Why are flights so much cheaper in Europe than in the U.S.?

Many flights here can be astonishingly cheap, and not only for those who spend hours searching the Internet for the best deals. On a recent day in September, travelers could book $17 flights from London to Berlin on 14 different days in October — or even the next morning. On the same day, the roughly 1,000-mile flight to Barcelona typically cost about $22, and the slightly longer trip to Rome ran about $34, almost too expensive for European standards.Cheap Flights from Phnom Penh to Shenzhen

That doesn't come without risks: Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier, RyanAir, is canceling thousands of flights because it mismanaged its pilots’ holiday schedules. But the cheap prices still outweigh the disadvantages for many travelers — and American fliers can still only dream of such bargain-basement tickets on their own airlines. On transatlantic flights, some European airlines such as Iceland’s Wow Air or Norwegian similarly offer much cheaper deals than their U.S. counterparts.
Europe hardly owns the idea of low-cost air travel. Long before EasyJet and RyanAir, the United States was a pioneer in the industry, with companies like People Express and others offering cheap tickets in the 1970s and early 1980s. At the time, travelers could fly from Boston to New York City for $19 (comparable to the purchasing power of about $60 today), and tickets could be bought on board as though fliers were boarding a bus. Europe deregulated its airline industry much later than the United States, which is why the old continent’s low-budget airline industry only took off in the early 1990s.

Even today, the United States is home to some of the world’s largest low-budget carriers, including Southwest Airlines and JetBlue. Almost every third flight in the United States is operated by a low-budget airline, a similar proportion to Europe.
Although the European industry was deregulated later than in the United States, the legislative framework became more expansive and low-budget carriers picked up momentum on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean much more quickly. Airlines like RyanAir refined the U.S. model by cutting costs on board further, investing in efficient but cheap planes and speeding up the boarding process.