Is my favourite Budget airline search engine. You can use the "Whole Country" so it searches for flights from Zurich, Basel, Friedrichshafen, Milan, Lyon, anywhere that is even vaguely close to Switzerland.
Try http://www.skyscanner.net/ - I think it's a great website to get an overview of the situation. However since ticket prices are not updated in real-time (I think they update the prices every few days) there is a risk of missing special offers which have just come out; it is always better to check with the specific airline's website too.
http://opodo.com/ can be pretty good, and it is worth looking at both the UK, and German sites, they sometimes have different prices. Though some of the real cheap one's on the UK site don't do e-tickets and only post to UK addresses (Bloody Poms who don't understand that letters/packages/people can go out of the country, I'm running into this all the time. ).
I swear by http://www.mobissimo.com , it searches online travel agencies, online consolidators, major airlines, and budget airlines. I think it's great...perfect for "one stop" searching! Hasn't failed me yet in getting great deals and has saved me hours of time going from site to site. My only advice (which may be obvious) is once you find the cheapest flight, go to the airline directly and book...it could save you a bit more. Good luck!
Good, but kayak ( www.kayak.co.uk or www.kayak.com ) do the same and have a better interface, you can search nearby airports and filter the results dynamically.. it's very good indeed IMO.
1. Consider non-mainstream airports for cheap flight alternatives. For example, a few years ago during the expen$ive Chri$tmas $ea$on, I flew Ryanair between London and Karlsruhe , Germany, for wayyyyyy less money than a flight into Switzerland, even when you factored in the train ticket. Freidrechshafen (spelling?), Germany is another small airport with cheap flights near the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Just keep in mind that although you can save a lot of money this way, you certainly don't save time...
Bon voyage!
HeatherM[/quote]
Bringing this thread back from the dead. I was looking at flights from Karlsruhe and they are very cheap. Whats the proximity of the airport to train line? Anybody have experience of this?