do you want to fly to Paris from now until june 15 for 200.00? Here's how!!!
 

I live near Rockford Illinois. There is an incentive to get you to fly out of Rockford International Airport! The flights that I am going to write about are the Rockford to Paris flights.
Here is how it works, you log into flyrfd.com, you have to book your flights before May 8 and travel from now until June 15,which means you have to be back in the states on the 15th!
Buy your tickets on NWA, it is the only international flight out of Rockford. You fly to Detroit and depending on availability you either fly KLM through Amsterdam to Paris or directly to Detroit to Paris on Northwest.
In order to get your cash rebate you need to sign up for milesahead program on the flyrfd website. The kicker is they will guarantee that your round trip ticket to paris is 99.00 each way. For instance I am flying out of Rockford on June 10 and returning on june 14 my ticket is 1230.00 after taxes. Rockford airport is giving me a cash rebate of 930.00 dollars, I still have to pay the taxes on my ticket. So in the end I am flying to Paris spur of the moment in June for 99.00 each way with around 100.00 in taxed on top of that. So anyone in the Chicago area, this is a for real deal, and I am going to take advantage of it!! Check it out for yourself. pj

Well here is a heads up on a incredible deal and no replys, anyway this is only a Rockford incentive to get Chicago area people to take notice of an international airport that is not chicago airport! PS I know Rex is checking out the validity, so it is now May 4 and the deal is over on May 8th!!

Yee haaahhh!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you, PJ!

My long drought is ending (didn't get to Europe at all in 2004 - - only once before since 1991 - - and that year did go to Australia).

And it will be "just a quick smooch" (6 nights) - - but at under $300 for May/June travel, no way could I let this get away.

As your follow-up post implied, I did confirm independently with the Rockford airport authority that this rebate program is legitimate, and not subject to some fine print that rules it out for us.

Now, I just have to decide where we are going once we get to Paris - - probably the southwest; certainly open for any suggestions. The two of us are moderately willing to "cover some ground" to see places we have not been before, despite my eternal mantra of "see where you are more, move around less". Azay-le-Rideau, Saumur, Cognac, the Perigord (stay in Mercues?) come to mind. The biggest difficult decision will be whether to try to "press on" to make a day or two in Bilbao or not (sanity would say no, but need to think about this).

Now that I've got my two tickets, y'all jmup on this! What a sweet deal, even if you have to fly into Midway (iflyswa.com) to get to Rockford!

Best wishes,

Rex

well Rex you win the award for jumping on a deal of a lifetime the fastest on fodors!!! It really is a splurge in time for me since I was just in Paris in March and will be in Seattle right before this trip!!

Well, hopefully, the trip is the "award". I am as surprised as you that others are not jumping on this.

And just for the sake of honest, I will list here the "hidden" costs we expect to bear to get this sub-$300 airfare:

RT ticket from Louisville to Midway $115 per person on Southwest
Rental car to drive from MDW to RFD $38
Rental car to drive back from RFD to MDW $46
(Estimated) overnight lodging near Midway on the night of our return $30-40 (priceline) - - the flight gets back too late to return to Midway and fly home to Louisville.

So, since we are not local, our true cost will be about $475 - - but still phenomenally good for (almost summer travel) - - fares from the east coast might come along to match this quite regularly, but from "the heartland" it is usually necessary to add $200, if not $300 to get comparable deals.

I just can't believe that the Rockford Airport Authority is going to write us a check for $1832, to subsidize our tickets which cost $2430.

Topping for Rockford, Illinois area residents. Sweet.

Wow, and I thought we got an absolute steal flying Denver to Rome May 13-25 for only $671 each.

Congrats rex and others who jumped on this deal!

Oh how I wish Southwest flew to Colorado, Frontier just doesn't compare to their low prices.

By the way, this deal has even more great fares to other domestic destinations. My sister and family are going to jump on the $59 fare to Denver.

I just booked Hotel Du Danube for my June dates!! Thank God there was availabilty.
We are going to take a day trip to Dijon and area. I do live in Rockford so this is as sweet as it gets!
Well there is still time!!!!!!!! The deal ends on May 8 for travel through June 15th.

Wow! I can't believe the prices! I would just on it in a heartbeat (I live Illinois, near St. Louis, but it would be worth the drive!) but we are leaving for our Europe vacation on Saturday so there is no way I could jump on the offer. Like TexasAggie, I thought we got a great deal from St. Louis to Nuremberg (leaving on May 7) for $550 per person!

Thanks for posting! It may be worthwhile for us to consider using the Rockfort airport for future travels.

Tracy

tcreath, just want to clarify the city is Rockford, definitely put it on your list of airports when researching Northwest flights.

Oops, sorry for the typo! Thanks pjsparlor! We are actually flying NWA when we go to Germany on Saturday. I never even thought to look into Rockford's airport because I assumed it was a smaller airport that wouldn't handle international flights.

May 2nd was the first NW flight so you are right about it being small, and not an international airport.But hopefully that will change and Rockford will keep the planes filled!!So now it is a International Airport!

It was an International Airport even before May 2, right...? there are/were charter carriers going to Mexico, the Bahamas, no?

ok you got me on that, I was so excited about Europe and MY plans that I kinda left out Bahamas and Mexico!! Guess I am not a beach girl, and made a faux pas.

Super price if you live anywhere near Rockford. It would cost me over $500.00 to get to Rockford from Northwest Montana making it approx. $700.00.
For a couple hundred more i guess I'll wait and pick the dates I want out of Spokane or Seattle.
Have a great trip guys!

Thanks for the hot tip. After the rebate, it nets out to less than $300 r/t to Paris. That's lunacy!

That's what we've been trying to tell you!

Thanks for the great tip. Off to Paris in 2 weeks. Now I have to find a hotel!

ttt for Illinois!

Last chance... today and tomorrow!

is this limited to economy fares or will they reimburse business class too?

Gee... why don't you buy a business class fare and see what they say they will do?

;)

rogerb, someone on Flyertalk called the airport and asked that question. It is limited to coach fares. Having said that, I have to seriously wonder if the folks running this promotion really understand what they have gotten themselves into. Coach fares to Paris are very high on Northwest for the period (the lowest I saw was over $1,100.) I'm wondering if there is an unhappy ending with a lot of hard feelings all the way around when all is said and done with this one. Stay tuned.

since i started this thread, out of curiosity, how many on fodors took adavantage of this? I know Rex did, but anyone else?

pj
You will love the Danube :)

Thank you Scarlett, this is my 6th time staying there! I keep going back for the service and cute ambiance,plus Rue Jacob is an awesome street! I am so excited to be going to Paris in June!! I am a frugal traveler so I always end up going in the winter. So this will be fun to see Giverny, since it is always closed when I am usually in paris!

Hi pj,

We bought 2 tickets, leaving in a couple of weeks. Thanks again!

Last day.

Well, the promotion has ended and our crack research team has determined that there is a high liklihood of everything coming through as presented. Thanks to pjsparlor for bringing this truly unusual (and remarkable) offer to the attention of the board and bon voyage to all who got in on it!

To whom this concerns, I just talked to a client who booked one of these rebate promotions and has received her check! Her itiniery was not Paris but it was still the same type of promotion. So anyway it really was a for real deal, and I am glad I posted this for all you fodorites! God knows I have learned so much from this board! It is nice to return the favor!

For what it's worth pjsp... our flight contained a total of 13 passengers who were going to Paris - - there were about 30-some people on the plane in total. There was a guy there asking info of all of the passengers, and he said that there had been travelers from as far away as Louisiana who signed up for the program.

He also said that no checks would be sent until the travel is completed, to combat against people just trying to "make" hundreds of dollars.

Hoping our check arrives before long - - do you have yours? (presumably not, as you are not leaving until next week).

Merci millefois, again...

After reading this, just out of curiosity I went to NWA and tried pricing a Rockford-Paris trip end of august. $1128. So it's bye-bye bargains, looks like!

tuckerdc, this deal would have never shown up on NWA or any other search engine because it was a third party rebate. I took this one last weekend and the actual ticket price was more than $1,100. In talking with the Rockford Airport folks, there were 120 people that took them up on the Paris deal. (Rex, I guess we should post again when the rebate checks show up.)

I'm a Rockford-to-Paris flyer from Louisiana and returned home several days ago, with 13-yr-old daughter along. As Rockford airport also offered one-way New Orleans to Rockford for $99, our total fare (after refund) will be about $500 pp. Zounds! And in late May-early June, too! The Rockford folks told me that they were marketing to Chicago, not planning on a national response, but hadn't figured on the internet. However, they were adamant that this offer has "put them on the map" and has gotten them exactly the kind of exposure that they wanted, so they didn't seem to regret a bit those of us travelling through Rockford from afar to get to Europe. Now I, too, wait for my big refund check....

So! It's <i>you</i>, queenjane... that I heard about from the guy with the clipboard in Rockford! What a hoot!

If there were 120 passengers total who chose to use the Paris promotion, I wonder who - - besides &quot;the four of us&quot; (me, flyboy, esm and queenjane) who came (&quot;from the internet&quot;) a distance of more than 100 miles to fly from Rockford? How many seats did &quot;we&quot; take? 9? of 120? I hope for their sake that they really did get 90+% of their rebated sales from potential repeat customers.

I do feel a little bit like I got something for nothing - - but I am consoling any pangs of conscience I have - - with the knowledge that they probably did get hundreds of sales (counting all of the destinations - - not just Paris). And presumably the potential repeat customers who will generate a lot more word-of-mouth publicity for them.

If I did live within a 75 mile radius, the ease of using this little airport would probably entice me to fly Northwest through Detroit - - instead of whatever airlines/routings might be a choice through O'Hare.

Rex, I talked with the same guy you did and I was listening to the other surveying going on. There were some people from eastern Iowa and Wisconsin, as well as some from the greater Rockford area. I think that the promotion probably did serve to put the Rockford Airport on the map for a lot of people who didn't really know about it. While Northwest is the only major carrier and it has a rather sparse flight schedule (2X per day to/from DTW), there is quite a bit of travel in the vacation market with three other carriers that make use of the airport. The reach of Rockford may legitimately be fairly large, since many in the hinterlands to the west, north, etc. are quite inclined to drive considerable distances to pick up charter deals. The prospect of free parking, not dealing with Chicago traffic and O'Hare could prove to be very attractive.

Thanks to pjsparlor for bringing a very unusual deal to our attention. Since I have your e-mails, I'll shoot you both a draft of an article that I may be placing on this one.

I was wondering how many people took advantage of this offer. There were only 2 we saw who boarded in Rockford and continued on to Paris on our flight. I’ll certainly look up fares out of RFD in future. It is a longer drive for us but without the hassles of O’Hare. But our flight was delayed for almost an hour due to weather in Detroit and had me worried a bit about missing the connection.
Did any of you get the freebee toothbrush/toothpaste combo in Rockford? Not a bad one for travel!

I live in Rockford and I'm flying out of Rockford on NWA, via Detroit to Paris at the end of July - we couldn't do the June dates due to other commitments, but are so excited to have the RFD airport on the map and be able to fly out of here! Please spread the word! The airport now has $100 rebates for many destinations - check it out: www.flyrfd.com

Just received an email from Rockford Airport marketing office asking for copies of boarding pass or ticket receipts showing completion of travel in order to process the refund. Here’s part of the message:

&quot;We realize that many of you have already taken your trip and are anxiously waiting for your check; however, due to a recent incident of several travelers trying to receive rebates on flights that were cancelled and refunded, we feel that we must take this extra precaution. Due to this unfortunate situation, we apologize that this process is taking longer than the 20 business days we initially anticipated.&quot;