I am traveling to visit friends at Ramstein Airforce Base in Germany. What is the cheapest city to fly into that would be within a 2 to 4 hour drive of the base?

Uh...from where?

Presuming you are coming from N. America and want a direct flight;

Frankfurt - the most frequent direct destination in Germany for American/Canadian airlines - about 1:30 from Ramstein. which is near Kaiserslautern.

Cologne - about 2:30 hours

Munich - about 4 hours.

Nothing else comes close except Paris (4 :30) and Brussels (3:30), but if you are renting a car, you would be better off doing so in Germany.

What a stupid question. Where are you coming from?

What an arrogant response.

Frankfurt International (FRA) would be the obvious choice (and will have most connections to North America or elsewhere).
Frankfurt Hahn airport (HNH) has only intra-European low-cost flights.


Closest airport to Ramstein is Saarbrücken (SCN) - 50kms/30mls.
You'd want a rental car from there, though.

Both Lufthansa/Star Alliance and Airberlin.com serve SCN.
Lufthansa got connecting flights thru the Star Alliance network to any halfway major US airport.
Airberlin only to JFK and MIA.

Due to the wonders of modern airfare calculation, it can sometimes be cheaper to add a connecting flight to a smaller airport than to fly only non-stop from hub to hub. So it does not hurt to check.

kayak.com

cheapoair.com

2 great discount sites to play around on

FRA

DUS

MUC

might all work well for you best deals there vary.

Swissair runs great deals into ZUR sometimes

great deals on insertion there for me.

find cheapest faresimply take regional train like a local

to your destination and save a tonne...

if flexible find very best deals on airtech.com sometimes

Happy Travels,

sorry typo above ZRH for Zurich

cheapoair.com nonstops EWR ZRH in June $350/tax

each way like $800 all in heck of a deal for June

doubt you will beat that flying into Germany but play around

Frankfurt is most likely the best but depending on when you are going and your departure point, you may also get deals in Luxembourg or Hamburg.

Don't expect to get on the base alone unless you have a military ID. Otherwise, your friends will have to meet you off base.

<i>Aramis on May 17, 11 at 6:44am
What an arrogant response.</i>

The OPs departure city is just as important as his arrival city.

I was going to say the place that you find the cheapest airfare to?

I think this depends on the airport you are flying from...the cheapest for me coming from London would likely be different than someone flying from Seattle, or Montreal, or Orlando...