The problem with no mobs is the airlines won't want to fly empty planes. That means less seats for sale.

September you might run into price increases related to Octoberfest. Might be cheaper to fly into Berlin,Frankfurt,Viena or Prague and take the train

Two other strategies might work. Fly into LHR and then a low cost carrier on to MUC - but there might be an airport change because a LOT of LCC flights go out of LGW, LTN, and STN.

Or try one of the airline's vacation packages. Bundling the flights with a few nights hotel can often result in a much cheaper fare. I'm most familiar with AAVacations but UA, BA, etc have similar sorts of programs.

Did you check departures after May 22nd?
or Turkish airlines via Istanbul (may be to Rome or so)?
or WestJet via Calgary?
or DEN - MXP with Swiss?
all depends on the dates, of course

Bear in mind you will need an ETA if you are changing airports in the UK, and also low cost airlines have very strict luggage allowances and soon cease to be low cost if you don't obey those rules.

Gardyloo - I've looked into that already as well as leaving from Denver. Also looked into one way fares. Also looked into flying into Frankfurt, Zurich and through Iceland.

I've also looked into coach and PE fares, as well as business, just out of curiosity.

I've also tried various airlines' vacation packages. Will look into flying into LHR and then onwards on a separate ticket as suggested by Janis, although that gives me the heebie-jeebies as it's risky. Yes, I've looked into flying after May 22 - the fares seem to go up May 20, and that's the soonest we can fly.

I appreciate these suggestions; I've tried most of them, but will look into the ones I haven't.

Having said that, there comes a point that trying to finagle a good price is more trouble than it's worth.

For now, I'll wait and watch.

I'm in Canada on the west coast and have found fares to Europe to be very pricey the last few years and the longer you wait, the more expensive they get.
I am planning a trip to Calabria and Sicily for May and I have left it later than I usually would for planning; because this trip has a lot of moving parts I haven't booked the flights yet. So my tardiness means the flights went up about $1,000 for 2 tkts already from a month ago and just from yesterday to this morning another $1,000. We are flying business class but have looked at premium economy and prices are shocking there too.
I am pretty picky, will not fly through the US at this time and I look for the most direct option possible but have friends who fly Economy and Premium Econ and not as picky as me and even they are describing very high prices and it taking weeks to find something they can swallow.

Anyone here familiar with Condor?

To the people who are checking airfares, are you searching on the same sites for the same routes, for example, such as Expedia, CheapoAir, Kayak, etc.? Or the same airline?

This might be a long shot, but the reason I ask is that several times in the past years, I would be checking flights on the same site, and they would increase every day. I was shocked. My husband thought it was because the site could see my search history, knew we wanted to go to a certain place, and would increase the fares assuming I would get desperate and purchase the higher fares. So he would clear my search history, and I would start anew, and the fares were lower. Not sure if that is what is happening here but thought I would throw it out there.

Hi Karen -

That's why I tried using a VPN. Good idea to clear my cookies though.

Hi Karen, yes I clear my search history each time.
So I finally bit the bullet and booked our flights. Interestingly there was about a $700 difference between the prices from the desktop computer vs my iPad. (iPad was cheaper, using same site with history cleared)
So in Canadian $ 2 business class tickets from Vancouver via Toronto and Frankfurt to Lamezia Terme and back from Catania via Munich then direct to Vancouver - $10,053. Premium Economy would have been $8,000 for two tickets and Economy roughly $2,000 each ticket.

It’s owned by Lufthansa I believe.
My son and his wife used Condor to fly from New York to Florence via Frankfurt 2 summers ago for a friend’s wedding. They lost my son’s luggage with all his new clothes for the fancy destination wedding and the luggage was never found. (He did eventually get some compensation) He wasn’t the only one to lose luggage, lots of other people had the same issue, don’t know if they eventually got their lugggage back.
The customer service from Condor through this whole thing was a nightmare and after hearing their story I would never recommend Condor.

Condor is a German holiday airline based in Frankfurt with seasonal (almost daily) flights to 17 popular Mediterranean destinations as well as Mauritius, Seychelles, Sansibar, Maldives, Phuket, Punta Cana, Puerto Plata and Montego Bay.
In pre covid times, they flew regularly to more than 10 Caribbean Islands. I used them several times without any problem..
Their US destinations are actually BOS, LAX, SFO, JFK
Condor belonged initially to the Thomas Cook Group, but is now financially indipendent. In Europe, they are strongly cooperating with Deutsche Lufthansa

Here's a last century idea. Call the airline. In the last month I've called American Airlines twice to rebook tickets. I called because I was having trouble using a credit. Both times the price they quoted was less than what I saw on the website.

Now there's a thought PM!

Cleared my browsing history and will try again.

Thanks for the feedback on Condor, read a lot of negative reviews yesterday, so will probably give them a pass.

huh, I had the opposite experience for flights this year so far! I have been finding tickets far cheaper than I normally expect! Flying to Zurich in mid-May via Icelandic air for sub-$500 (I ended up paying extra $100 for extra leg room seat for the outbound), but it's still only $604 r/t. I also see some low prices on LH - we are flying to Norway in June for $550pp. Not the most direct way to get there but almost 1/2 of what I expect to pay for summer fares to Europe ($1000pp) is a win.

Re: Condor - we have flown it once BOS-FRA in April 2024. I talked about my Condor experience in the very first post (I paid for PE for the outbound)
yk+child 1week in Germany Mosel/Rhine region, April 2024

Maybe they know your history with rental cars in Italy?

I have been researching a premium economy multi city ticket for Sept/Oct. Flying out of different cities on the west coast to see the price change. My best so far is a BA and AA ticket for $1,758.00.

rcg, interestingly, your business class fares are very close to what we see flying from Halifax to western Europe this year: $10,300-ish for two, Halifax-Valencia, returning from Madrid, next month. I just checked Halifax-Paris in late August, returning in September: $10,230 round trip. Haven't booked.

And yet, in early December, I snagged Halifax-Ljubljana at $9030, which was almost $2000 less than the fare I saw for the two if us in late November. I think it is extremely difficult to predict fluctuations in air fares, simply because the airlines see things that we can't.

All our flights to Europe are via Montreal or Toronto, usually changing again in Munich, Frankfurt, or Zurich, unless it is a destination served directly from YUL or YYZ by Air Canada, such as Amsterdam, Rome, Paris, London, Madrid, etc. It stopped being fun a very long time ago.

The cookies/browsing history thing is an urban legend without merit. The booking services pull their fares off the GDS systems like Amadeus and Saabre. They get back the availability sorted by fare buckets and dates, which they then show on their fare quotes.

Fare bucket is the term for specific fares including their price, rules, restrictions, penalties etc. There are many of these; for example for flights from Denver round trip to Munich with the dates of May 16 to June 6 (picked arbitrarily) United has over 80 fare buckets listed just in the economy seats, with prices (before taxes) ranging from $800 to over $5000 for unrestricted "Y" bucket economy seats. When you add premium economy or business class buckets, the total number becomes stupifying.

Not all the fares are available for sale at any one time. The airlines' revenue algorithms review and change the list constantly, based on their voodoo codes. They really don't care if the price delivered to you is from a higher or lower fare bucket than the one you saw yesterday. They're selling millions of tickets daily and are not especially concerned if they're giving you a higher or lower price than before or after. They're picking for this instant, and the result could change five minutes or five weeks from now.

Trying to game the airlines' pricing system is a fool's errand. Find a fare and schedule you can live with, pull the trigger, and don't look back.

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Not since 2000. They were bought by Thomas Cook International until Thomas Cook went belly up in 2019 and then bought by some investment/hedge fund. The Lufthansa connection persisted in many minds probably due to airline partnerships, but Condor is now receptive to non-Lufthansa and non-Star Alliance partners, like Alaska Airlines (Oneworld.)

Reviews are still mixed, but they're rolling out products that seem more competitive.