurt, and take the train. The trip is 4 hours from the Frankfurt airport to Hamburg. Every two hours, there's one direct from the airport; and on the other hour, a change at Frankfurt.

You can get the train schedule from www.bahn.de Use Frankfurt Flughafen as your origin.

Otherwise, you can change planes at any major European hub, like London, Paris, Amsterdam, or Frankfurt.

rkkwan

BTW, the fares right now is about $650 for mid-October, with weekday departure, or about $700 for weekend. I think that's a little high, and ~$550ish should be about right.

Andre

angelarrudolph,

As mentioned by rkkwan, there are no nonstops from ORD to Hamburg, so shop around for the best fare with 1 plane change.

Check fares on the large travel websites such as:
www.expedia.com
www.orbitz.com
www.travelocity.com

as well as directly with these airlines, which all offer connections with 1 plane change:
www.aa.com (via London or Zurich)
www.airfrance.com (via Paris)
www.britishairways.com (via London)
www.delta.com (via Paris)
www.lufthansa.com (via Frankfurt or Munich)
www.nwa.com (via Amsterdam)
www.scandinavian.net (via Copenhagen)
www.swiss.com (via Zurich)
www.united.com (via Frankfurt)

I would avoid booking this journey with 2 separate tickets as you seem to suggest, since this creates needless complications. Also tickets to Frankfurt are not generally any cheaper than those to Hamburg, so the train option isn't that appealing IMO.

If you book everything on a single ticket, your luggage will be checked through all the way to Hamburg and you will be reacommodated on a later flight should you miss your onward connection. In most instances, you will also get your boarding pass for the second leg when you check in at ORD.

Hope this helps,
Andre

hsv

Living in Hamburg, I have some annoying experience with having no nonstop flights to the US.

I, too, would buy a ticket to Hamburg with one change of planes involved. It should not cost substantially more than flying into Frankfurt or Munich.
There are discount airline connections between Hamburg and Munich, but a one way fare will set you back some € 77.-. That is unlikely to be worth it.
There are no dicount flights between Frankfurt and Hamburg. Thus, you'd be limited to taking the train.
But flying in with some jet lag accumulated, you should remember that the last thing you will want to do is take a train to proceed to Hamburg in another 4 hours!
Enjoy your trip- and if you need any suggestions on what to do or where to stay, do post!
hsv

angelarrudolph

Thank you all very much. I'll check out your suggestions.