SAS Scandinavian Airlines has a big sale happening from Los Angeles to Copenhagen with fares down to $476 at online travel agencies and around $500 through major OTA sites like Orbitz and Expedia. Departures at ticket prices under $500 round trip start around September 19 and last through May 30, 2017. One of the cool features of this sale is availability today of tickets for Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons under $500 round trip.
Even if Copenhagen is not your desired destination, the availability of low cost flights with RyanAir, Norwegian and many of the alliance airlines makes Copenhagen a convenient airport for flights elsewhere in Europe. Last year I flew Copenhagen to London for $60 round trip on RyanAir, about $60 to Prague on Norwegian, and last month I flew Krakow to Copenhagen on SAS for $62 in peak season July.
SAS Scandinavian Airlines Los Angeles LAX – Chicago ORD – Copenhagen CPH
$496 round trip Sat Dec 18 – Thu Dec 29
This flight has a horrible outbound 10hr layover. I actually have spent many hours on the SAS website searching deals since Sunday evening. The lowest fare ticket I found was $394 for a Stockholm itinerary, but that ticket had a 20 hour layover in Chicago on the outbound and I paid $75 more to get the itinerary I really wanted.
Momondo.com search finds an OTA price for $476 round trip for the itinerary shown above.
One thing I learned yesterday is some of these European OTA sites will not accept a U.S. credit card since their screen does not include the USA for an address choice. I also found it difficult to book tickets on foreign language websites when I was trying to determine what boxes were asking in Swedish and Polish as I tried to buy tickets.
My final solution was booking through Orbitz.com in English for my tickets. I figure if there is a problem I can deal with Orbitz much more easily than a foreign OTA.
Orbitz Ticket is $502.01 for same itinerary shown above.
Orbitz Ticket for SAS Los Angeles LAX – Copenhagen CPH
$498.40 Sat Nov 19 – Sun Nov 27 (Thanksgiving week)
This is another low fare ticket with Orbitz for LAX to Copenhagen, but forces an overnight in Stockholm for 10 hours and adds hotel expense. That overnight in Stockholm means a hotel night at the airport and those hotels are expensive unless you have points to burn.
Play around with dates and positioning flights if you plan to make somewhere else in Europe your ultimate destination. Move the date for LAX-CPH in December by one day and a much better itinerary is available on Monday Dec 19
SAS Airlines
Los Angeles LAX – Chicago ORD (2 hours) – Copenhagen CPH – San Francisco SFO (3 hours) – Los Angeles LAX
$502.01 Orbitz ticket Monday Dec 19 – Thursday December 29
Great deals are to be found for LAX-CPH and you can get an itinerary without long layovers in places you don’t want to end up visiting only for a hotel night.
I had the same problem finding itineraries with overnight layovers as I planned December 2016 and July 2017 trips to Europe over the past two days. Trying to decide whether a day in Chicago or London or Copenhagen and a hotel were worth the time and expense. Ultimately I opted for skipping USA airport connections to fly to Stockholm via Copenhagen and spend 24 hours on a transit stop in Copenhagen instead with a hotel night there on the way to Stockholm. But that is another ticket and another story since this deal is only LAX-Copenhagen and I booked a Stockholm-San Francisco round trip ticket today for $470 to position me in Europe for July 2017.
The difficult part of my itinerary was matching dates for SAS international flights from and to the USA with low fare dates for connections to Krakow, Riga and Berlin, since those are the places I plan to travel rather than stay in Scandinavia. And I planned my travel dates to match up with Club Carlson 4-for-2 rates discount hotel rates for these cities.
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