yes, it is normal this year for summer for going to western Europe.

I don't think there is much chance it will go down, but who knows, if demand is really off for the summer, they might have some "sale" in May or June. I remember one year they did have a good sale on Air France flights in August that wasn't announced until some time in Spring.

I've just been checking to try to get a FF ticket on Delta to those similar places and few flights are available to me (many that you can book are not available to me as a FF). And even the convoluted routes are not available to me on certain dates, it gets worse towards the end of July and August, much to my surprise. SO I can only presume that means a lot of these flights are pretty booked up.

But the range you are finding is the norm, you aren't going to get anything much different.

Have you looked at Kayak.com and the month-long views? I wouldn't count on any fare decreases; it has been reported that airlines are running flights which have high occupancy rates..more so than ever before.

Hello Bosgal!
Though I have not been searching out of Boston, I had been querying for flights for a couple of months now for either Spring or early to mid Summer. I was able to find round trip tickets from Charleston to Brussels for $800, but I am traveling in late March/early April. The prices went up steadily from mid-April to mid-May, and then more sharply come Memorial Day and into June and July. While I never searched out of Boston, I did check other hubs like Atlanta, Charlotte, and even DC, and it didn't seem to make much of a difference. The cost seemed to be between $1100-$1300 for travel in the summertime. If you are searching for Paris and Amsterdam, I would also look at Brussels and even London, which I found to be much cheaper. You can get a one-way trip on the Eurostar from London to Paris for only $61, so you can factor the difference in cost, while obviously taking into consideration the added time. As I said, Paris and Amsterdam seemed to be clearly more expensive than Brussels, which is about 90 minutes by train from both Paris and Amsterdam. The search engine I use most is itasoftware.com, which is not a sales site, but just a search engine, which gives you a lot of options and variables to see the lowest possible price by date, arrival and departure city, etc. Then, you can go to kayak and plug those exact criteria into their search engine and get the same price. I've read that the best time to find deals is 1-3 months out from your trip. Too far in advance or last minute can result in higher fares I have found, though it isn't always the case. My other advice is to check regularly. I usually take about 5 minutes each morning at work to check prices if I am planning an upcoming trip. That way, you can recognize what is typical for that route, and you will therefore be able to recognize a true deal when you see one offered by a different airline or something. Last year in mid-July, I found round trip tickets from Charleston to Rome for Labor Day weekend last year for $685, so you never know!

Good luck!

I see a few fares to Amsterdam on Icelandair for slightly less than $1k, in the ~$980 range. I looked at July 7 - 17. Use there flexible days fare finder and see what comes up. They use 757s and connect in Reykjavik, the return day I saw had an 11 hour overnight layover in KEF. http://www.icelandair.us/

As mentioned above, you should try itasoftware matrix airfare to search for a range of dates/trip duration days. (Again, it's not a booking/purchase site but if you find a fare that looks good jot down the specifics and try to find the same fare on the airline's website or a site like expedia.
http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Thank you for all your suggestions! I was trying to do multi-city, fly into Amsterdam and out through Paris so I don't have to retrace. I thought when I tried flying into Brussells and out from Pars that it came out more than flying into Amsterdam and out from PAris. I will check that out again. Since I haven't done a trip to Western Europe during the summer in a while, I just had no idea how much summer travel is now and just wanted to get a sense if the prices I am seeing are typical, and if I should wait longer if it will drop, or just book now.

Anyone else traveling to Paris/Amsterdam in summer from Boston or NY? Curious how much you got your ticket for and how early did you book it? Thanks!

YOU have my sympathy! I have already spent hours trying to find a low cost way to get to Paris from Denver mid-August. Then we go to Hamburg to visit friends and then off to Slovenia for 2+ weeks and finally Croatia for 2+ weeks.....returning around Oct.9th from Dubrovnik or Zagreb.
I'm getting $1800/pp from Zagreb.......$2058/pp from Dubrovnik. This does not incl getting to Ljubljana from Hamburg.
While i drive myself crazy now......I feel prices WILL go down in the April-May timeframe.
I have tried EVERY permutation.....but I will try itasoftware.
IF fuel prices continue to go up......I just may be eating those words.
CHEERS.

We are going Boston-Dublin-London Gatwick-Paris-Dublin-Boston in mid-late May for less than $775. June-September would certainly be higher than that.

Q. Why not direct London?
A. We are goin to the Brighton Festival and a friend will pick us up at Gatwick.

Q. I have heard that Aer Lingus is awful
A. We will let you know. The Boston-Dublin flight is scheduled for just under 6 hours, suggesting actual flight time will be 5+, and you can put up with anything for 5 hours, especially for hundreds of dollars in savings.

I have been tracking airfare on ITASoftware.com from BOS to MRS (Marseille / Southern France) since mid-December. We have a 4 week trip planned for late July - early August.

Airfare is trending upward. It was in the $1,100-$1,300 range for a while, but since mid-January it has increased to the upper $1,300's at a minimum.

Aer Lingus ran a sale for a few days in early January for $1,000 RT. Would have pounced on that but didn't have travel plans pinned down.

Checking daily, I have seen airlines testing the waters with slightly lower prices. They'll dip for a few days into the $1,200's, but then go back up shortly.

You have to track airfare daily to get a good deal. To do that I make ITA the homepage on my browser, so whenever I jump on the internet it pops up and I click the search button and it is only a minute each day

I'm flying NYC to Paris, return Paris to Boston. Aer Lingus $982, booked two weeks ago. Late June to late July travel.

Last summer I flew Icelandic Air NYC to London and Amsterdam back to Boston and it was about the same price.

Obviously the non-stops are much more. In the my case all the layovers are very reasonable (just a few hours).