When to buy airfare?
 

We are planning a trip to Italy to take place the last two weeks of June 2011. Airfare is currently $1,500+...way more than we have ever paid for tickets to any European city. We can arrive and depart from any major city in Italy and will use trains once in Italy. When is the best time to buy airfare...is their a good source for airfare trends?

OMG I just checked the fares for the dates of my hoped for trip next summer around the same time as yours - I'm also seeing $1500 from Atl. WOW! not good - I certainly hope those fares come down - just when the dollar gets a bit stronger the airfare skyrockets!

Try this. Rome is the only Italian city in the listings, but it should give you an rough idea. Fares to Europe in 2010 looks about 40-50% higher than 2009 across the board - not a good sign...

http://www.expedia.com/daily/trend_tracker/

June is always high--supply and demand.
I doubt if you see any drop until next year, and the airlines really do not dicount much until 90 days out. This year June fares would have been about $1200. We did $1000 this May, but that was after looking for 2 months. It will vary east to west

Have you tried to track fares on Yapta.com? You can put in a specific flight for a specific day and Yapta will track the price and notify you when the fare drops below a value that you set. You can use one flight as a barometer for what other flights to your destination might be. The problem is that fares to Europe haven't been dropping very much, but if they do, it's nice to have Yapta to alert you.

Agree with bobthenavigator that it's too early to get discouraged by airfares for June 2011. Set-up an alert on Kayak.com if your airports are specific, or better yet, sign-up for the Top 25 Cities alert, and adjust your trip accordingly. There are numerous ways to get around in Europe if you're willing to fly into a different airport to save money.

For example, I wanted to get to Paris this October with my boyfriend. Every ticket I found was north of $900 from LAX to CDG. I kept my eye on Kayak and sure enough, a fare popped up that was $604 all-in that flew to Brussels. For €25 each, we're taking the TGV down to Paris in a little over an hour.

Stay on top of your search and when you see a price you can live with, jump on it. As everyone said, airfares don't seem to be going anywhere but up, up and away unfortunately...good luck!

There is a new website called:

www.hipmunk.com

Give it a try. It is set up for easy use and the prices are good.

Thanks everyone, I have alerts set up with the sites mentioned and just checked out hipmunk - easy to understand presentation of rates and all on one page, straight forward and no pop-up ads (-:. Aer Lingus had a great rate from Boston (we need to depart from Boston or NYC) to Milan a week ago that I was hoping to grab but it seems to be gone. In fact there are no rates posted on Aer Lingus' site anymore past October to Italy, but they do have rates posted to other cities for June 2011. We'll be watching and ready to pounce, but I guess we won't be getting any great deals soon.

Sales usually show up 3 to 4 months before the travel date. "Usually" being the key word. But check periodically from now on as sometimes an airline will have a temporary cash flow problem or decide to promote a new route and have a sale well before the travel date.

This is way, way, way too early to be buying airfare for June 2011. I wouldn't even consider buying anything until March 2011, and wouldn't start feeling pressured until late April/early May 2011. Not a bad idea to keep looking periodically, but I wouldn't jump at anything above $500 this far out.