Airfare to Italy
 

Family of 5 flying to Italy in June 2007. Where can I find less expensive airfare. Currently seeing $1000 + per person. Any less expensive options available. Airlines? Timing? Deals? Ideas? Is it cheaper to fly into or out of another city. Going to Tuscany, but can fly in or out of several cities. Love to hear suggestions. Thanks.

Unfortunately, at that time of year and this far ahead you're not likely to find many better deals or sales. have you tried www.kayak.com?

Have you cosidered a flight to someplace like London and then a budget carrier such as Easyjet or Ryanair to get to Italy?

Have you looked at consolidators such as www.onetravel.com and aggregators such as www.itasoftware.com or

www.mobissimo.com

Have you considered flying <b>out</b> of another airport where there is more competition on transatlantic routes?

Joanne1928, We have had good luck going through Gemutlichkeit Travel. See their site at: http://www.gemut.com
Tickets to Italy were expensive this year though. We did fly in to one city and fly out of another, worked out best for us. We were around $800 a person with all taxes and fees. Sometimes the days you decide to travel to and from on make a $$ difference as well. Have a wonderful time planning your trip! Shirley

I agree with the post about flying to and from different cities. It was weird, but flying from Orlando to Rome to Palermo back to Orlando, was much cheaper than Rome R/T or Orl-Rom &amp; Pal-Orl. For some reason the leg from Rome to Palermo knocked several hundred off the price.

Oh, and we aren't flying to Palermo, taking the ferry with the rental car.

Who can figure out airlines, eh?

dave

So, $1000 per ticket to Italy in June. Should I buy or wait. Need 5 tickets. That's alot of gelato.

$850 was the cheapest I could find for Atlanta to Tuscany (via many airport options) for October. I postponed my trip. Deals may happen - but you can't count on them.

I paid $1000 including taxes ($890 fare + $110 tax)from the Mid-west to Venice and Naples to mid-west leaving June 30, 2007 and back 2nd week of July, 2007. Also we are doing weekend departure and arrival so that increases the fare. I am satisfied with the fare I paid and I got the tickets (4) a couple of months ago.

No disrepect meant, but how can anyone remark on whether it's a decent fare if you don't tell us from which city you are departing?

Are leaving from a major city on the east coast, or from, say, Cucamonga?

Big difference.

There can be differences between JFK and Council Bluffs. Give us an idea about what you're looking for in terms of departure point and your destination in Italy. Really, a grand per person in late June is not necessarily a bad fare from many origins in the U.S. to a number of destinations in Italy. In early June from an eastern hub, we might have different advice.

Hi Joanne,
We also agonized over fares to Italy for our trip in May '07. As soon as we decided on dates,it seemed as if the rates took off. I checked several times a day and when the IAH-Milan and then FCO-IAH got back down to $870(total round trip for 2 was $1900), I jumped on it( about 2 months later!). Haven't looked at rates since and I'm not going to! Even if the rates go down as the date gets closer, I've avoided a lot of stress and as soon as I bought the tickets, I felt like the trip was a reality.
Good luck and have a great trip! :-p

Drop in to the SkyAuction website. They have auctions where you can, if you win, purchase from one to eight tickets at your price. I know you'll beat $1,000 per. I bought two tickets JFK-LST on MAXjet (biz class) for $911 each a couple of weeks ago.

Tickets to fly to Europe are traded on a market very much ilke the stock market. Posted prices change very rapidly. Most experts admit that 'perfect timing' of the stock market just can't be done.

Now to answer your question, the general consensus is that June 2007 is too far out for aggressive prices to be seen yet.

Flying mid-week rather than weekend will save you money.

A flight that leaves the east coast between 7:00pm and say 9:00pm might be cheaper than one that leaves at say 2:00pm.

Getting five contiguous seats might be cutting down your options.

Rumor is that most price reductions/ sales are posted at midnight eastern time on either Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

At my house, we purchase the air tickets and then fill in the other pieces (rental cars and rooms). So we are only comfortable booking air fare far enough ahead to still have a chance to get preferred hotels.

That Sky Auction website sounds really, really interesting.

Good luck.

So we still don't know what her departure airport is? How are we supposed to help?

If it's anywhere near NYC, maybe waiting until next year's schedules come up and see if http://www.euroflyusa.com/ can do better? It's way too early to make a final purchase for June 2007 imho.

For instance, there is currently an offer on SkyAuction for tickets(s?) JFK-FCO for $609, all in. Its not even an auction, just buy the ticket(s?). There's no mention of number of tickets available.

Thanks for the great input. We are flying out of Houston. I have continued to check and nothing has changed. Seems best option so far is British Airways through London. I was curious, if fares go down, do they refund you $. Curious Joy C.- who are you flying and what site did you find seats on? Sounds like I should try checking every Wednesday morning. We are going to Rome and Tuscany around Seina, so could fly into one airport and out of another. Maybe into Rome, out of Florence or Pisa or the reverse. Have made no other plans yet. It's just buying 5 tickets compounds the problem of expensive tickets. Thanks.

Joanne---check prices into and out of Milan, too---sometimes it is the least expensive, and it's only a short hop away on the train.

If you look at the British Air website, it will show you the prices each day for a week or a month. They vary a lot, depending on the day of the week you depart---I think Tuesday or Wednesday is the least expensive. And of course prices go up dramatically just when school gets out, which is probably when you are going.

My secretary used Hotwire for her family's last trip to Europe (also 5 people) and she was quite pleased. But you don't get to choose the airline.

Not sure I would use Hotwire. The least expensive fare is on Iberia. Prefer to fly British Airlines or Continental.

Joanne,

Where do you live? You can save big $$$ if you fly out of a major international hub.

Joanne: I bought 2 tix mid-August stl-italy. DH and MIL got the other 2 tix from stl-germany-italy-stl sometime early september. Actually theirs is a bit more expensive ~$1090 total. We fly AA/BA. I just plugged in our dates and itinerary both on aa/ba/expedia websites and currently they are running $1660/person. I think DH just got lucky with their fare because the day after it went up to $1387/person.Have not check what it is now.

Sorry, just saw... Houston.

NYC or Philly's out of the question I guess.

Houston is a Conntinental (sp) Hub iirc. Maybe sign up for the sales alert emails?

I've watching since august, (Houston-FCO then Milan-Houston) and haven't seen much from that area below $900 and they've been over $1000 since around September. I check kayak daily as well as Delta and Continental's sites.

I'll just keep checking. Is Travelocity the best website for alerts or is there a better one.

CO won't release the cheaper fare this early. Check prices once it a while now, but in earnest starting in around mid-Jan.

You may be able to find cheaper fares to London; then just buy a seperate ticket to Italy. That's exactly what I am doing this Christmas. CO IAH-LGW, then buy seperate tickets London-Italy and back.

Not sure I would use Hotwire. The least expensive fare is on Iberia. Prefer to fly British Airlines or Continental..

Look, Joanne....NOW you're getting a little picky..complaining about high prices and then talking about preferring this airline or that.

Don't want to use a discounter like Hotwire..then I guess you'll have to suck up whatever those preferred airlines are charging.

Joanne - We're going to Milan on Thursday (day after the day after tomorrow!) and out of Rome on the 06th of Nov. I *nearly* bit on tickets from Britsh Airways in May, but saw that two legs were operated by Alitalia, so looked them up--$300 less. Our two tickets were $729 each, from San Francisco. The stateside leg from SFO to JFK is run by Delta, which is fine. I've read some complaints about Alitalia, but we'll see--the price is great. Buon viaggio!

Joanne I 4 tickets Seattle to Paris, Rome to Seattle just last night and used kayak.com, which I really recommend. You can sign up for daily alerts if you like. I checked every couple of hours this past weekend and it was amazing how often the price changed. Painful to watch really, like gambling &quot;will they go down...will they go up...&quot;

I was almost resigned to paying $970 each, then put in a departure date of Thursday rather than Friday and found 4 fares at $833! Needless to say I clicked BUY. An hour later the same tickets were $950.

So - try Kayak, try different cities, try different dates.

Lots of good info here from everyone. I also use kayak and sidestep.com w/ good luck. Most travel sites now have alerts...and you just have to continually keep checking various sites and playing with dates, if you're flexible - available tickets change all the time - and it really is too early to be panicking.

fyi...I just checked Houston to Milan on Kayak and sidestep and saw $809 and $814 come up for 3rd week in June through Orbitz...so it seems like you can definitely do better.

Also check this site, which has an interesting list of strategies for approaching best airfares: http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/Users...9/Default.aspx

Hello. We are going to Tuscany late May and June 2007 and just booked our flights through Orbitz via Kayak and got 2 tickets to Rome from San Francisco and return with only one stop each way for a total of $1591. I think we did pretty good but I don't want to check anymore because I don't want to find anything cheeper! Good luck.

Joanne,
Having just done Seattle - Rome, Rome - Seattle via British Airways through London, I'd have reservations on recommending it. Heathrow is an unbelievable nightmare, particularly for BA flights with the additional security measures. They're still setting 75 minutes as the standard transfer time between flights, but at this time that's generally insufficient, and the only reason we made our connections in London was because none of the BA flights are leaving on time. BA staff both on the flight and at Heathrow were surly, and unhelpful. If you must fly BA, try to leave yourself additional layover time in London.