There is an opportunity today for American Airlines $127 round trip tickets between Los Angeles or San Francisco and Chicago for departures October to March. Frontier has fares down to $117 round trip and United is $132 in January for LAX-ORD. United and Delta do not have sale fares from SFO.
The deal I see is the opportunity to connect in Chicago for a sub-$500 round trip ticket to cities across Europe with any of the major airlines. I spent the last 48 hours planning 5 weeks of European travel for 2017 from California. Flying to Chicago from San Francisco was one of the lowest priced options for winter travel to Europe, but ultimately I paid more per ticket to fly out of San Francisco directly to London and avoid Chicago in winter.
American Airlines San Francisco SFO – Chicago ORD nonstop
$141.20 round trip Friday Feb 3 – Sat Feb 11
American Airlines Los Angeles LAX – Chicago ORD nonstop
$126.20 round trip Friday Feb 3 – Sun Feb 12
Delta Airlines Chicago ORD – New York JFK – Paris CDG – Chicago ORD
$476.86 round trip Friday Feb 3 – Sat Feb 11
Google Flights fares Chicago ORD – Europe
Friday Feb 3 – Sat Feb 11
- Oslo $430
- Brussels $443
- Amsterdam $451
- Copenhagen $465
- Paris $474
- Stockholm $490
- Budapest $492
- Bucharest $493
- Frankfurt $504
- Munich $531
- London $553
- Madrid $578
Many of these cities in Europe are priced $100 to $300 lower for travel from LAX or SFO when buying a cheap ticket to Chicago and flying from there to Europe. Similar low fare deals are available for winter travel to European cities in the $400s and low $500 from Denver and Seattle too.
Icelandair has some high $300s fares Chicago to Oslo, Norway and free stopover in Iceland can be scheduled at time of booking.
