Flights being booked for summer already(?)
 

A travel agent I inquired of today regarding summer flights from the US to Europe claims flights are being booked up already. She says it's because so many flights have been cancelled due to 9-11 and also the reason for the high fares. Unless she's saying so to sell more tickets.

Is anyone finding this to be true as well? I thought there's still time to research and buy airfare but maybe not.

For months now I've been waiting for my flight to Italy in May to go down in price, when in fact it's going UP. I'm pretty skittish, too, considering I'll have two layovers and I don't want to wait too long and miss out on the best connections.

I just booked two tickets from GSP (SC) to CDG & return for $629 each through airfare.com for May 26 - June 14. I've never used them before so I hope they are trustworthy. (Anyone know?) You might want to check them out.

francophile, wait at least until March to buy your tickets.Unless,of course, you find a terrific fare before then..

Betty, thanks for the tip, but for my flight (Lubbock to Verona, then Venice to Lubbock), airfare.com was only $20 cheaper than any other I've found. It's not substantially cheaper to do roundtrips to Verona, Venice, or even Milan. Guess I'm stuck with a $1000 ticket!

Are you an American Airlines AAdvantage member? If so, go onto their web site and start to make the reservation (even if you aren't planning to fly American). At some point (before giving your credit card number) you can click on a diagram of the airplane and see what seats are available and what seats are booked. If it is pretty full, that will give you a good idea that the agent is telling the truth.

What I think they are really cutting down on is the number of available frequent flyer seats on each flight...I had enough AAdvantage miles for 3 tickets to Paris. When I booked my mid-March '04 trip in late JULY '03, the agent told me that I had reserved the last 3 frequent flyer seats on that flight!!!

missypie,


Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I am an AA frequent flyer, and was planning to take AA even though it's more expensive. Great idea, I'll do it right now.

Well, I couldn't get the AA website to cooperate (it's done this every time I've tried): it's not showing the flights I'd like to take that I see listed on orbitz and expedia. What's up with that???

Sounds to me like a travel agent trying to lock in a commission on the highest-price tickets (as purchasing a summer ticket would be right now).
There will be some kind of summer Europe sale by spring, you can set your watch to it. And the number of transatlantic flights this summer will be quite a bit higher. For example, Delta is going double-daily from Atlanta to Munich, Northwest is adding Detroit-Rome, and I read that American is increasing its transatlantic capacity quite a bit this summer.

Seat maps are not a reliable tool to gage how many seats are sold on any flight. Most airlines block off many seats for different reasons, so even if you do have status you will see these seats as sold, when they really are not. Also many people don't know/care about seat assignments, so even when they do buy tickets they don't pick any seats. Trust me it happens all the time.

If you want to have any idea of how any particular flight is filling up you have to check fare loads.

There are few tools on the web to do this, but I won't get into it now.

For the average, once a year traveler, that is not important. Decide on your dates and book it early, or as soon as you feel comfortable with the fare. AA is good about rolling-back fares and issuing a voucher if you catch the same flights being cheaper.

I believe that it is true. I have been hearing that in the news for quite a while now. Flights are going out full because there are fewer of them.

If the airfare is around $1,000/pp I'm not sure if we will be able to travel. I hope it can go a bit lower such as $800 or so.

francophile3, what city are you leaving from?

San Francisco

I'm booked for Naples in July,got out of the way this year,no last minute panic to find low fares etc...

I'll start getting nervous about fares Chicago --> Scotland (bwo Manchester?) in late February. Till then, I'm assuming they'll come down sometime soon-ish. Pretty expensive now.

AA Frequent Flyer--do I need to book directly through AA to be eligible for the travel vouchers should the price go down after I purchase the tickets?

Jocelyn,

No you don't. Just make sure you are purchasing a published fare, not a consolidator or special tour fares.

I find that most of the published fares you find elsewhere should be able to price the same on AA.COM about 95% of the time and collect the 1000 mile booking bonus which you won't get booking somewhere else.

When somebody points out a great fare they find, let's say on Orbitz, I will go there, price it, get the flight numbers, go back to AA.com, and do a search by schedule, not by fare. When all the different flights show up, I put together the same itn that I found on Orbitz, and like I said above, most times I will get the same fare minus the service fee and plus the 1000 mile booking bonus.

Thank you so much for the information, AA Frequent Flyer. I wish we could book through AA, but we have a travel credit through our Miles One credit card and need to book through their travel center to redeem it. Since we just joined the AA Advantage program, it will make sense for us to switch to a Citibank card, but we haven't done it yet.