Are we crazy to spend so much on airline tickets?
 

I'm back after a long time away from Fodors. Our last trip to Europe was 4 years ago, and we're shocked at the cost of airline tickets. Should we spend $1100 or $1200 each to fly to Amsterdam, returning from Hanover, Germany in late June-early July? We've been checking every day, and sometimes there are changes but not by much. What should we do?

I think you are in the ballpark for that time of year.

Look at the price of gas between now and four years ago./... Jet fuel has gone up too.

Plus you are going a busy time of the year and may actually be late for deals that time of year.

YOu can plany the game and wait, but... I wouldn't expect a great sale.

I guess if you can get your flights, times, dates that you want, AND you can afford it, why not? You haven't gone for 4 years; the prices may not come down, ever. Go!

Surely only you can answer this question. Can you afford it? Do you really want to go? If so, then spend the money. Flight prices aren't what they were even one year ago, much less four years ago!

You may have better luck price-wise w/a R/T flight. I imagine the 'flying back from Hanover' portion is increasing the price.

I just bought my RT ticket for August --- San Francisco to Madrid, and it was around $1300. I decided chances are that prices will only continue to go up with the rising cost of oil ... although I understand there's another school of thought that claims fares may go down because of reduced demand due to the dollar vs. the Euro ...

My feeling is that I really want to go ... and I don't want to waste a huge amount of time worrying about a hundred or so dollars. So I paid what I needed to.

Only €780 for a return ticket to Europe! Be grateful that you have such a short flight and that the price is so low.

We paid around 1,100.00 for step son ticket to accompany us this coming December - I watched the airfare JUMP within a few weeks... I would not wait. jmo.

*If* a round-trip ticket were a bit less, you'd lose the difference in having to backtrack to the orig. airport, so open-jaw is just as good. And sometimes better.

i fear securing low airfares is going to be a quest of the past. oil prices do not seem to be going anywhere but up.

we´d better enjoy our travels while we can.

It's amazing how quickly the prices are jumping up, isn't it? Just this past April we flew from the mid-US to northern Africa (return from Spain) for around $720.

That said, I've been watching a non-stop to AMS we have availble from here and it hasn't budged lower in ages. Add on that Hanover return as WannabeinaMontserrat pointed out
- not a common, therefore competitive destination from the US - and I'd be willing to bet you're looking at close to the best you'll get. No one really knows for sure, but a sudden fare sale, in the summer, involving Hanover is fairly unlikely.

Are oil prices the main issue? If so, why can we fly from the east coast of the USA to Hawaii for $475? Or to Alaska for $525? Distances are longer than to Europe.

You have to understand that it isn't JUST the price of fuel that contributes to cost but also the amount of competition on a route.

And as oil prices continue to rise, competition continues to diminish (mergers, etc.), and the airlines pack more passengers onto fewer flights, well...

And if you are "shocked" by these flight prices, wait until you actually GET there and start spending your dollars for Euros....

I think oil prices are a huge issue. And comparing international fares to domestic is not really valid.

The airlines are LOSING money on LOTS of those domestic fares. They are competing with each other much more agressively on those routes. (And they have airlines with "lower" costs such as SW, AirTran, Spirit, etc) They don't have this competetion to Europe so they want to make money there. The airlines have pretty much admitted the "income" is coming from thier international flights. That's why DL is racing to get into Gatwick. That's why lots of them are spending big bucks on new "international" planes, but not on new planes to fly domestically.

Plus there is the impact of the weak dollar on top of the oil prices. So when they get to Europe even an American airline has to pay for the stuff needed for the return flight in weakened dollars. Most American airlines don't sell a lot of tickets overseas so they don't have a lot of foreign currency to pay with... So the "oil" price issue is a double hit. Jet Fuel costs more and you are paying for it with dollars that are worth less...

OK, so as I suspected, it's not just oil prices--or perhaps even mainly oil prices.

Hi R,

Airfares are very high this year because oil is so expensive.

Have you checked www.1800flyeurope.com, www.kayak.com and www.mobissimo.com?

((I))

I just bit the bullet and paid $1146 each for tickets to Germany this July. Like you said, sometimes they go up $70-80 in a day, but don't seem to go below that. One thing that may help you feel better: of the $1146, the actual fare was $996-the rest was taxes. So if you buy and then see a much lower fare, it is probably quoted without taxes.

We usually fly to Europe in non-peak season-our last year's spring break tickets to Barcelona were only $624 each, but when I priced the same trip just for fun for July, the ticket price more than doubled.

But most flights have skyrocketed. I had to pay close to $500 per tickets to get from DFW to Charleston SC for June. I remember flying to GERMANY for $499 (16 years ago, but still!)

The price of that ticket is fine.

Staying there...now that's a problem.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080312/dollar_gold.html?.v=2

Thanks Mr. Bernanke, you are such a shrewd economist.

Lame!

I was looking at the $1200 prices for flights from Jacksonville to Edinburgh for months, then there was a one-day sale on Orbitz, got the tickets for $800 - that price was gone by noon. If you watch, you MIGHT get better prices, but I wouldn't count on it for certain.

Green Dragon is right. If you have a job where you have easy access to your computer all day, you might get a deal if you can pouce on it quickly.

While I didn't get as much of a deal as Green Dragon did, when I bought our tickets to Italy two years ago, I had been watching the fares for weeks and weeks. On the day I bought the tickets on aa.com, they started out at $1400 each, dipped to $1075 (when I bought them), then climbed to $1200...all on the same day, the same flights.