MSY to Europe Flights - help needed (May 24-Jun 2 window)

The one your comfortable with

To what destination?

It varies immensely from MSY. If you're a little more flexible you could probably cut costs booking 2 separate flights.

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What’s the cheapest flight?

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Have fun going through Istanbul and burning up time.

If you dont care where you fly into your best bet is probably to fly MSY to NYC/ATL/NEWARK etc. and then look from there. Get to a gateway city and then look at the options.

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your best bet is probably to fly MSY to NYC/ATL/NEWARK etc. and then look from there. Get to a gateway city and then look at the options.

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That's how I do all of my international flights and it's always far cheaper. It also helps if you have Southwest points and can just use the points to get to that domestic destination.

But you have to be okay with getting your bags and rechecking them, or better yet only bringing carry on. Also know that if there are any severe delays, you run the risk of missing your flight.

If checking bags I'd give yourself at least 2 hours between flights.

Heading to Europe you can find insanely cheap flights out of Boston and New York.

Count me as a person who never books separate tickets, mainly because I (or my traveling companions) have hard obligations upon return. When you book a separate ticket, you risk difficulties if delayed by weather, mechanical problems, etc. If your Euro leg is late, you're SOL for the last leg home. Okay if you have time & money to waste getting rebooked, but sux if you really need to be home as scheduled (pets, work, family obligations, etc).

I'd rather shop carefully for a RT that gets me all the way home. If you're ticketed home, the airline will often go out of its way to get you where you need to go. Coming home from Dublin, the inbound aircraft was delayed out of Dulles: I arrive at the airport to discover that it hadn't even left the US yet. Since I was bound all the way back to MSY, the ticket agent cheerfully re-routed me through a different city and I ended up home earlier than scheduled, despite the 15 hr delay of my original flight.

You get what you pay for (service). You need to decide if the risk is worth it. For me, it definitely isn't.

I agree it's not for everyone, and probably not worth it if you're only saving a small amount of money, but sometimes it's too much of savings to pass up.

For instance, I'm flying to Tokyo in May. A good flight out of MSY (1 stop) is going to run you upwards of $1700. I got a round trip flight (nonstop) out of LAX for $700 and am using my Southwest miles for a nonstop MSY to LAX.

That $1,000 of savings is totally worth the risk and possible inconvenience IMO.

Are you spending the night in LA? I've considered separate flights, but with my luck, my MSY-LAX would be severely delayed or canceled and I'd be SOL. Only way I'd do something like that it if the time between landing at LAX and taking off for wherever was massive.

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You get what you pay for (service). You need to decide if the risk is worth it. For me, it definitely isn't.

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So much this. We just got back from an emergency trip to Germany. We booked round trip tickets and had delays on both legs going out and coming back. We would have missed our flight from LHR to DUS and from DFW to home if we had not booked RT and got expressed through LHR and DFW because of the delays. This was with a minimum of three hour layovers at each stop.

I'm not sure that Condor shows up on Google Flights, but that is my go-to to the continent from MSY. Direct to Frankfurt, and from there you can literally go anywhere in Europe on any airline with 3 flights per day. Clearing customs at MSY >>>>> IAD / JFK / EWR / IAH