JohnK

I intend to fly from New York to Berlin for a long weekend, June 23-27, 2005 and would like to fly American Airlines at least most of the way (change in London, Brussels or Zurich). Right now the fare is about $1100. Do you, AAFrequentFlyer, or anyone else with expertise, have any advice on how best to get a decent fare? Am I looking too far ahead? Should I wait for a particular month to book the best fare? Is there anyway to get notified when American Airlines has a substantial sale? Any advice you can give would be very much appreciated. Thank you. John

kgsd

You can try Travelocity's fare watcher alert, which has you set the max. price and route. When the fare for your route goes below your max price, it will send you an email. (I'm not sure if you can specify the airline, but you could still subscribe and see if you get lucky.) That, and just staying active on this board to see if someone posts about a sale. (That's how I found my recent bargain fare.) You can also set favorite routes at the American Airlines website, but you have to go to the site every day to see if there's a "fare alert". I don't believe there's an email for fare alerts. (The only email I get is the last-minute fare sales.)

The other thing you might consider is looking for a cheap fare to London. Many people have posted about how they saved hundreds of dollars by buying separate tickets for the JFK-London leg and then the London-Berlin leg.

As well as buying separate tickets, you could consider flying Ryanair or EasyJet for the intra-Europe segment. Most of the time, that means you have to change airports in London which can be a hassle, but it might save even more money.

dutyfree

Delta is starting nonstop service to Berlin May 1st from JFK to Berlin if that is an option. I bet that there will be some deals-I got the news on one of my email travel pages.

AAFrequentFlyer

<b>JohnK</b>

That is so far out that it's impossible to predict. A weekend in late June? I would say you should be able to do better. Fly AA to London as even at the height of the season the NYC-LON route is very competatively priced. The reason you are seeing the high fares now, is because it's so far away. Wait.

<b>www.aa.com</b> usually has better fares on BA inter-European fares than the <b>www.ba.com</b> itself. When you see a fare to London that you could live with, try to price it 2 different ways. JFK-LHR-Berlin or just JFK-LHR, and then price the 2nd segment seperately. I have found that for whatever reason, there is no formula for which way is better. You could also try some of the European budgets (<b>www.whichbudget.com</b> ) for the LON-BER leg. Not too many budgets fly from LHR and I'm against the LHR to STN or LUT transfer thing as that adds up costs and requires lots of time, so if BA is about 20-40BP more, but you connect in LHR, it's worth every penny.


Blue sky with few light clouds in Manchester, UK this morning. Looks like it will be a beauiful day for a visit with a friend in Scunthorpe.

Going to London tomorrow and will be home on Wednesday, (finally!!! after a gruelling business trip that will end up being about 26K airmiles total).

JohnK

Thank you very much for the great advice. I am either going to wait a bit and follow AAFrequentFlyer's advice for checking airfares with aa.com or maybe I'll just use my Delta miles and go for the non-stop (although from what I read Delta is on the edge of bankruptcy so who know where they'll be flying by next June.) Either way I appreciate the solid advice! John

yk

I just read on WSJ and found out that Continental will also be opening up nonstop from NYC to Berlin (from Newark to Berlin Tegel). However, the article states that CO will be starting the route in July (which won't work for you unless you change your schedule). This is just FYI, in case you change your plans down the road.