It DOES pay to keep watching flights...
 

I had been looking at flights to go to Italy 6/29-7/11. Originally was thinking of the Amalfi Coast and ending in Rome. They have all been $1150 and up. Since there are plenty of other places I'd like to go, I was also checking going into Venice and out of Rome. Same prices or even higher. Just now, on Cheaptickets via kayak.com, there was one little flight on Lufthansa for $615 into Venice and out of Rome (the rest were all $1300+). Guess where I'm flying into! Woohoo!!

Yikes! Nice catch.

I've been non-stop on Kayak LOOKING for a deal 5/25 to 6/5. HOpefully I find something as good! I"m seeing 1100+.

Congrats to you!!

SusanP, OMG I just booked my august 24-Sept4 trip, Lufthansa for $614pp, I'm so excited, thank YOU!

That is great! So far our tickets to Paris just keep going up. Good thing I bought them already, but it did hurt...$1700 each! But that is for non stop from SFO in late June.

natc, that's great! Mine aren't direct, but only one stop in Frankfurt.

Yes, I have frankfurt connections too, they are 1 hour + 15 mins or so. I know that is tight, but hoping we could make it. The price is unbeatable! Thanks so much for posting.

I got a deal alert from Orbitz for August dates. However, I already got cheap flights. Hope this works for someone, though:

United - $324+tax SEA-CGN ($555 all-in) in August - on Orbitz

This might work for other months.

well....orbitz would not honor the $598 open jaw ny-rome, venice-ny....the price they gave was $1200!!! claimed flight availablity! we booked instead a $689 flight thru airfare.com...now we change in munich instead of frankfurt but we have 2 plus hours so we should be golden!

Isn't it fun when you get a flight for half what you were afraid you'd have to pay? :-d

oh...our travel dates are 6/25 - 7/18!

Good for you and congrats!

I always try to be as open as possible when booking my flights because sometimes it can lead to great results. For instance, we went to Germany and Austria in 2005 and wanted to fly round trip into/out of Munich or Austria. However, we found a flight to Nuremburg that was almost half the cost of the flights to Munich or Vienna so we jumped on it and based our itinerary around that. It definitely pays to keep an open mind and look at surrounding airports!

Sounds like you have a wonderful trip ahead of you!

Tracy

I just got a $599 fare from LA/Zurich/Rome/LA. in early October on United. It's a promo fare for United now flying NS from Dulles to Rome.

I should have said early September not October.

So happy to finally hear of some lower fares for the summer. Good luck everyone.

Well don't know how you guys feel about turbo-prop planes, but Lufthansa uses them a lot for their European connecting flights. Hubby refuses to fly out over the Alps from Germany to Italy in a Dash-8 or the RJ-72 twin turbo. He says it's bumpy, tho only about an hour flight. Might want to check that. British Airways uses 737's for connections into Italy.

I flew from Munich to Florence in April 2005 in a little 40-seat (I believe) Dash-8, a code share between Lufthansa and Air Dolomiti. We left Munich in clear weather, hit a thunderstorm over the Alps, glimpsed a beautiful sunset intermittently through the clouds, and landed in Florence in the rain. A few mild to moderate bumps but certainly nothing to get excited about. Definitely would do it again just to get to connect through the great Munich airport.

Almost had a good fare too. Went to kayak and they offered $881 (sfo to venice then fco to sfo in May and June) which was $300 less than I have been seeing. when they "sent" me to orbitz for the fare it said there was an error or the fare had expired boo hoo. Great for all who got it. what a deal...

The same thing happened to me a few hours ago. I went to kayak and the fare to my destinations was $604 with taxes -- a great fare compared to what I've been seeing for the past month. When it sent me to purchase, the fare was more than $1,000. Very disappointing.

luvtotravel,

what a low blow !!! I've been looking for three months. Leaving from the west coast is never cheap and this was so exciting..

where do you fly from ??

I sent an email to Kayak because they "want to know about problems".

Luvtotravel and Susie, that is disappointing when that happens, but it happens all the time. Unless you just happen to be up now, this will probably be too late, as I imagine the fares will be pulled shortly, but there are various excellent fares available on Orbitz, United, and elsewhere - see this thread I started on FlyerTalk:
http://tinyurl.com/vsh35

I was trying to score one of these cheap flights as well. Last night I got all the way through to billing info on cheaptickets when I bailed because I wasn't absolutely sure the dates would work for my daughters. The fare was $636, Newark to Venice, and Rome to Newark. Today, I called cheaptickets, the guy was amazed by the fare, and when he tried to book it, he said the cheapest fare on Lufthansa was $2,000.

I followed randola's advice and looked on airfare.com, and I was able to book the open jaw itinerary for $714 each- June 15th to June 25th. Still a bargain compared to the fares that have been showing up.

Oh, and the dates really didn't work for my daughters so just my husband and I are going now!

Everyone's posting all of these airfare deals and I can't find any of them to work out of DFW. It's at least $500 more per person going out of DFW than the dates that are listed here. Am I doing something wrong???

WillTravel, it was a bit odd. I was on Kayak and Orbitz. Both were quoting fares between $604 and $611 inclusive, but when I hit that "purchase" button, the fares were much higher. This went on until the wee hours of the morning. I imagine fares change minute-to-minute, but after hours they should stop teasing us with those reasonable fares.

andy, I don't think you are doing anything wrong. It might be that DFW isn't included in the sale, and the fares seem to be getting harder to come by. I checked airfare.com for you and the fares were more like $1,136 per ticket.

I always have problems with Orbitz. They will quote me a terrific rate but when I click to purchase the rate is no longer valid and the new rate is always hundreds of dollars higher. I quit using Orbitz last year because I got tired of dealing with it!

Tracy

I ended up calling orbitz's so called "customer service" because I kept pulling up that cheap airfare last night. I called orbitz to book direct and the woman I talked to found the fare but when she tried to book it, it came up as an error. I asked to talk to a supervisor and she put me on hold and then talked to her supervisor (who wouldn't talk to me) bottom line was "keep trying, maybe in the middle of the night !! Then I called to register a complaint and that was a joke.

anyway I'm still looking.

Thanks WillTravel, I checked United and read the website. Couldn't find a deal- even called Lufthansa who was listed as the carrier on Orbitz and he quoted about $1,300...

try airfare.com....they honored the price quoted on kayack....

I booked directly through Lufthansa, no problems at all. NY to Rome with connection in Munich for 585. good luck

Travel booking check for their cookies when you enter their website. Before visiting a travel booking website either clear all of your surfing History and cookies or search in the Histroy and cookie folders for files containing the website name (and variations thereof). Doing this lets you appear as you had never visited the site before so you can try and get some of the good deals that seem to disappear after you return or try again after getting an error.

To illustrate how this works the next time you find a flight that is a great deal that only ends up to be an error in availability or price when you get to the booking screen, exit and go back into the website. You'll now see that that flight is no longer listed in the available options or if it is it will now show the higher price. Now exit and clear your History and cookies then go back to the website. Why, that good deal is back! Now you might get the same booking error and you might not. It took me 24 tries in the middle of the night (individual nights - not all in one) to get the flight price and schedule that I wanted but perserverence does pay off.

Went to United.com yesterday and got $537 open jaw DC to Paris, London to DC in August. They had no FF seats available but it's nice to get a good price.

I've heard of people having troubles with airfare.com - I avoided using it though it offered what seemed like an outrageously great fare for our upcoming trip. Have heard that they refuse to e-ticket and all of their fares are frought with restrictions... the flight we got, through BA for only $100 more than the airfare.com price is flexible.. we can upgrade for a reasonable fee, change dates, etc.. while at airfare.com the flexibility was nil and they charge dsomething like $300 PLUS, on top of the airlines fee, for some changes.