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Can anyone help me understand this better?
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Use a budget airline and don’t fly direct
Fly to Oslo first thru Norse airlines
Check google flights and play with days. You could also type the three New York airports in as the origin and “Europe” as the destination to see if other cities are cheaper. NY to Paris is a competitive market though, so I suspect you’ll find fairly cheap fares. Cheapest published one-stop is $502 now (SAS via Oslo) and cheapest non-stop is $652 (AA departing on a Tuesday or Wednesday). There should be no need to book more than 28 days ahead (you’ll almost never see an advance purchase requirement on a far of more than that)
Skyscanner is my go-to - select NYC (all airports) to Paris (all airports) on any time and scroll through their flights. Currently in the middle of booking $850ish round trip flights to Japan currently, flying out Friday and getting back on a Sunday.
Great UI/UX for this on their mobile app, less ideal on a laptop/desktop.
This strategy takes a long time but: Paris is a more popular destination than [fill in the European city] so sometimes a flight to Paris will be more expensive than a flight to [european city] that connects in Paris. Search for as many random routes as you can, find the ones that stop in Paris and if one is cheaper, book that flight and just don’t get on the second leg of the journey
That can work (with some risk) for domestic US and occasional short-haul European flights that are priced on a one-way basis, but it doesn’t work on transatlantic flights where a one-way ticket is usually much more expensive than a roundtrip ticket, as the rest of the ticket—your return—is cancelled as soon as you miss one segment. Your bag is normally checked to your final destination too (and even if you only travel with a carryon, you could be forced to check it), which can be a problem if you’re not planning to go to your final ticketed destination. You can avoid this if you have an overnight connection or you’re planning to drop the first segment after arriving in the U.S., but it’s otherwise tricky as gate agents have been instructed to charge passengers the fare difference if they believe they’re engaging in hidden city ticketing. Finally, hidden city ticketing is against the airlines’ contracts of carriage and you can be asked to pay the fare difference and lose your entire mileage balance for doing this. I had one crazy experience with this on an Indian airline where the airline was worried I’d placed a bomb on the plane operating a segment I wasn’t taking and I was kept in an office until the flight landed safely at its destination. I was also forced to pay the fare difference.
Go to Portugal then fly Ryan air or some low cost airline
Buy it 6+ months ahead and with points. Bought a $4.5k itinerary (economy with a layover going to Paris, business direct back to NYC) for 90k chase points which has an equivalent case value of approx. ~$900
Thanks guys!