Need help from Europeans on airfare to US
 

I know all the tricks for finding a cheap US to Europe roundtrip ticket. Now we are looking for the opposite direction and all fares seem to be close to twice as much when the flight originates in Europe. My son is currently in Poland and for a number of complicated reasons wants to make a couple week trip back to the US. This is last minute and he has lots of flexibility as to dates and departure place. He's currently in Poland but could certainly take a bus to Frankfurt or Paris or some place like that if the airline ticket price is right. Are there European websites where we could search out cheap fares or lst minute fares or consolidators fares or something equivalent to Priceline? He can qualify for a student fare as he has an international student card. If you can help me out, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

I think there's something going on other than it originating in Europe, as European-based fares are often cheaper than those in the US, for the same route (ie RT NY-Paris is cheaper when bought in France as RT Paris-NY). There was a thread on here once about this, and it surprised me as I hadn't expected it, but I checked Air France prices and found it was true (same dates, same cities).

I think the reason is that you are trying to get a last minute ticket and this is going into the holiday season.

www.opodo.com is a european airfare web site that is probably what you want.

applefares.com & http://www.skyscanner.net
are websites with the cheap inter-europe airlines for getting from Poland to another city for onward travel (I think a better option than a bus :) )

Here is a list of discount airfare websites I've "collected". I'm sorry I can't offer which are best but affordablepoland.com sounds like a good place to start. You also might want to look on statravel.com which is a student travel website.

www.cheapflights.co.uk/
www.aerfares.net
www.tiss.com
www.consolidatorwebfares.com
www.economytravel.com ph.888 222 2110
www.sidestep.com
www.ebookers.com
www.travelhub.com
www.travel.zoo.com
www.farebase.net
www.telme.com
www.affordablepoland.com
http://www.travelselect.com/cgi-bin/starter.cgi
http://www.1877femtrip.com/

Thanks Christina. I'll give the website a try. I guess I should clarify. I always check Travelocity's function where you can find the lowest fare and use this as a baseline. This is how I determine what the best price I can find is. When using this, for example, the price roundtrip from Frankfurt to Minneapolis is about 2 times the fare when the trip originates in the states. Perhaps this is because this is a US based site. Any other tips from others would be greatly appreciated.

I have made excellent experiences with a Germany based travel agency called "Travel Overland".
Their website is to be found at www.travel-overland.com
In case the website should not be sufficient, there is a hotline you can call- or one of their travel centers.
They have some surprising experts working there and they specialize on independent flight booking.
I got a flight on last minute notice to L.A. when I needed it urgently through them- and all other travel- agencies said everything was sold out. In addition, they even got me a bargain price (and knew the United flight schedule out of L.A. without even consulting their computer!)!

I'd also post on the www.eurotrip.com/forum site and make sure that Don responds to your post. He is very knowledgeable, including about student fare discounts.

Thanks all. I knew I could find good help here. There are so many places I'd never heard of. Of course things are further complicated because we need a ticket to the midwest (Minneapolis) and that always further increases the price.

Hi Julies,

Try www.tiss.com and click on "Germany" at the top of the screen.

I found a Frankfurt/Minneapolis for about the same price as vv.