Bargain Airline WOW Air Lands In Chicago With $99 Flights To Europe

By Stephen Gossett in News on Mar 27, 2017 6:12PM

WOW Air

It'll be Christmas in July for hunters of extreme international-travel bargains. WOW air, the Iceland-based low-cost flight carrier, announced on Monday that Chicago will be the airline's first Midwestern service point, with one-way flights from O'Hare International Airport to Reykjavík for $99 beginning this summer. Tickets went on sale today.

If you're so over Iceland—and despite the Scandinavian hotspot's ongoing tourism rush, there's a good chance you are—you can fly into 23 other European cities from Keflavik Airport for an additional $50, or $149 total. Those spots include London, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, Copenhagen, Berlin and Frankfurt, among others.

Skúli Mogensen (who we sincerely hope considers the nickname Schoolly M), founder and CEO of WOW air, said in a statement, "We're excited to partner with O'Hare International Airport, the third busiest airport in the United States, to bring our promise of affordable transatlantic travel to the Midwest."

Of course, any transcontinental flight that's priced lower than some meals in Chicago is going to include some austerity measures. There's no wi-fi, no entertainment, no free refreshments, and you'll pay for carry-ons and checked baggage alike. Plus the $99/$149 ticket price doesn't tell quite the full story, considering those are one-way deals. Right now, for example, the least expensive flight back to Chicago from Iceland is $169 and the cheapest from continental Europe back to Illinois is another $189, WOW Air spokesperson Anna Romano told Chicagoist. And those prices could fluctuate. But for an economy hop across the Atlantic, that's still not bad.