March airfares
 

I've been searching for airfares for the third week in March from New York to Paris and have found some unusual things. First, prices are even higher than I expected. With fule costs what they are I certainly expected higher prices but I'm finding them to be 25-50% higher than in the last few years. For the past four years I've flown to either London or Paris, always the third week in March, and fares have ranged from $379 (in 2004) to $479 in (2005)(but that year Easter was the day I was coming home). In 2002 and 2003 they were just about $400. I always bought the tickets in mid November. This year, the lowest fares I'm finding are over $550. If prices are going to remain high due to fule costs, you'd think summer prices woud also be up an equivalent amount, but in looking at those they are in the same ballpark as they have been for the past five summers. I can't do an exact comparison because I go different places each summer, but they are similiar. The prices (for March) went down about $50 last weekend but went right back up yesterday. Do you think that's it for the price drop and they'll stay up, or do you think that was just a blip and they'll go down a bit more?

The second interesting thing I found was that prices on the big airfare search engines/consolidators is no better than for the airlines themselves and in most cases higher. Orbitz was neck and neck with airfrance and continential but all the others (I checked about 10) were significantly higher. In the past few years they've always been significantly lower.

The third interesting thing was that a round trip ticket from Newark to Paris was $553 (airfrance, that was the best price I found). But if I ADDED a leg - did Newark to Paris and came home from Barcelona (BCN to CDG to EWR) the price came DOWN to $538. So I can save money by adding an extra flight (the BCN to CDG flight - the CDG to EWR is the same one they'd put me on if I just came home direclty from Paris).

Any thoughts on any of this?

My only thoughts are that if you haven't checked on
www.mobissimo.com
www.itasoftware.com
www.onetravel.com
you haven't necessarily checked thoroughly enough.

Airlines are doing a better job of mixing it up this year. Fare sales seem to be more limited and difficult to anticipate. Despite that, there are some decent deals that pop up from time to time and the vigilant are able to jump on them. (Example: I purchased a r/t ticket to Paris from the U.S. Midwest for $395 last week that is $675 this week for the same flights.)

voyager - tried them all, none beat airfrance or orbitz - or even come really close.

flyboy - what site did you use?

It was directly off the Northwest Airlines site where there was a limited term sale going on for several days. (Looking at the receipt online, I see the purchase date was actually Oct. 29).

isabel - If you're not going to Barcelona, then you can't book the return from there to save yourself money. If you don't show up to check in at BCN, your CDG-EWR leg will be cancelled too. Do not try it at home!