Going Crazy Searching Airfare?
 

I know people keep posting about this, but is anyone else going cross eyed from putting in dates and times and trying to get reasonable fares to Europe this summer? Due to work and personal reasons, we can only travel mid june-mid july..I expect to pay slightly higher but right now I'm at 1500 pp for our open jaw LAX-ROM, ATH-LAX and counting our cheapie Aegean flight in between rome at athens. Am i being insane to think that it should be more like 1000 ish for the open jaw portion? Is that real? Will this ever happen? I've tried crunching the numbers going thru Dublin, London and then catching cheap flights around but it all comes about pretty close to 1500 with just a lot of extra hassle...I'm losing my eyesight and panicking that we may have to scrap the whole thing altogether...Is anyone else as frustrated?
I'm a website expert by now and my new favorite is Kayak.com...seriously fantastic...

I don't think it has anything to do, in particular, with it being open jaw. It is peak travel season and Los Angeles is VERY far away from Rome and Athens. I would not expect you to get that for $1000. I'm seeing RT fares of $1200 for that time period from Eeast Coast of US to/from Central Europe, let alone your type of itinerary.

Assume you have priced LAX to London and changing to EasyJet or RyanAir from there; EasyJet ATH to Gatwick and from there to LAX.

I priced your itinerary on onetravel.com and the cheapest I found was almost $1600 per person.

Using beta.itasoftware.com I punched in some random dates in July and found a mainly AA itinerary for $1,249. It's not bookable on aa.com, but you may try to see if it's bookable on Orbitz.com.

It's still a bit early for the airlines to be posting summer sales.

Though with the fuel supply issues, I don't think anyone can predict with any assurance of accuracy what's going to happen in terms of pricing.

The most we've ever paid from the east coast is $491 per ticket in the high season. I'm watching with interest to see what happens this year.

Most of the airlines dont have any sales running yet for the period you wish to travel. Most presently are only running sales through the end of March (or at least the really good priced tickets). I wouldnt expect to see sales for the period you want to travel until after Memorial day. Unfortunately, as the previous poster also noted, the time you want to travel is peak time and therefore not sure how good those sale prices will be.

Oh Suezanna, I feel your pain. I was an airfare site junkie from October until about 2 weeks ago. Cross-eyed doesn't begin to describe it. My husband called it my part time job. Finally got a good fare on Aer Lingus but we have to sit in Dublin for 6 hours between flights. Good luck!

Thanks for allowing the venting, I'm glad others are finding the same thing. It is FAR away in terms of distance, and I guess I was being a tad unrealistic with the fares I was hoping (dreaming) for. Summer is ROUGHER than I could have imagined...
It's TOTALLY my part time job.My husband calls me his travel guru. Thanks to everyone for the help, I'm gonna try at aa fare...

Hae you looked at eurofly.com? You would have to schedule your domestic flight to NY yourself, as well as the athens departure back to Rome...but it looks like it would be cheaper than what you are looking at.

On aa.com use the "multi-city" tab, enter LAX-FCO and ATH-LAX, sort by price, and be sure to click the "AA, Eagle and Oneworld" button.

I picked arbitrary dates of 6/16 outbound, 7/10 return - $1212 all in, several routings possible.

That still seems high but I guess I'm getting used to

it.

Have you tried checking the route through vancouver, bc?

Yes my husband and I both are going insane. I can't imagine what has made the airfares go insane. We are flying to Ireland in May, and in June we are going to Italy. The airfare IN COACH for Italy is over $1550 a person. We have tried every routing possible and won't give up but it is insane. What the hell is going on this summer? We are doing airmile tickets and are thankful we have over 300,000 airmiles in our bank of useable mileage. These airfares are outrageous. We have been checking every day for two months.

the flying hell broke lose :)

Airfare is determined by the market. Airlines will charge the highest fares the market can support it. It may not be good business sense in the long term, but it is for the short run. With the industry losing big money as a whole, that's what you're going to find.

BTW, for those who seem to find nothing but $1,500 fares, you may find business class tickets for not much more.

I priced my tickets a few weeks ago to Italy in May... a little over a grand. right now they are at 875. I'll likely buy them shortly anyway just to be assured of the times I want!

Rkkwan is correct: the price of a fare has little, or nothing to do with the distance traveled but everything to do with what the particular "market" will bear and also what the competitors are charging for the same route.

You can wait and hope there will be a sale but a sale will only come if sales are down and I honestly wonder if they will be.

Have you looked at www.1800flyeurope.com?

Add me to the list of people going cross-eyed. I've also been looking since October (as you can see by my many posts regarding this topic). I can't seem to find anything cheaper than $1,100 from Washington, DC. I'm also being a bit particular in that I don't want to connect in Canada, London or Iceland. My husband is tall so the less time in the air, the better.

I've been told by 2 agents at United that they have a 'good' feeling that tickets will go on sale for summer .... but when, they didn't know. I almost booked this past weekend, but decided to hold out. :)

Good Luck!

This is helpful since I was almost feeling embarrassed about the tickets I bought for June. We are going from Chicago to Zurich on June 8th for a 12 day trip to Austria, Venice and Lake Como. We paid $1300 each on Swiss from Ohare to Zurich. Ouch. The only saving grace is that I was able to get a third ticket for free by cashing in my american express points. So, we get to take out 12 year old son with us for free on his first trip overseas.

I am also going to Paris on March 8th via American. We paid $500 each for those from Chicago to CDG direct. SO, i guess its the travel demand due to the time of year. Last may I paid $1100 for the same flight to Paris.

But, there are so many ways to rationalize it all...

If you pick the right days of the week in June & July BA will fly you LAX-LHR return for $996 incl.taxes, Easyjet is 36 GBP incl. for LGW-Rome, but 102 GBP for ATH-LGW. (Total $1236 & you have to change airports in London.) I was pricing spring flights into ATH earlier this year, and everything was expensive.