rbnwdln

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!

Intrepid1

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.

g33kgrl

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?

rbnwdln

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

Doble_Vergasser

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.

g33kgrl

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.

g33kgrl

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.

rbnwdln

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!

tower

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

jgg

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.

JoyC

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.

Jean

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.

fun4all4

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.

RufusTFirefly

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_am_kane

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.

suze

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.

rbnwdln

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?

jesssica

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.

i_am_kane

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.

missypie

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!