swalter518

Hi all,
I'm planning a trip for 6 adults (2 parents, 4 kids ages 10-21) in July to Italy and need help finding the lowest airfare possible. The departure city is Chicago-ORD. Ideally we'd like to fly into Rome and out of Milan and our dates are flexible but need to be July to the first week or so of August (before Ferragusto). Any tips would be appreciated-I'm not paying but am still suffering from sticker shock at $1300 a ticket. Thanks!

fmpden

That is peak summer travel time. It might get a little cheap, say 1100/1200 but I don't think you will see anything under a 1000. But go to farecompare.com and look at the historical rate for those flights. What were you expecting to pay?

isabel

Unfortunately, that's probably not an outrageous price for summer. You could try finding cheap(er) tickets to some other city and then fly easyjet or another inexpensive intra-European airline to Italy. Sometimes that works well but other times it costs just as much once you add in those other tickets and the extra day or so it will take.

But for example - I wanted to fly Boston to Rome and out of Croatia and was looking at prices in the $13-1400 range. I found a ticket on Iceland Air in and out of Amsterdam, which I wouldn't mind spending a few days in. All in all my total air fare per person is around $1100 so I am saving, and going to places I wanted to go. But there are a number of days that much of will be "lost" to travel. But I wanted to go to several different destinations anyway.

There is no rhyme or reason to airfare prices. You just have to go to a site like kayak.com and plug in some dates and cities and see what you get. But just for the heck of it I tried your city and found the cheapest flights were to Madrid - via London - on British air - AND to London - via Madrid - on Iberia. It's crazy. Makes no sense. But you have to get over that and just play their game. Occasionally you can win.

greg

You can look at one company's shot at using an "analytical" tool in forecasting the fares at: www.farecast.com. Use "Flexible search" from the left bar, enter ORD for departure and FCO for arrival. The tool is incapable of forecasting open-jaw, so the round trip to FCO is next best proxy. Set July for the travel date.

Don't read too much into their predictions.

The companies adjust airfares to maximize the profit. What looks bizarre and nonsense from our point of view makes perfect sense seen from the other side. If they predict that seats on a particular route sell out at the current price, they adjust the fare up to maximize the profit until their demand curve predicts just enough buyer to snatch the tickets plus an overbook margin. You can get some sense as to which way the market is going by monitoring the price and the occupancy rate available from several booking site. If they are selling well or near capacity, the airlines usually have no incentive to lower the prices. The airlines know historically just how many people "have" to travel at the last minutes and extract maximum pain from these last minutes travelers. You don't want to be one of them.

swalter518

thanks for all your tips. Actually, I'm not going but helping a friend plan. We've personally always gone Spring or Fall and paid WAY less so I guess my sticker shock is not warranted. These fares definately solidify my "no travel in summer" philosophy!