Hi.
We are having a devil of a time trying to locate good fares to Europe.
We live on the West Coast & are looking for round-trip, open jaw tickets to Europe for around $1200 each in August-September. Is this realistic? Any suggestions (websites, agencies, etc)?
Thanks.

I can see round trips from LAX to London or Dublin for under $1200 from several carriers, including Air New Zealand, which is probably the most comfortable option.

I'd look at one-way tickets beyond London to your ultimate cities; British Airways serves numerous cities from London for $150 or less on a one-way basis. For no good reason, if you buy a trip via London to the same city (i.e. a through ticket) the price seems to be higher.

SAS also announced an August/September fare sale today (good from Seattle) but evidently it's been too popular for their website, which is presently inop.

Hi D,

From where on the West Coast to where in Europe?

If you're close to Canada (or a cheap flight away), you might investigate the possibility of flying Zoom or Air Transat from Vancouver or Calgary. You can book one-way segments, and both airlines offer a "premium economy" type product with more leg room.

Try www.kayak.com.

We just booked Italy for $739. round trip, although
we didn't do it on Kayak, but through our travel
agent. Kayak is a great site, as is www.farecast.com

Good luck,
Sebastian

TTT

Well I paid more this year than any other time - we flew ATL to AMS and then CDG to ATL departing April 21. I watched and waited, then bit the bullet and paid over $1000 for direct flights - airfares are higher this year - the only slightly good thing being fares did not seem to flucuate so much. Day after day the fare was the same which made it a bit less nerve racking. I have hopes of going to Italy at the end of August (MXP) but that flight is running around $1500! Hilton Head is looking better and better!

I'll ditto "kayak". I've used them often, but generally then book directly with airline (for a variety of reasons).

Thanks for all the responses.
Ira, our plan is Seattle-Athens, Prague-Seattle.

Don't give up yet. BA might be the best choice on that flight.


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Every time I've tried to find open jaw tickets on these websites, I've found the sum of the two one-ways to be MUCH more than a simple round trip to and from one city.

I must be doing something wrong...

Just for the heck of it, try SEA-LON-SEA then a separate LON-ATH//PRG-LON itinerary. I can see London for under $1100, LHR-ATH for $147 on BA and PRG-LHR for $102, thus a total of ca. $1350 all in. Not $1200, but not that far off. When I tried to price a straight SEA-ATH//PRG-SEA itinerary the cheapest I could see was ca. $1700.

Tuck - two 1-way tickets does NOT equal an open jaw ticket. Open jaw is all one booking - flying A to B, then C back to A (or elsewhere). When searching for flights, select the Multiple Flights (or whatever it might be) at the very beginning, where the Roundtrip or One Way choices are. Try that, and see what you come up with.

Dinks,

Have you tried using a consolidator site such as onetravel.com just to cross-check flight prices?

I would normally suggest an aggregator site such as itasoftware.com but unfortunately it will not allow you to do the normal "month-long view" on an open jaw itinerary.

Also, as abhorrent as it might sound, you might do well to check with a travel agent. I say that because recently I was pricing airfares to Japan using every possible resource on the web, including the airline sites and then a travel agent friend offered me a price, in Business Class, that was about 1/2 of the lowest price I could find anywhere else.

Hey Dukey.
We've tried a few agents to no avail. I would welcome trying your travel agent friend if you don't mind.
Thanks.

dinks,

AA just put a 10% sale on, today, from most of their west coast hub cities. You might want to try them out.

Holly - Thank you!