Cheap Flights to Europe – Now visit Europe without spending much money.
In earlier times, travel agents acted as consolidators to book a number of like-minded people on cheap flights to Europe. The people they put together were required to have some kind of tie, for example to belong to the same school, club or employer organization. In the 1970’s, the rules on group affiliation were relaxed, which allowed more people who had an interest to book cheap flights to Europe, even if they didn’t know much about the rest of the group making the trip with them. For a few years, the types of affiliations were more and more tenuous, to the point where some groups were called by very generic, meaningless names, such as “air breathers," “lovers of oxygen" and “mouth breathers." Needless to say, the requirements to join such groups were pretty light, and anyone could join.
This group affiliation fiction was finally pierced in the late 1970’s as both European governments and the US realized that the old logic no longer held up in the current expectations of their voters and customers. At that time, there were other changes taking effect. In the US, the old CAA was disbanded, which gave free rein to the airlines to set schedules and fares, and took away the umbrella held over them by the government.
In Europe, the old ways died a lot harder. Many of the airlines, unlike in the US, were owned by national governments who could not let their ‘flag carrier’ die in the face of external competition. These national airlines competed on the basis of other elements than price—service, frequency, and even on the basis of access to landing and take-off slots at their major national airports. In short, the flag carriers used every tool at their disposal to assure that their home team got all the advantages in the marketplace when competing with more-efficient, privately-owned ‘non-national’ airlines, primarily from the United States.
All of this started to change for the European airlines in the 1980’s. Cheap flights to Europe, offered by the US carriers, started to dig deeply into the competitiveness of the European airlines. They responded by relaxing the rules, and leveling the playing field. Interesting what happens with a little competition, isn’t it?