My niece is hoping to visit friends in Florence in the second half of March - and airfare is much higher than expected.

Might there be late winter sales coming up? Is it worth waiting do you think? If she can be flexible with her dates, I can find fares under $800, but that seems to be the best I can find.

Any strategy hints?

Thanks,
Alice

Has she tried flights to Pisa? Has she tried mid-week departures?

Also Easter is at the end of March, so the vacation times around that holiday could be causing higher prices.

Just yesterday I found roundtrips fares JFK to Pisa in early March for under $600.

Also consider Rome. Often the flights there are quicker, and it's about two hours by train from the airport to Florence (changing at Termini).

Sometimes even Bologna has good prices, so that's worth checking as well.

(I'd go even further, and check all over Europe, but the above options are easy and quite cheap train rides, with trains running very frequently. Right now the best fares seem to be to German cities.)

Did you try 1800flyeurope.com
?

I also suggest Pisa since it has biger airport and more frequent flights. You might also consider Malpensa Airport at Milan or Rome. Any would work and all will have train access to Florence.

<i>I can find fares under $800, but that seems to be the best I can find.</i>

From... New York? New Orleans? New Mexico? New Zealand?

Agree with the above suggestions. We've flown in and out of Florence. It's a very small airport and there's not much competition or traffic. Definitely try mid-week dates and alternative places like Rome, Pisa, Bologna, Milan, etc, all of which have good train connections to Florence.

I'm sorry, I should have said, she's looking for airfare out of the Washington DC area, so either Dulles or BWI airports.

I'll encourage her to look at Pisa, which is very close, and Milan and Rome which have many more flights.

Alice

I can see flights to Frankfurt on Lufthansa for selected days in March for $558 with one stop (usually Brussels.) Then Ryanair (from Hahn airport instead of FRA, so a change needed) flies to Pisa for &euro;1.70 (&euro;16 all in.) Bit of a hassle, but well under $800.

On 1800flyeurope.com

I got a $670 fare DCA-FLR

$685 BWI-PSA

March 17-29

Flying directly into Florence's small airport is a nice option.