My daughter and friends are looking to fly Chicago to Athens May 26th - June 6th. They must arrive in Athens before 5 pm. They are not having any luck with decent fares for those days and times. Any hints? (Have tried kayak, etc. ) Thanks!

Prayer--just kidding. I had to hold off on visiting Greece this year because the airfare just would not budge beneath 1000, and neither would my dates (also was looking at late May). A sale might pop up, but have they tried getting a cheap flight to another major city and finding a low cost carrier to get them to Athens? For example, easyjet just had a sale (now ended) out of London.

I went to a travel expo over the weekend where Arthur Frommer was a speaker giving budget travel tips.

He was recommending two newer airfare search engines which I had not heard of www.momondo.com and www.dohop.com.

They could also consider flying to a Europe hub and grabbing a budget airline to Athens from there. (The budget airlines do not, however, necessarily leave from the main hub airport but some secondary re-purposed airports so watch that.) You can find those on www.whichbudget.com.

Another budget travel tip I once heard is to contact travel agencies in big cities (like Chicago) who specialize in travel to a certain "home" country for immigrants. Here's one for Greece in Chicago I got by googling http://chicago.agrino.org/travel_agents.htm

Check Delta Airlines. Looks like fare is around $1400 but they will arrive well before 5 PM

Not sure they'll have much luck since that's the start of summer season but you might try various individual airline sites. For ex, LH is having a sale now but you have to travel by 5/15.

Have they looked into opening a Gyro Stand to raise money to buy the tickets? I'm not expert, but maybe that would help.

RBN, you do not say what your def. of "Decent" is.... I agree that $1400 is about the best on the usual search sites. Flights with good arrival times this year have not dipped that much. I have a nonstop out of Philly just under $1000 for mid-May, and prices for that flight have NOT gone down at all. That Chicago link laurie gave you looks good -- there are several agencies listed that specialize in students. ALSO these girls have a MUST arrival time, but can they be a bit flexible on the departure? Or -- if they could save $200 each by going a day earlier, would they do that? We could help them find a cheapie room.

Jon!!!! You are too funny! Just trying to help your sister!!!