Has anyone found any "deals" on flights from Chicago to Frankfurt for May 2005? I'm surprised that the lowest I've found is $711.
Should I expect the flights will go down or up? I thought I'd find something around $500-600.
Thanks for any advice.

try cheapseats.com for low fares - they use non-standard type airlines from the US to FRA. My son got a very last minute ticket with them for about $700 roundtrip and that was with 48 hours before the flight. He flew MDW to Detroit and then to FRA on Northwest.

I think it's good to demonstrate some resourcefulness before asking others for such specific travel planning assistance. People are more likely to respond if you mention that you've already searched the forum for general advice on finding cheap flights, and if you list the travel booking / price comparison Web sites you've already consulted.

That said, for round-trip flights from Chicago to Frankfurt in May, 2005 with normal tickets on normal airlines, I found the following fares:

USD711 for most Fri/Sat/Sun departures
USD681 for most Mon-Thu departures
USD617 for departures on May 7, 28, or 29
USD563 for departures on May 2-4, 24, or 25

A good tool for this kind of search is:

http://beta.itasoftware.com/

Click "Month Long Search" at the top right and then enter the origin and destination cities, the first date you want to search, and the approximate length of your stay. Click "Go", and within a minute, you'll see a calendar with the lowest price for each day. This site does not accept bookings, but it does provide fare basis codes, which you can refer to when you book through the distribution channel of your choice.

Hint: the site has a powerful query language, which you can find out about on the FlyerTalk bulletin board. For Chicago, you can use the city code, CHI, to check O'hare and Midway. Where there is no city code, use multiple airport codes separated by semi-colons. For example, I'd used "SFO;SJC;OAK" to cover the San Francisco Bay Area airports.

Other tip: because Frankfurt is a Northwest destination, check Northwest's own Web site periodically. My guess (and it's just a guess) is that Northwest has some excess capacity there.

Hope this helps!

Paul Marcelin-Sampson
Santa Cruz, California, USA

You should also check fares using aggregator sites such as www.mobissimo.com or www.farechase.com or www.quixo.com or www.kayak.com

Just a note, to prevent frustration... it's qixo.com, with no "u".

Also... I haven't tried Mobissimo, but Qixo, Kayak (still in beta) and FareChase all have lousy user interfaces. If your dates are flexible, you will have to repeat your search over and over and over and over again to test the different date combinations.

Paul Marcelin-Sampson
Santa Cruz, California, USA