June 2006?
 

I need help from experts. We would like to go to Italy in June. I have the hotel reservations but am waiting on the airfares. Right now they are asking over $1,200 per person to Rome. I can leave from Minneapolis or New York. Does anyone have any expert advice on when or if I can expect fares to come down. Last year we spent almost $800 to get to Rome and I thought THAT was a lot. Thanks!

I would look now on consolidator and aggregator sites just in case a cheaper fare might be out there.

Nobody knows <b>for certain</b> when there will be a sale or exactly when prices will fall to their lowest.

For now, I'd look at

www.onetravel.com
www.itasoftware.com
www.mobissimo.com

Unfortunately that 2 for 1 SAS airfare sale only goes through March '06.
Good luck.

June is high season and fuel prices are WAY above what they were last year, but I saw fares from NYC to Rome for $840 on at least two different sites(sidestep.com and lowestfare.com). Who is the &quot;they&quot; who are asking $1200?

&quot;They&quot; are all the major carriers, Northwest, Delta, Air France, etc. through Orbitz, Travelocity, carrier web sites, etc.

Getting the best airfare is an art (similar to timing the stock market).

I would suspect that now (10 months ahead of departure) there are few if any sales or agressively price airfare deals.

Well, without knowing the specifics of your search, I don't know why you're getting higher prices. As I said, I searched for NYC to Rome, middle of the week flights (always cheaper than weekends): Iberia (840), US Airways (949), Air Canada (1005), British Air (1027), and Air France (1029) are all right around or under $1000. Go with one of the major European lines instead of American--that is where you're going, after all. LOL ;-)

I do agree that 10 months is probably a bit early to be buying them.

BTW, I use SideStep.com for my searches--it shows the fares WITH all the taxes and fees added on the main result screen so you know exactly what the total amount is and can easily compare all the options--I hate having to choose a particular flight before I get to see what the real total is.

Well, one reason I'm finding more expensive fares is that I'd REALLY like to leave from Minneapolis because that is where I live. Our daughter lives in NY and last year we went to visit her and then left from JFK. I noticed that Air Lingus has a fare to Dublin that is less than 500 dollars. Does it make sense to fly there and then take Ryanair or one of the less expensive airlines to Rome? As you can see I am a novice at all this. Thanks for your help!

RBN....I have never, that's never, spent anywhere near that kind of money on Transatlantic fares in my 40 years of overseas travel. And I fly from L.A....last spring, flying Lufthansa to it's base in Frankfurt, connecting to Rome, we paid $545 per person R/T.. Year before, Lufthansa again (best fares, best connection), flew to Oslo and return for $560 per person.
I got my granddaughter a roundtripper, L.A. to London, on Air N.Z. for $600 this past June...from London, she flew EasyJet for $38 to Munich. I have flown most major carriers in all those years, BUT, never in summer...always spring, fall or winter. Therein, lies the most important secret. I also use a savvy &quot;quasi-consolidator&quot;, and feel free to call him if you wish...use my name...he's Sebastian Arikan of A.R.S. Travel in L.A. phone: 323-938-5001.
Good luck.
Stu Tower

rbnwdln-Thanks for asking this question. I am coming up with the same problem for our trip to Prague and Italy June of 2006. I have been wondering as well how long to wait.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions of internet sites, and Stu for a personal recommendation. I will look into all of those.

Same here, I have been watching airfare since end of August for Austria/Italy for June 2006 and am coming up with $1200 leaving from Chicago. Also I noticed that even though the base fare is consistent, the taxes and fees are going up. It started like $200 and now its about $250/person.

There may be &quot;deals&quot; on Orbitz, et al., but I always check directly with the airlines. If you're lucky, you'll get a rez agent who's willing to look at creative routing. (If the agent isn't &quot;friendly,&quot; hang up and call back.) You also need to think outside the dates of your hotel reservation. There are different fares for almost every day of the week and different times of the day. Think Tuesday, red-eye or dawn o'clock.

It's good to know that others are having the same trouble I am with fares for next June. For flights last July (2005), our family paid $1200 for our particular routing (Dulles to Zurich and Venice to Dulles). I had to cancel the trip due to an illness in the family. To book those exact same flights again is now $1600 plus. Yikes. The best price I've been able to find at all is over $1100 and the flights/connections are terrible.

I guess I will keep searching and hang out a bit longer. Unfortunately, our dates are not flexible so I don't want to wait too long.

Good luck everyone! And please post if/when some better deals come along so we can all be aware and jump on them.

fun4--it is tough to have set dates. Usually the best deals don't show up until 2 to 4 months before the flight date, depending on departure point, destination, and time of year.

I would like to add my two cents: Our family of 10 has specific dates that we must travel to Italy. We want open-jaw flights for 6 of us JFK-VCE, FCO-JFK.

Into that mix, we must get the remaining 4 family members from Florida to Italy. After months of researching airlines, airfares and flight schedules, the 4 of them will do MCO-JFK-VCE, then the same route back.

I think when you have clear parameters as we do, your options drop dramatically. I salivate looking at the airfares that are available if you have flexibilty. We do not.

In the end, with 60% of the flight from JFK-VCE sold out in the middle of September, 2005 for departure on June 24, 2006, we bit the bullet and paid $1,112 per person for 6 of us in Connecticut, and $1,330 for the other four from Florida!

Ultimately, these are our perfect flights, and I guess you pay a premium when you aren't flexible.

The stress of constantly checking the airfares for 10 people wasn't worth it - we needed those flights. However, if we were a party of 2 with flexibility, you bet I would keep checking the fares.

As the poster above, I have always paid a regular price because I wanted a specific airline, flight times, and favorable connections. I prefer to deal with the airline not consolidators or internet discount bookings. For me it would not be worth the savings to make a detour, use more than one carrier, have unnecessary additional airport stops, etc. Not right or wrong, just what I'm comfortable with.

I am flexible on dates. Our hotel reservations are for Positano and we can flex around the dates there. I will keep trying. Can anyone answer my question about using Ryanair, etc. withing Europe to get a reasonable fare to say London or Paris and then use Ryanair or the like to Italy?

Hello
I was having this problem last year at this time. We went to Italy in June 05, so last fall I started looking into flights JFK/VCE and return FCO/JFK and they started at $1200, then 2 weeks later were at $1900. But by November I was able to purchase for around $800 each, they came down and stayed there for awhile. (I checked every day). And we got the exact flights we wanted. Good Luck.

rbnwdln

Keep in mind that it's a whole different ball game this year with the instability of fuel prices.

Fuel costs will have an impact in your airfare.

I'm looking for flights to Rome from DFW in early Jun, and I'm seeing the $1200-1400 range. Same thing for Frankfurt. There are 5 of us, so that's quite a sting, esp. since we flew to Paris in '04 for $562 each!

I am in the same situation although I am getting married in July and have to find rates for about 30 people! What Jessica said was very promising. I have been looking everyday, and finally yesterday I found a ton of flights in July on Alitalia for $820. I got everyones information together and was going to book today when the prices went up even higher to $1100. I'm confident the prices will go down because gas prices have been on the rise for the past few years and I know many of us have flown ther during these times for $800.

Our rates for next July are $1650!!! Luckily we had a lot of frequent flyer miles accumulated so we have 4 tickets already booked for the cost of taxes and $15 each for doing it over the phone. Now, that's a bargain. Only one ticket to go!

The airline agent recommended that I hold off buying the last ticket becuase they haven't even posted the spring promotions yet. I'm going to wait a couple months and then start checking regularly, as per the agent.

No guarantees, but historically, European fare sales show up around 3 to 4 months before the travel date. So for June 2006--February or March.

They really don't have much incentive to offer lower fares this far out. An exception might occur if an airline has an immediate cash flow problem that they can't deal with any other way.

We were seeing the same kinds of postings a several months ago from people who couldn't find anything under $900 for November/December.

Why offer a sale fare 10 months in advance when some people will pay those premium prices--the airlines prefer to wait until they see how fast the seats are filling up before lowering prices.

RBN

I don't know a thing about Ryan air, but I think you might have better luck getting your question about flying them from Ireland to Italy answered in a new thread with a title that is specific to flying r.a. from Dublin to Italy. Maybe more people will see it that way. I would suggest a title to you, but I am sick and feel lucky that I came up with this idea. ;-(

Also, have you checked Ryan Air for route maps? Not that many airlines have good route maps these days, but Ryan Air might.

A year or two ago, maybe more, Frommers (gasp) Budget Travel magazine did an article wherein they showed route maps for all the cheap European carriers. You might be able to get that article at the library; most librarians will be happy to help you do a search for it.

good luck, debbie

oh, another idea:

I once used opodo.co.uk to buy discount tickets within Europe. You could research flights there from Dublin to where you are going in Italy.

Registering and getting the tickets bought with a US credit card was a huge pain. I had to get some sort of Visa International approval or ID or something, but in the end, it was worth it to get where I was going at a price I could afford.

For what it's worth, the last two times we've gone to Europe, we purchased our tickets about 8 months in advance and it turned out to be the lowest fare.
You might look at skyscanner.net or whichbudget.com to find discount carriers from Dublin to Rome, but I'm certain you'd need to wait several months or more to find the really cheap fares on any budget airline. Airfares to/from Rome always seem higher than those to other European cities. I guess it's supply &amp; demand.

I too am looking for airfare to Europe for June. Our flight is SFO to Athens. I can't believe how much the fares are now. British Airways is the best so far,but once they add tax and charges the cheapest I've found is $1,317. I'm hoping it will come down in a few months.

Does the same scenario apply to smaller flights within Europe? We are planning to fly between Innsbruck and Orly, Paris next August and I was told by the agent of SkyEurope to call again in November when it's tickets for that time period go on sale. I need 5 tickets and don't want to wait too long in case the seats sell out, but also don't want to pay premium prices. Maybe I should be asking if anyone has experience with Sky Europe, if they use planes that fill up early on, or if that is a high-demand route. Any recommendations when to book our seats? Also, are they one of the airlines which allow you a small amount of luggage and charge an arm and a leg if you go over the weight?

(OK - this is the sign of the true Fodor's addiction - I couldn't sleep and here I am before 5am checking the forum just to see what's up!!!)

hoping for an answer, so...ttt

Topping for kwren - did you find out anything?