mclaurie

Helping some friends who need 5 (1 adult & 4 kids) tickets for this route coming in late June and returning in late July. I've searched kayak and also checked Southwest. Any other thoughts? Non-stop fare seems to be ~$375/ticket. Any thoughts on sales or other options to consider? Their preference for NYC airport is JFK or LGA (or ISP).

rkkwan

Sounds right. That's the new normal fare.

NoFlyZone

Also search hipmunk.com. I have found fares (legitimate, real) on there which are not on Kayak.

mclaurie

Thanks for the heads up on hipmunk. Haven't seen that before. Do you think there's any hope of a sale on Jet Blue or any of the other carriers for this trip? Trying to determine if it's worth waiting to buy.

mztery

if they are staying more than 30 days that may trigger a higher fare

with fuel prices rising my GUESS is that fares will not go down - Delta for ex is cutting a lit of capacity and other airlines may follow

it's possible 5 seats on one flight exhausts the cheapest fare buckets - if it were 5 adults I'd say look at splitting the reservation but not w/ adult and 4 kids


it IS high season so I suspect 370 may be as low as it goes - have you checked DEN to Newark?

tomfuller

This is a rare case where 2 adults and 4 children under 16 can travel to New York City from Denver and return for less than $1600. How? Amtrak California Zephyr to Chicago layover and the Lakeshore Limited to New York. Return at the end of July is no problem. Amtrak will not allow 1 adult to travel with more than two kids. This won't work if you have something scheduled in NY the day after they could leave Denver.
Am I going to get kicked off the Air Travel Forum for suggesting such a thing?

NoFlyZone

I agree with tomfuller about checking out Amtrak with the proviso that his sub $1600 fare total is based on sitting in coach seats for 20+ hours on each of the Zephyr and Lakeshore. Adding sleeping rooms will bring it up to about $5000.

Also Amtrak does NOT have any limitation on the number of kids per adult. The restriction tomfuller refers to is that each adult can go with only 2 kids at the discounted child fare and other kids must travel at the adult fare. So in this case it would be fared as 4 adults and 2 children.

I wish Amtrak were not so expensive these days. But they will sell out during the summer months so they must be doing something right.

NoFlyZone

We need an editor! Corrected sentence above should read:

So in this case it would be fared as 3 adults and 2 children.

tomfuller

Yup I travel in coach. Over 30,000 miles on Amtrak and ViaRail in the last 10 years. Hasn't killed me yet.

rkkwan

Why take AMTRAK with a change and 45 hours in total travel time when you can ride "direct" on Greyhound that <b>only</b> takes about 38 hours?

And cheaper. On both, you have to buy tickets for 2 adults and 3 children, as neither will allow one adult with 4 kids. Lowest price I can find on AMTRAK is about $773 each way for the five passengers; while it's $609 on Greyhound.

J62

I always prefer non-stop, which for Denver that means JFK or EWR, except on Saturdays. DEN-LGA non-stops are allowed on Sat only.

mclaurie

1) It's not 2 adults it's one
2) The number of passengers doesn't seem to change the airfare. I don't see any airfare cheaper when I search for just 1 person
3) Amtrak is not worthwhile
Thanks for your help.

Sue878

Did you check Frontier Airlines, I believe they fly non-stop to NY.

mclaurie

Yup, kayak includes Frontier and they weren't any cheaper.