Europe Flight Routes

The airport is not always the city

Europe's low-cost network is built on airports that borrow a famous name from some distance away. Paris Beauvais is well over an hour north of the city by coach. Rome Ciampino is closer than Fiumicino but has no rail link of its own. Barcelona Girona, Milan Bergamo, Stockholm Skavsta and Frankfurt Hahn all follow the same pattern. None of these are bad airports, and the fares through them are often genuinely lower — but the coach transfer is a fixed cost in both money and time, and it runs to a timetable that does not always match your flight.

The rule of thumb that holds up: secondary airports work when you are travelling light and have slack in the day. They stop working when you have a checked bag, a young family or a dinner reservation. For the cities where this matters most, the individual route guides — London to Rome and London to Paris among them — spell out which airport suits which arrival.

When the train is the better answer

On a handful of European city pairs the flight loses on total time even before you account for the stress. London to Paris is the clearest case: Eurostar runs city centre to city centre in a shade over two hours with no airport transfer at either end, which is competitive with flying once check-in and the RER are added. Similar logic applies to Amsterdam and Brussels from London, Madrid to Barcelona and Paris to Lyon on the high-speed network, and Milan to Rome.

Flying wins on price and on late-evening flexibility, particularly if you are leaving after work on a Friday. It is worth pricing both rather than assuming either — and for onward legs after you land, our city break transport guide covers how the main European metro systems connect to their airports.

Cabin bags and the fare that is not the fare

The headline price on a European low-cost carrier increasingly buys a personal item that fits under the seat in front of you and nothing else. A proper cabin bag in the overhead locker is a paid extra on Ryanair, Wizz and most of easyJet's fare types, seat selection is another, and priority boarding is a third. Add all three and the legacy carrier flying from a more convenient airport with a checked bag included is frequently cheaper.

Price the trip you are actually taking, with the bags you are actually bringing. Our guide to comparing flight prices properly walks through how to line up these fare types honestly, and the final baggage rules are always confirmed on the partner's own site before you pay.

Seasons, and when Europe is at its best

The shoulder months do most of the work in Europe. April to early June and September into October give you open terraces, museums you can move around in and hotel rates well below the August peak, and the weather in southern Europe is often more pleasant for walking than high summer. August is the month to avoid if you can: it is when southern Europe takes its own holiday, many family-run restaurants close, and the Mediterranean coast is at its most expensive.

Two exceptions worth planning around. Greek island routes such as London to Santorini are seasonal — the direct flights largely disappear over winter. And Christmas market weekends in Central Europe compress a lot of demand into four or five weeks, so Prague, Vienna and Berlin book up early for December.