My wife and I are planning a trip to Vienna in August and have been told that sometimes it is cheaper to fly to another city and then transfer.

Can anybody shed some light on this practice?

I wouldn't call it a "practice" as if it were some kind of gimmick or trick. Airlines will adapt their fares to demand and will sell their tickets at various prices for various routes.

It isn't clear what you mean by "fly to another city and then transfer." What kind of transfer? To another airline? To a flight on the same airline? To a bus? To a train?

In many cases you can find lower rates for multiple enroute stops than for a non-stop flight. Is this what you meant? Please clarify your question.

Possibly you mean from a more major hub, that has more flights so more choices?

While it's true that your message header is not very clear (I would always advise re-posting and indicating specific destination info in your message header), I think that your question is clear enough.

With regard to "another city"... to reach Vienna, you are probably talking about the airport in Bratislava (Slovakia) which likes to use the term "Vienna East", as it is served by shuttle bus (45 minutes) from downtown Vienna. On the website www.whichbudget.com you can find all kinds of info on Bratislava service, which is primarily offered by skyeurope.com

They do not fly transatlantic, so you will have to think about the choice of another Europe gateway city, as part of a trip to Vienna (and/or Slovakia).

Best wishes,

Rex

Before thinking about flying into other cities and then going on think about the extra time that will take. To me there is nothing better then a non-stop flight even if it costs more. Less tiring, less chance of luggage going astray, you get where you are going faster just to name a few. It would have to be a huge amount of savings to make me want to transfer when I could go non-stop anyplace and I mean huge.

If you can get a decent fare, fly with Austrian Airlines. It's really, really good compared with most others today.

If you are within a 2-3hr drive from NYC, DC, or Toronto then consider flying out of one of those cities non-stop on Austrian Air. It is usually competive compared to flying out of somewhere else (and connecting). The lack of layovers also means the trip as a whole may be quicker even with the drive.

The question is well founded. This is indeed a new practice that came about with the numerous European budget airlines making it cheap and sometimes easy to connect within Europe.

It works like this, taking Vienna as an example: You don't have to fly to Vienna from the US if fares seem out of line with fares to another big European city - fly to that other big European city (even if it's a long way from Vienna), then fly from that other European city to Vienna with one of the cheapies and pocket the difference.

Now never mind individual preferences and all the rest of it - the poster asked a fair question, so I'll try to give a fair answer.

MrChirpy, the way to figure this out involves quite a bit of homework:

Open two browser windows. In one you launch your favorite airfare search program, one like www.kayak.com for example, and you use this for flights from your home airport to the various big European hubs - LON (for all London airports), PAR (for all Paris airports), FRA (Frankfurt am Main), FCO (Rome), etc.

In the other browser window you launch www.skyscanner.net and play around - it has recently been redesigned to let you do "open" searches, like simply all flights in a given month from one country to another, and so on.

After experimenting a bit, you'll find out what budget airlines fly to Vienna or nearby Bratislava or even to Salzburg from which other European airports.

Now if on kayak there are no major differences in fares between going to Vienna and any other European hubs, give up on this idea, and call consolidators (or look at www.flightcoordinator.com).

But if you get, say, a London fare for a few hundred dollars less than going to Vienna from home, and you find you can fly from London to Vienna with a budget airline for one of those crazy cheap fares like 30 bucks incl. taxes and fees - suddenly you might consider doing that.

Then you have to figure how to get to the airport of departure from the airport of arrival, sometimes they are secondary airports quite a distance from the majors, and maybe you'll even stay a night in the hub of arrival before making your connection.

Then you have to consider the luggage restrictions that are less generous on the European budget airlines than on overseas flights.

Did I say homework?

This is how it's done, and it can work out very well. If AerLingus runs a special to Dublin and Ryanair gets you from there to Vienna for a pittance, why not? Or Iberia discounts flights to Madrid and Vueling takes you to Paris for a song?

Hope this answers your question.

WK

Oops, make that the plural -

www.flightcoordinators.com/

Sorry

WK

And if you do end up flying into Bratislava BTS airport (closer to Vienna than, say, Milan MXP airport is to Milan...) - unless you want to first check out the city (not a bad idea!), these are the fares you should pay if you like to be chauffeured to Vienna: www.bratislava.info/taxi/

It's not all that much more than the shuttle to the train and the train itself - in an airconditioned vehicle this could be a good solution on a hot August day.

WK

While Wally has given lots of great information, BTS isn't really closer to Vienna than MXP is to Milan. BTS is about 60km from Vienna, the coach takes 75-80 minutes and 10 euros; plus one border to cross. MXP is about 54km from Milan, coach takes 50 minutes and 5 euro.