Barcelona Flights

[DIS_Ag]

Looking for a little help here....

I booked my family (2 adults, 3 kids) on Med cruise out of Barcelona in May of 2020. I know it's early but flights from Houston are pretty expensive. Is there a strategy of how far out to book flights? Is there a better option of flying into a bigger hub in Europe and flying to BCN from there? Thanks for any insight.

 

[PsylockeSmythe]

My suggestion would be to start with pricing flights from other airports that are within driving distance that have direct flights first. If everything is still too high; then start looking at other flights that have 1 or 2 stops. Just remember if you do go with flights that have multiple connections to look at the total travel time; because some of those flights the total travel time can be 18 to 28 hours or more.

We flew direct last year for our Med cruise and the price of the tickets were high; especially after we chose our seats. I could have knocked about 25 to 30% off the price of the tickets if we would have flown to NY first and then from NY to Barcelona. We didn't do that; due to it would have meant us leaving around 7 am local time; spend around 10 to 13 hours at the NY airport and then arrive in Barcelona around 11am to noon their time. Which would have made around a 26 hour trip; compared to the 10 1/2 hours of the direct flight. I don't do well being stuck in an airport; so while I would have loved to save money on the flight; the stress it would have caused would have made for a bad start to the wife's dream vacation. So paying extra for a direct flight was worth it.

Psy

 

[carrielouhoo]

My son and I recently traveled to Barcelona for his soccer training. We flew from Dulles, with a layover in Paris each way. We booked in July for our flight in February and I never found prices cheaper than what we paid (~$600 pp, roundtrip with one stop). We're also booked for a Med cruise in May 2020, and I plan to start stalking fares as soon as they are released and book whenever I see something I can live with (though I don't expect to fly in May for as cheap as we were able to in February).

Psy gave some very good advice above, but I would also recommend that, if you're going to have a connection on the way to Barcelona, try to find flights where the connection is in Europe (not ones where you're connecting in the US). I figure, if you miss your connection, at least you'd already be in Europe, where it's much easier (and probably cheaper) to re-book/find a smaller airline to get you the rest of the way (as opposed to missing a connection in the US, where there are only so many transatlantic flights on any given day). I don't know that the location of the layover necessarily impacts the price of the flight, but thought it might be a helpful tip for your planning.

 

[trvlgirlmq]

As soon as your return dates are available set up fare alerts on sites like Kayak and Airfare watchdog. Unless you plan to visit another European city stick with BCN. You don't want the hassle of having to book separate tickets and working out if you have enough time.

 

[fredandkell]

Flights to Europe are expensive, especially during summer. Do you have a preferred airline you want to book on? Can you use frequent flyer miles? Are you open to flying in a couple days early or home a couple days later? For example, last summer I needed to book 4 frequent flyer miles flights on Delta for our R/T Barcelona cruise. I had exactly enough for 4 at the lowest level of points. When I put in my preferred days, there were no [cheap] tickets. By searching the "flexible dates" options, I found that flying in the day before (which I recommend anyway for a Europe cruise--gives you time to adjust to the time change, plus a buffer if flights get canceled, etc.) would be the cheapest. There WERE no cheap flights home from Barcelona within like 2 weeks of the dates I needed. Period. So I priced some one-way points flights from nearby airports. Ended up getting a Zurich to Atlanta cheap points flight. Even with hotel costs and staying 3 extra days in Switzerland and the intra-Europe flight on easyJet from Barcelona to Geneva, it ended up being cheaper. (And Switzerland was one of the absolute highlights of the trip!) Soooo...be open to other methods of getting to and from there. And even if you don't have frequent flyer miles, if you search pretending that you do, often the days that have the cheap FF flights are also the days that will have the cheap cash-rate flights.

Are you actually seeing DATES that you can actually pick for a May 2020 flight? Most airlines only release their flights 330-ish dates out, so I would not expect to see May 2020 pricing until June 2019. If you come back here around those dates and tag me, I'll gladly help you search - I love trying to "beat the system" with flights!

 

[jenf22]

We just came back from Barcelona and our fares were about $600 roundtrip per person from Denver (with a stop in Miami). We've been twice and both times booked flights about 4 months out. I follow "The Points Guy" on Facebook and he tends to post when flights to Europe are cheap. I know the first time we went to Barcelona, we bought flights based on an article I saw from him. Good luck!

 

[DIS_Ag]

Thanks everyone.... will watch this.... I'm also going to look into moving to a travel credit card vs my bank one for this purpose.

 

[pixiedustedme]

Looking for a little help here....

I booked my family (2 adults, 3 kids) on Med cruise out of Barcelona in May of 2020. I know it's early but flights from Houston are pretty expensive. Is there a strategy of how far out to book flights? Is there a better option of flying into a bigger hub in Europe and flying to BCN from there? Thanks for any insight.

I live in Austin, so getting reasonably priced flights required some thinking outside of the box. I chose to book separate flights to New York, then booked much less expensive flights from New York to Europe. I was careful to separate those flights by several hours on the outbound trip, and for the inbound trip, I put a hotel night between them.

Fyi, European carriers like Lufthansa & Air France sometimes have better deals for transatlantic flights than American carriers. And flights within Europe are quite cheap because everything is so close together.

 

[dclpluto]

As another person has said jfk has really cheap flights. A jfk round trip to bcn came up at 349 dollars non stop on delta airlines. Houston to bcn is over a thousand dollars as you know. Have you ever been to nyc? You could do nyc before and after your cruise. Of course than you have the added expense of hotels and food. Probably come out to the same amount of money but you will get to see nyc if you want. Houston to jfk round trip was around 350.

 

[anjuan]

Flights to Europe are definitely not cheap. I live in the Chicago area, which has a pretty big hub and I couldn't find flight prices that were that good. I do think that you need to weigh how much you are willing to spend for the convenience of a direct flight vs having to transfer and spend a lot of time in another airport. For me last year the convenience factor won out and I ended up spending more for a direct flight from O'Hare. I know others on my cruise were able to get better deals by flying to NY and going from there as others have mentioned.

One thing that I would also suggest is to check with DCL to see what there prices for flights are. I priced one I wanted out first and then called DCL and the price was essentially the same. I didn't have to pay for the flight until my cruise paid in full date. Plus if my flight home, which was the same day was affected by the ship getting in late, etc. Disney would have taken care of arranging a new flight, etc. I was able to pick my seats just like booking directly etc. as well.

 

[DIS_Ag]

Good thought on the DCL flight...

We've been to NYC many times and love it, but I think we'd rather get to Europe and see more of it. I don't mind spending a few hours in the airport so that's an option.

 

[pixiedustedme]

I would also recommend that, if you're going to have a connection on the way to Barcelona, try to find flights where the connection is in Europe (not ones where you're connecting in the US). I figure, if you miss your connection, at least you'd already be in Europe, where it's much easier (and probably cheaper) to re-book/find a smaller airline to get you the rest of the way...

The only problem with that is that flying to Europe from middle America is much, much pricier than it is from the east coast. That's why we flew to New York first. Flying from central Texas to any city in Europe would cost a great deal more than flying from JFK to anywhere in Europe. So it's getting to Europe at all that is the primary affordability issue for those of us flying from the middle of the USA.

 

[soniam]

Flying to Europe from Texas is just expensive. My jaw dropped at the price for our tickets from Austin to Barcelona at the end of June. Follow the advice here to get it down anyway you can.

I live in Austin, so getting reasonably priced flights required some thinking outside of the box. I chose to book separate flights to New York, then booked much less expensive flights from New York to Europe. I was careful to separate those flights by several hours on the outbound trip, and for the inbound trip, I put a hotel night between them.

Fyi, European carriers like Lufthansa & Air France often have better deals for transatlantic flights than American carriers. And flights within Europe are quite cheap because everything is so close together.

We are flying to Barcelona from Austin in June. It's expensive. Those are some good suggestions. I'll have to consider that next time. Unfortunately, it won't help me with our flight to Chile in December, because Texas is one of the cheapest flights there

 

[pixiedustedme]

Flying to Europe from Texas is just expensive. My jaw dropped at the price for our tickets from Austin to Barcelona at the end of June. Follow the advice here to get it down anyway you can.



We are flying to Barcelona from Austin in June. It's expensive. Those are some good suggestions. I'll have to consider that next time. Unfortunately, it won't help me with our flight to Chile in December, because Texas is one of the cheapest flights there

You're lucky to go to Chile. I want to go there someday.

 

[soniam]

You're lucky to go to Chile. I want to go there someday.

My FIL is from there. My husband went several times as a kid, because his father's family is mostly still there. We went, before our son, once for 3 weeks. It was nice. We really want our son to experience his heritage. Plus, we have never gotten down far south. I am hoping to convince some of his siblings to come, because none of the grandkids have ever been. The flights aren't great, but they aren't terrible either. The hotel and food prices are pretty reasonable. It's very safe and feels more like Europe than South America.

 

[*pixie*]

We just came back from Barcelona and our fares were about $600 roundtrip per person from Denver (with a stop in Miami). We've been twice and both times booked flights about 4 months out. I follow "The Points Guy" on Facebook and he tends to post when flights to Europe are cheap. I know the first time we went to Barcelona, we bought flights based on an article I saw from him. Good luck!

I know this is an older thread, but I was wondering what airline you flew with? I'm just starting to research doing the EBTA 2021, and I've never flown out of the country. We would be flying out of Denver and I'm totally lost even trying to figure out what airlines fly from Denver to Barcelona!

 

[fredandkell]

I know this is an older thread, but I was wondering what airline you flew with? I'm just starting to research doing the EBTA 2021, and I've never flown out of the country. We would be flying out of Denver and I'm totally lost even trying to figure out what airlines fly from Denver to Barcelona!

Since you're looking for a one-way, I've heard from several people on here that booking through DCL is actually one of the cheapest ways to book a O/W, and they take the hassle factor out of it for you. Unless you have some frequent flyer miles lying around, in which case a O/W is half the points needed for a round-trip. But you'll find that if you pay for a one-way, it usually costs as much as or more than the round-trip! Which is why people recommend going thru DCL for the international one-ways. You can also find a few budget carriers that have cheaper one-way tickets (e.g. Norwegian Air) but I don't trust them as it seems they are always going in and out of business - I prefer the big name carriers for trans-Atlantic flights.

 

[jenf22]

I know this is an older thread, but I was wondering what airline you flew with? I'm just starting to research doing the EBTA 2021, and I've never flown out of the country. We would be flying out of Denver and I'm totally lost even trying to figure out what airlines fly from Denver to Barcelona!

We flew American in March and we flew United 2 years ago. This year's flights were actually on British Airways, operated by American. When we tried to book American directly, the prices were high. It was kind of weird. We ended up booking on Expedia. I recommend checking sites like Expedia and then trying to book direct with the airline. We had serious issues this year because our flight to MIA was on the 737MAX8. It was grounded 2 days before our flight, which was also the same day of our "bomb cyclone" that cancelled 1500 flights out of DIA. So American just cancelled our flight to MIA with no other option given that would have gotten us to our ship on time. We could have changed our flights to 3 days later, but then we would have missed our cruise. So we ended up leaving a day early flying to South Dakota, then to Atlanta, and then to Miami to make our original connection to Barcelona. American was great when we finally got through to them and they were able to cancel the DEN-MIA leg while keeping our MIA-BCN leg. But it was a pain trying to get in touch with Expedia. We wasted a lot of time on the phone with them and missed out on much better options to MIA. In the end, it all worked out and our trip insurance covered half of our new flights (it had a $500 per person max and the new flight was $900 per person). Anyway, long story to say "try to book direct" and "always get travel insurance". Best of luck. Barcelona is a beautiful city!

 

[ryankski]

We just booked a couple of weeks ago round trip flights from Chicago to Barcelona in mid-April 2020 for $436.83 per person. This is for a land based trip. We are flying with SWISS Airlines with layovers in Zurich. We had the option of both layovers being 1.5 to 2 hours, but chose one being 7 hrs so we can take the train 15 minutes into the city center. We don't get a checked bag or seat assignment as those would have added at least a couple hundred more dollars. Lufthansa was slightly more and TAP Airlines was about $60 more.

I would definitely look at European based airlines. I use Kayak and Google flights to fight the best prices and then book directly through the airline's site.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

One thing that I would also suggest is to check with DCL to see what there prices for flights are. I priced one I wanted out first and then called DCL and the price was essentially the same. I didn't have to pay for the flight until my cruise paid in full date. Plus if my flight home, which was the same day was affected by the ship getting in late, etc. Disney would have taken care of arranging a new flight, etc. I was able to pick my seats just like booking directly etc. as well.

Same here. On our B2B Med/WBTA cruises, we found the airfare though DCL was only about $100 more, but there was the cushion of "what if the plane is delayed" and was worth the piece of mind for us.