Europe: By plane or by train?

By Sarah Schlichter and Caroline Costello

updated 4:25 p.m. ET Sept. 4, 2008

Europe's extensive network of railroads was once the only affordable option for folks traveling around the continent, but lately the rails have lost their supremacy. Discount airlines like Ryanair and easyJet have made jetting around the continent quicker and cheaper. Ryanair has sales that sometimes offer tickets from just 10 GBP (about $18.50 USD), and claims to be 50 percent cheaper than easyJet, its biggest rival. (Not necessarily true — see our findings below!)

With fares this cheap, does it make sense even to consider traveling by train anymore? The answer: It depends. For one thing, the discount airlines aren't generally quite as cheap as they appear. Even if you do net an incredibly affordable flight, taxes and fees bump the price up to at least $25 or $30. Then, if you're traveling on Ryanair, you'll have to pay for each piece of checked baggage — 8 GBP per item (about $14.90) if you book it ahead of time when you make your reservation, and 16 GBP for each unreserved item ($29.75) that you bring to the check-in counter. These fees are charged per one-way flight; carry-on baggage is free. Ryanair also charges "handling" or "transaction" fees if you book your tickets using some credit or debit cards; these are 4 GBP (about $7.40) per one-way flight.

One more factor to take into account? Discount airlines tend to fly into smaller airports that can be an hour or more outside of the city you're trying to visit. Trains, on the other hand, typically arrive in or near the center of town, and usually link up easily with the city's mass transportation system.

We tested fares on easyJet, Ryanair and Eurail to see who had the lowest price, the most convenient connections and the quickest journey. We tested prices using the same dates over a two-week period in February, though we sometimes had to tweak our dates a bit when pricing train tickets — most European rail operators don't allow reservations more than 60 days in advance.

Slide show   London calling From Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square, the venerable old town oozes history and Dickens. more photos

London - Paris - Rome - London
This popular itinerary was our first test subject since London is the cheapest gateway to Europe for most Americans. It's important to note that London has four different airports, and that most Americans will fly into Heathrow or, less commonly, Gatwick. The discount airlines, meanwhile, fly from Stansted, Luton or Gatwick, not Heathrow — so be sure to allow plenty of time to transfer between airports if your itinerary so requires.

The winner: easyJet edged out Ryanair for first place. It offers direct flights for each leg of our itinerary, so booking was a breeze. The total price with taxes: $161.30, with a total of about five hours in the air. easyJet's site was also the easiest to use, allowing us to search "all London airports" when booking. Note: We had to fly in and out of five different airports —Charles de Gaulle and Orly (Paris), Luton and Gatwick (London), and Ciampino (Rome).

Slideshow   Perfectly Paris A magical city known as the ‘City of Love’ and the ‘City of Lights’, Paris is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world – and a city full of amazing architecture, world-class art, museums, gardens and parks. more photos

The runner-up: Ryanair offered somewhat similar pricing to easyJet — $158.31 — but, strangely, offered no direct flights from London to Paris, forcing us to manually test several possible connecting cities. (The search function on Ryanair.com won't make connections for you, so you have to search each leg individually.) We found a good deal on flights from London Stansted to Dublin and then from Dublin to Paris Beauvais, but the extra flight and layover boosted our total travel time significantly. Also, our price above doesn't include the cost of checking baggage on each flight — so assuming you check two bags and reserve them ahead of time, you'll pay an extra $119.20 to check them on four flights. A few other caveats: Beauvais is probably the least convenient airport for Paris-bound travelers, requiring a shuttle bus ride of over an hour to get into the center of the city. Finally, while Ryanair.com was easy to use, there was no option to search all London airports; instead, we had to test each of the three individually.

Slide show   Florence a la fresco Explore Italy's Renaissance city and discover magnificent art, architecture and more more photos

The loser: Eurail was the clear third choice for this itinerary since the cities involved are so far apart. The total estimated time of all three legs was a vacation-eating 60 hours — and the price couldn't compensate for the transit time, adding up to a hefty $560 per person when buying tickets individually. A cheaper alternative would be to buy a France-Italy Pass, covering four days of travel in France and Italy over a two-month period from $354. But you'd still need to buy the tickets to London individually, meaning that the savings might not be as great as they look. (The price we found from London to Paris was $109 each way.)

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Rome - Florence - Venice - Rome
This itinerary is a common one for first-time visitors interested in seeing Italy's highlights. We assumed here that our test traveler flew from the United States into Rome, usually the cheapest Italian gateway city for Americans. Because of the relative proximity of the three cities involved, this turned out to be a much more train-friendly itinerary than our first test case.

The winner: Eurail won this round by a landslide, offering both the shortest total travel time (9 hours and 56 minutes) and the lowest price. We priced each leg individually and came up with a total of $178, which is less than it would cost you to buy an Italy Pass for $225. However, the prices were so close for our travel dates that it's worth checking both options when you book. One final perk of taking the train? In most cases you'll arrive at a train station near the center of each city, with quick, easy connections by subway to hotels and sightseeing.

The runner-up: Neither airline really shone in this comparison. Ryanair gets our vote for runner-up with a total price of $261.34. The travel time was almost twice as long the train's, not because of time in the air but because of lengthy layovers. (That doesn't even take into account how early you need to arrive at the airport before your flights to get through security!) The only direct flight available for any of these city pairs was between Venice and Rome, which we priced at just $14.61 with taxes. But we ran into trouble booking flights between Rome and Pisa (Ryanair doesn't go directly to Florence) and between Pisa and Venice. In both cases we had to test each possible connecting city to see which one yielded the best schedule and lowest total price. We ended up connecting through Brussels Charleroi for one leg and London Stansted for the other. Another drawback is the inconvenience of the airports —the Pisa airport is a good 50 miles away from Florence, and connecting between Rome's Ciampino airport and Rome's major international airport, Fiumicino, requires a convoluted and lengthy transfer process. And don't forget that extra fee for baggage — about $149 to take two pre-reserved bags on five flights.

The loser: easyJet's flight schedules were even less convenient than Ryanair's, resulting in a total price of $304 for six flights. When booking, we again faced the painstaking process of searching connection cities one by one — in this case for all three legs, since there were no direct flights between any of the cities on our itinerary. We ended up with layovers in three different cities (Berlin, Bristol and London Gatwick). Like Ryanair, easyJet flies to Pisa rather than Florence and to Rome Ciampino rather than Fiumicino, making for some inconvenience in transferring during and at the end of the trip.

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