Newark to Rome... should I buy tickets now?
 

Hi All,
I’m looking to take a short trip from Newark to Rome from March 29, 2006 to April 2, 2006. I found a non stop flight on Alitalia for $586 pp each way. It seems like a good price to me. Is it or should I hold off on buying the tickets?

I hope you mean roundtrip per person. Not each way. R/T, decent price if it includes all taxes and fees.

Good catch... my mistake.. yes, it is ROUND TRIP.

I just replied on another thread about flying to Rome during March of 2007(you wrote 2006 but thought that it was a mistake?). Yes, that is a great price especially when you realize that you are in the midst of the spring break travel and everything is packed to the rafters on these flights.
There are not alot of nonstop Rome flights from the USA so if you find one that is reasonable and at the time you want I would grab it.I fly to Rome almost everyweek as a flight attendant and it is a very heavily traveled market at all times of the year but spring break,parts of summer and Christmas vacation are unbelievably full. Take the stress out and purchase the tickets!!!!

I just looked into booking a flight from Newark to Rome June 29-July 8, 2007. Round trip airfare was showing up at $1200 per person. Does this seem right for July? It's so much higher than what you booked in March. Also, I want to use Continental points(business class) and now the point tier is 250,000 per person round trip. The Continental rep said that sometimes 100,000 round trip point level seats become available. Anybody know when these usually get posted? I don't want to miss out on booking the flights.

rjk - $1,200 for a coach ticket seems high, even for July travel. I think you should be able to get something around $1,000 a little later on.

As for using CO miles for BusinessFirst ticket, CO is different from other airlines that it doesn't release them early. Instead they're often available starting 4-5 months out. However, for July travel, they may not release a single ticket. Hard to say.

If you just want to fly business class, have them check flights on the partner airlines - AF, KL, DL, NW, AZ, etc. And there's absolutely no reason to spend 250K miles right now to get a "Sleazy Pass" award, as those are often available till the end. If you still want to cash them in near travel time, you can still do so. Plus, in my opinion, 250K miles is a bad deal for a BF ticket to Europe any time of the year.