I need help! Out of SFO or SMF to FCO. Which airline, best connection, who to book through.???? Will be going April or May.

It looks like you have some flexibility. It is almost invariably less expensive to go in March and those fares will begin popping up sooner than those for April and May. In any case, I would suggest setting up a Fare Watcher on Travelocity and just keep checking. As for connections: the less the better. You can start checking on routings right now to see what looks best.

Lots of options out of SFO. If you list the following in order of your priority it will help you focus in:

non-stop flight
cheapest price
shortest total trip time
departure or arrival time

Hi PT,

I find that I get reasonably good results from www.1800flyeurope.com and http://airtravelcenter.com/onetrav.htm.

Low fares should be listed around the end of Oct.

You will usually get better fares and schedules via SFO than SMF. No one I know flies directly from either to FCO at the present time. You have a choice of flying from either to a city in the US that has direct connections with FCO or flying to London, Paris, Frankfurt, Munich or Amsterdam from SFO than connecting to FCO.
April or May will probably be shoulder season and March will likely be cheaper. Fares for April and May should be out in early 2005. Fares for March later this fall. Exceptions to this do however occur. Depending on what you want to do may cause you to open jaw it, in which case it is usually easier to connect in Europe than in the US.

Last year I flew from SFO to FCO with Continental with a connection in Newark. My home airport is also SMF, and I find that it's always much more than SFO. It is MUCH more convenient but the connections can be multiple from SMF and definitely it will cost you more.

mjs, didn't Alitalia used to fly non-stop from SFO to FCO? I see they no longer do.

Alitalia used to fly SFO to Milan than Rome before about 2001. They may have flown directly to Rome from SFO sometime in the past but not recently. We have found that ocassionaly you could get similar fares out of SMF as SFO to various overseas destinations but they have always so far had poor conections such as 6 to 8 hour layovers somewhere like Chicago or Atlanta or Dallas etc. Tend to prefer UA or LH out of SFO to FRA or MUC (especially) for connections throughout Europe.

I flew Lufthansa from S.F.O last year. Took a night flight and it connected in Munich. Two hour layover and then off to Rome.Nighttime seems to go by faster as lights are out for long time so it is quieter.