Hello, my husband and I are students- we are looking to fly from Sacramento (SMF) and somehow land in Genova (GOA), Italy in mid-May 2006. From there we will travel by car/train etc. through Switzerland and Germany. We plan to travel all over Germany staying with family and friends. In mid June 2006, we would like to fly out of Frankfurt (FRA) and end up home in SMF.
My questions are:
1. I understand we will have to make a connection somewhere on the East Coast before starting the ocean portion of the trip. I don't really care where we stop- however it is required to enter that information when planning a multi-city trip.
2. Any easy ways to plan this as I am not a frequent flyer and don't have a travel agent.
3. Any other information to know would be wonderful.

please e-mail me if you have extra information or websites to share: [email protected]
-Thanks Mark and Christina

You really don't have to worry about putting in an East Coast connecting city when planning your trip. If you use one of the airline websites or travelsites like Expedia or Travelocity simply put in you originating city (in your case SMF) and your first European destination city (presumably GOA). The programs will list all available flights between those two cities - non-stops (if any) will be listed first followed by all the available connecting flights. The data will show the connecting cities, flight times, layover times, etc. for all those flights. Simply pick the flight itinerary that works best for you time and budget wise. For your flight home reverse the process i.e. departure city FRA, destination city SMF.

Just to clarify, you are trying to book what is know as an "open jaw" itinerary (flying into one city and returning from another). People do it all the time. Your "multi-city" trip is simply SMF/GOA/FRA/SMF.

Good luck.

A_Traveller is right on - use Expedia, Orbitz, etc. to price and view the flights. Don't worry about any intermediate airports, just list your starting and ending points for your trips there an back.

Do you have a preference on an airline? As far as I've found in my research, BA is the only airline that will not let you price/book an open-jaw flight on their website (you would have to call them to get that information).

All other airlines are very accommodating in regards to open-jaw bookings. In fact, if you find a good deal on one of the travel sites (all one airline or alliance), pop over to the airline website and see if it's the same or less. You can book directly with them and skip the booking fee.

Good luck!

Hi g2tegra, if you go to the Sacramento Airport website which is www.sacairports.org and click on the airline links etc. you can put in your trip itinerary and see which airlines you can fly on from Sacramento. If you flew out of SFO you would have a much bigger selection of flights and airlines I would think.

Have always wanted to be able to do the reverse -- specify what East Coast city I absolutely DON'T want to be routed through (i.e. JFK).

HKP- Yes my husband mentioned JFK being at the bottom of his 'choice' layover spots. I laughed and said 'whatever gets us to Europe!'
I think I a bigger problem I am having now (and thanks to everyone for help) is planes that fly into Genova or Genoa airport. I looked up their website and some that I saw listed- (Air France) would not stop there when I went on Air France to make a sample resv. Not sure how that works.
And we thought about going straight to Milan but we'd rather see the coastline and drive and enjoy as much Italy as possible.

Genoa is a relatively small airport with no nonstop service to N. America, so you'll have to change planes somewhere, or else fly into a larger city and commence your tour there. As a rule (and there are exceptions) airfare to Italy is more expensive from N. American cities than other European countries. If the main part of your trip will be in Germany, then it might be advisable to book a round-trip flight to Frankfurt or Munich, then add a short flight or the train to Genoa as a separate ticket. Use the "multiple destinations" options on the travel sites (Expedia etc.) to explore open-jaw alternatives, but also check out round trip pricing to FRA or MUC just to get a feel for the differential. Also look at prices out of SFO; they may not be much less but you might spend a lot less time in transit as there are SFO-FRA nonstops.

Do you absolutely, positively have to land in Genoa? I think you might find you're adding a lot of air- and connection-time to do that. Milan or even Florence might work better -- or consider Venice, even. But that said, I went to Delta and found you can do this via Atlanta pretty easily for (right now) about $987. -- and AA and UA can also do this although with a change of carriers in one or another instance.

When you're using the multi-city function, you don't need to tell the program which connecting cities you need, just the beginning and end points, e.g., SMF to GOA and then FRA to SMF.

I took a look at airfrance.us and you just type in GOA in the "Arriving at" box and it works ok. If you click More Options and then "List of destinations" then you just have to select the first letter G of the city to get a dropdown list that includes Genoa. For the open jaw, you'd click on the Multiple Destinations option after More Options.

What's wrong with JFK? Whenever somebody says JFK's bad, ask him/her which airline, what connection and why is it bad. JFK's made up of many different terminals, each have its plus and minuses. One traveller's experience at the AA terminal will be totally different from another at DL's.

And I don't see JFK to be particular bad in terms of flights delay.

g2tegra-
Here's another site that might be useful:
http://www.airport.genova.it/eng/compagnie.php

It's the airport website, with the list of all airlines that fly into there. Ryan Air is listed, which is a low cost alternative from another European city. If you're looking to save $$, it might be worth it to look at their flights as well.

rkkwan-
My answer to your question was the customs process at JFK. It was so inefficient, hot, unorganized, and miserable. I don't have much to compare to, but that's the reason I would never want to go through JFK again.

jbee - That's what I'm talking about. There are customs/immigration at several of JFK's terminals. Are they all bad?

I'm not sure if they're all bad - I didn't know there were multiple customs points at JFK. We flew on Delta and were shuffled down a few flights of stairs to the basement where it was just a horrible mess. How can you tell which one you'll be shuffled through?

Well, if you arrive on a DL international flight, then you're at the immigration/customs at Terminal 3. So, you can fairly say "Don't fly DL to JFK from international locations".

AA's international flights arrive at 8, while other foreign carriers arrive at 1, 4 or 7, though some share DL's facility at 3 or share AA's facility at 8.

There's no central international arrivals facility at JFK, and one usually doesn't need to transfer far from international to domestic flights. It's either in the same terminal or adjacent ones (like DL's domestic may depart from 2 or 3).

Look at flying into Nice (NCE) if you want to see the coast. It's really not that far from Genoa. If you haven't looked at car rentals yet you will be shocked at the drop off charges if you don't return the car in the country you rented it.

Wow, everyone here is so helpful. I am going to try some sample itineraries (SMF-FRA/GOA-SMF) and some possible other cities.
The rental car situation doesn't look great either. To rent a small car from GOA and drop it off in Saarsbrucken for 5 days is like $1000. Not sure if that is a correct estimate.
Well it is late (1:42am) and I must sleep. I will check back here tomorrow. Thanks again!

My prejudice against JFK has to do with density of air traffic around the NYC metro area and specifically for JFK, and how vulnerable it is with ramifying problems once there's a delay from weather or whatever. LaGuardia has statistically more delays, I believe, but the sheer size and complexity of JFK's traffic means any snarl is a huge snarl.

PS for rkkwan -- don't take it personally; and yes, other airports have similar problems; but I and people close to me have had so many repeated problems with missed connections there that we'll work hard to avoid it as a gateway.

Prices for rental cars picked up in Italy and dropped off in another country, or v.v., are invariably extortionate. Not sure why, but it seems inevitable.

If you plan to have the car for more than 17 days or so (a price break point) you might look at the Renault "lease" (really a "buyback&quot plan - www.renaultusa.com - as an alternative to the main rental agencies. A little more paperwork is involved, but the insurance benefits, cross-border drop offs, etc., can more than make up for any additional hassle in the rental deal, plus (often) the class of car one can get for the same or lower price is significantly better than through the Hertzot and Avii of the world.