Hi Pat,

I bought my October tickets in January.

Generally

www.kayak.com/buzz

www.cheapoair.com

www.farecompare.com

www.skyscanner.net

NYC LON or AMS booked in WINTER on a TUESDAY

for cheapest fares.

I went this year on www.ba.com got 50000 FF miles bonus

right away on their FF Chase Credit card booked FREE

with that paid tax only...best CC deal I have ever seen

though I think they have scaled it back some of late..

But my wife and I got 200,000 on those BA cards

and have 4 free round trips just have to pay tax only.

Happy Hunting.

We start looking up to 6 months early and just follow airline prices on Orbitz or Kayak. Sales happen but they are less likely to be real bargains flying from an airport like Salt Lake City International on a fixed schedule. My wife's work schedule is not flexible enough to drop everything and just go, which also impedes chasing bargains.

When we do find a savings, the savings are usually less than 15% of our total trip cost. For us, the difference between a low fare and a high one does not warrant agonizing about. So, we normally buy 3 to 4 months out.

Our quest for a decent fare mostly comes down to flying in the off-season, which we like better anyway. This Nov/Dec we are flying out of SLC, through Detroit to meet-up and fly with my brother & his wife to Frankfurt for Christmas Markets. My brothers direct flight fare is better than our connecting flight.

Regards, Gary

www.mychasecreditcards.com/britishairways/hp_postpin

Does Canada count? $1300 (US) from Ottawa to Athens, return from Barcelona to Ottawa. Bought in April for late July. Looked on five sights a day for six months before buying the tickets.

I was looking for early August but couldn't commit to my dates until March because my daughter wasn't sure if she could get the vacation time. Maybe if I'd been able to buy earlier I might have been able to get a price I could live with. As it was, I never saw fares much below $1600 and since I needed 4 tickets that was more than I was willing to spend. Flying in the off-season wasn't an option for this trip since my son is still in school.

Interesting that only one person has actually answered the question. Maybe even when it comes to airfares people are too sensitive about $$$ to post the details?

I must admit that when we decide to fly the other way we start looking only a short time before we planning on going and try to find a direct flight from Europe to our destination rather than going for the best price, which almost inevitably involves transfers in the US. But there are only two of us so it doesn't matter quite so much.

I hope you had a good "staycation" Pat, and got to explore a beautiful part of the US.

$636 non-stop RT JFK-BRU-JFK on Delta. Depart 9/23, Return 10/10. Purchased 7/17.

We flew Newark to Stockholm for about $860 at the start of July on SAS. They had a two week sale on summer fares in the first two weeks of March. We had to buy our own tickets to Newark to take advantage of this deal, so we wound up spending another $160 on Continental to get from Greensboro to Newark. Since Continental and SAS are both in Star Alliance, we were able to check our bags through even though we had two separate tickets. Total airfare was therefore $1020, which was the best deal we saw when we were planning our trip. We had some frequent flier miles on SAS, and we used those to travel to France for part of our vacation.
I have signed up to get e-mail offers from a few airlines, and I look for summer sales, usually in February and March. It seemed there were fewer this year, but SAS did come through.

We flew the other direction, LHR to SEA. We bought our tickets in April and flew in July. $1000 a ticket. It was brutal. We've paid less than half that flying in the off season, but we had family obligations.

Have posted this elsewhere, but in early July we bought two roundtrip tickets from Boston to Barcelona for about $1040 on expedia per person for AirFrance (codeshare Delta)- this includes a four night stay in the Gran Torre Catalunya hotel. Cheaper flights with less advantageous departure times and no hotel averaged around $800 US. Interestingly, the exact flight we wanted WITHOUT hotel cost $1010, so, for $30 extra pp, we got a hotel.

Another interesting note: we originally booked the trip for Labor Day weekend and bought "trip cancellation" insurance through expedia for about $69 per person - we ended up changing the trip to the next weekend, got a better, fare, and ended up forfeiting only the $140 travel insurance fee (no airline change fees!), got a cheaper pacakge, and ended up saving about $50 pp. A pleasant surprise.

Here are 67 responses to my thread asking about European airfares for Sept 2010:
http://www.fodors.com/community/europe/whos-going-to-europe-in-september-2010-whats-your-airfare.cfm

DH & I also gave up the idea of our annual fall trip to Europe this year. We wanted to go to Amsterdam but I started looking for tickets too late in the game. The only ones I could find were >$1000 pp from Boston.

OTOH, last week I just purchased a plane ticket from Boston to Switzerland (arr Geneva, dep Zurich) on American for next month, Sept. I was surprised to find a ticket at $750 all-in.

Used USAirways FF miles and booked 2 non stops, Dulles-Munich with Lufthansa. Only had to pay taxes and a fee. $206 total.

Prices were over $1000 (approaching $1200 I think) so we used Continental frequent flyer miles for 4 tickets. Unfortunately, we could not get directly to Spain, so we: 1) flew Newark to Lisbon 2) took train and bus to Seville 3) drove around southern Spain 4) flew EasyJet Malaga to Geneva 5) flew Geneva to Newark.

It was a lot of hopping around, but I'm glad we got to spend a few days in Lisbon and our night in Geneva was unexpectedly really nice. Couldn't really call it a relaxing pace, though we had 18 days.

The best deal that I could find for JAX to CDG with a return from PRG was $1200. More than I was willing to part with so I used 30,000 miles on AA and got a one way to Paris. From there I bought a ticket on AirBerlin for $35 to Vienna. Taking the train to Prague for $40. The trip home from Prague was only $700 on US Air. I got all the travel (RT airfare, European airfare, and train ticket) for less than $800. I thought that was pretty good! Without the miles, I was not going to Europe this year...

Ord to Fra Sept 9 Berlin to Ord Sept 26 1895.00 for Wife and I. Bought them Apr 5.

We just bought CVG to LHR (change in DTW) with a return CDG to CVG (direct flight) for $938.
We leave 10/1!

YK - If you are a United FF member, you can get a RT flight from BOS-AMS in October for 25,000 miles and $315. Also available from other cities and for other destinations.

We bought basically last minute round-trip tickets two weeks ago - JFK to Prague leaving August 30. The cost was $812 each. AMEX points is paying for most of it. We did better buying the tickets separately and negotiating with the hotel for a good price than we would have if we combined flight and hotel. However, we were flexible on dates. Moving the date of our departure or our arrival one or two days would have added $200 to over $400 per ticket.

I find that the best way is to check on Kayak, look at the grid that shows the least expensive flight days for your departure and arrival cities. Then enter those days on Kayak and see what flights and prices show up. After that check the airline websites and compare. Sometimes they're less.
Depending on the country you fly into and/or have a stop-over in the taxes and fees could easily be more than the flight. So do check different country airlines.

If you have a stop-over read the duration carefully. Some air
lines list the duration of each leg separately and list them as non-stop. If you're not careful you might think you're buying a quick non-stop ticket when you're actually buying a long 1 or 2 stop ticket.

Because of family emergency I had to cancel my late July flight to Rome which was around 1400 and booked another flight that was leaving the day after I called the airline.

I had to pay 800 dollars extra same seats, same flights numbers but of course the date was different.

If you are going to boast about your bargain-hunting successes, why not mention the airline and let the rest of us benefit from your experience?

It's also interesting that so many people are defaulting to using their airline miles this year. Quite a few people on this thread commented on giving up on finding what they consider a "good" price and using miles instead. Maybe it's a conspiracy theory by the airlines to get people to spend their miles instead of banking them-- i.e. make the ticket prices so unattractive that travelers who are hell-bent on going will cash-in their miles. I'm mostly kidding, and realize supply/demand and many other economic factors that I don't even care to understand are at work, but who knows!

Now, playing along with the initial question:

LAX-CDG-Lyon-Brussels (R/T)
Purchased: June 2010
Traveling: October/November 2010
$604.50 all-in (bought two tickets for boyfriend and I)
Booked on Expedia.com via Kayak.com's Top 25 Cities buzz

Sorry, forgot to mention that all flights are on Air France.

$633---Chicago to Shannon

Booked in July for Sept.

Watched trip advisor flights every day for 2-3 weeks until one day the $900 flight was down to $633, back up again 2 days later.

Look every day so that when a good price comes up you will know it and be ready to jump on it.

We usually book in July for our Sept. trips.

Good Luck!

Tue, Jun 01, 2010
Washington, DC (IAD) to Madrid, Spain (MAD)to Rome, Italy (FCO)

IAD/Madrid/FCO

Base Fare: 560.20 USD
Taxes & Fees: 39.00 USD
Total: 599.20 USD

$818 Boston to Barcelona through Dublin on Aer Lingus. Bought the tix in March during a sale, flew in July. Often times the place we choose is determined by the airfare deals. This works because my list of countries to visit is REALLY lengthy!

Paid $765 on 8/15 for 9/1 departure DCA-BOS-LHR; returning LHR-RDU-DCA on 9/13 - booked directly with American Airlines

I had seen a $650 fare back in July for a Washington-London RT but could not get my mother to commit at the time so lost that fare!

ALSO - Taking a 3 night break mid-trip to Amsterdam - booked on 8/15 directly with Easyjet and paid $100 RT departure LUT-AMS; returning AMS-LGW 9/6-9/9 - Flying openjaw into London and out of Amsterdam on our start-return dates was over $200 more than the WAS-LHR RT quoted above

I think it's interesting that hardly anyone on this thread actually answered the question and had a flight in the summer (I think two) did but are quoting fares for Fall.

I wanted a vacation in July, that is when I like to go and need a vacation, so I did pay $1340 this year for a RT from Washington DC to France and back in mid-late July. It was nonstop both ways, so I could have saved a little for connections, but not that much. I checked a lot and actually never saw any as high as $1600 for what I was looking at. Maybe if you were from the West Coast, that could have been it. I pay a little more for nonstop on Air France, my preferred airline, but none of the competitors really had much better fares to Paris and most were not nonstop.

Same boat as everyone else. Prices were sky high when we looked for the summer so we used miles for our July trip from Boston to Paris.

We are also traveling at the end of September into early October. Yes, I know it's fall but it seems like we paid summer rates so I thought I'd mention it. We fly from Boston into Bordeaux and return from Paris. We paid just under $1K per ticket. Outbound flying BOS-AMS-BOD on Delta/KLM, return on AF non stop from CDG to BOS. I *think* we booked on Orbitz?? Probably could have done it $100 cheaper per ticket if we had been willing to make connections on the return.

1900 for me, 1700 for each of my parents. OUCH. This was into Venice and home from Geneva.

RT San Francisco - Copenhagen, $1,300 pp after tax Delta/KLM Flew on Sunday, back on Monday.

yk...off to Switz. in Sept? Enjoy!
Bill in Boston

Hi; $1150 r/t, Boston to Helsinki on the 10th of August and Bergen to Boston on the 26th of August on Delta with code share, KLM.

P.S. Tickets were bought in early June on the Delta site. But I check with kayak.com and other sites to see if the price is consistent.

1800 for 2 people r/t LGW from Atlanta in October.
Cheap fares are a thing of the past.

I was shocked at how reasonable our Spain flights were. They were purchased only one month in advance on USair, traveling in sept.

PHL direct to Barcelona, and coming back direct Madrid to PHL, $750.