At last, real budget travel: $39 flights are coming to NYC

Finally, real budget airfare: $39 domestic trips and $99 international flights coming to NYC — Allegiant: finally an affordable way to get to Cincinnati. Via Facebook.

Budget flights from New York City have long been the freakish white whale/golden unicorn hybrid of travel that we never thought we’d see. While those Europeans get to hop from country on airlines like Ryanair (essentially the Megabus of airplanes), we’re stuck thinking a $400 roundtrip to Chicago is a steal.

Now, finally, we might be getting ridiculously cheap airfare: The NY Post reports two new airlines will start running out of Newark offering flights to a few cities in the country for as low as $39, one-way trips to Iceland for $99 and flights to Paris, London, Berlin and Frankfurt for $149. Which is good because we should all probably travel to London right now; things seem perfectly fine there and not chaotic at all.

Starting in November, Allegiant air will be offering $39 one-way flights from Newark for to Cincinnati and Knoxville, and $41 flights to Asheville, NC and Savannah, Ga. Asheville is lovely and Savannah is one of the most charming cities in the country — you should go to both!

Also in November, Iceland’s Wow Air will also start flying out of Newark, offering daily nonstop service to its hub in Iceland and cheap flights to cities in Europe. Is it a coincidence that cheap flights out of this interminable reply all chain of a country are starting right around the time of the presidential election?

USA Today checked and indeed $99 one-way fares were available between Newark and Reykjavik in November. Flights to London, Dublin, Berlin, Amsterdam and Frankfurt were on sale for as little as $149 each way.

Will these rates last? Will there only be like two $99 flights a week that get gobbled up before you even load the web page? Only time will tell.

There are, of course, catches: This is the budgetest of budget air, so expect upcharges for just about everything. Using a credit card to buy a ticket on Allegiant results in an $8 fine, which my coffee shop doesn’t even do, but you can avoid it by using a debit card. You can bet on luggage fees too. Maybe it’s worth it to get a break from this country for a few days.