<p>I have heard that April is the best time to get deals on fares from North America to Europe. In looking now at summer fares displaying the fare per journey leg per day, I am seeing a large increase as the summer progresses. For example, $400+ for one leg there in late May/ Early June and $600-$800 for one leg back in late June/ early July.</p>
<p>Is it realistic to expect those fares to drop again?</p>
<p>Fares to the usual nice places in Europe always creep up substantially over the summer… If your travel dates are flexible check around, but fares get pretty ugly as summer progresses.</p>
<p>We dealt with this same question, for the exact same time frames, last year. We started looking in January and watched the fares remain relatively unchanged. We debated upon when to book the tickets, and kept hoping the prices would go down. They never really did. We booked in late Feb/early March. I still watched the prices. They never changed substantially–maybe $20-30 up and down. We were fine with that, knowing that our kids had their seats reserved in both directions and were traveling at the times we wanted. BTW-The cost was the same, or less, for them to fly into one city and depart from another when you added in the cost of getting back to the original city.</p>
<p>I would recommend you try cheapoair if they are less. We received an additional discount by booking through them–about $50/ticket.</p>
<p>You need to start looking so you can look over time and look at alternative routes, if possible. Also play with different days. I read somewhere that airlines adjust fares often on Tuesdays, so I always check on Tuesdays. Also if you can fly during the week, it’s usually cheaper. Those who travel on vacation usually want to go on Friday or Saturday and return on Sunday. </p>
<p>It’s especially true if you’re doing multiple legs. You might find it cheaper to do a to and from Europe flight (either round-trip or with different arrival and departure cities) and then purchase cheap (Easy Jet, for example) tickets within Europe. </p>
<p>Last year, H flew St Louis to Turin over and Bordeaux - St. Louis back. I flew Chicago - Rome over and Bordeaux - St. Louis back. Within Europe we found it much cheaper to purchase several internal flights (Toulouse-Lisbon, Milan-Bordeaux, Paris-Rome on either Easy Jet or Air France). Those were always cheaper to purchase round trip, even if I didn’t use the return half of it. With cars and hotels, I had a half-inch thick stack of confirmations (his and hers because we weren’t always traveling together).</p>
<p>If I recall correctly, we paid approx. $1300 for my flight and $1500 for his to Europe (this was between mid-June and late August). The internal European flights were around $100 on Easy Jet and $150-$250 on Air France. If you do fly Easy Jet, remember that they are very strict about their checked baggage and carryon restrictions. Make sure and pay for your checked bag when you buy your ticket. It’s much cheaper.</p>
<p>Flew from Dallas to Marseilles and then Frankfurt to San Francisco last summer. I saw a lower fare mid February (about $200 less) but did not have confirmation about D’s study abroad and had to wait until mid march. Paid about $1,500. Inside Europe we used trains</p>
<p>Rather than waiting, perhaps in vain, for fares to decrease significantly, you might want to play around with different departure/arrival cities to see how that might affect the cost. The different airports can make a significant difference in cost. Of course, depending on your plans for what you’ll do in Europe, you may be trading off convenience for savings but if you plan to see a lot of things anyway then it might not really matter if you fly into London vs Paris, Manchester vs London, fly through Atlanta or Chicago rather than nonstop from LAX or SFO, etc.</p>
<p>My experience with this over the years is that fares generally don’t go down. Occasionally they will but it doesn’t happen that often. If anything, they tend to go up. What I do is watch them for a few weeks to see if they are stable and just buy. The nice thing is now you can often see how full the plane is and that will give you an idea about if you have any time to delay buying them. Typically, they sell the cheapest seats first and then they go up from there. </p>
<p>If you do see them go down, buy immediately because chances are they will go back up within a few days.</p>
<p>I read a study a while back where the authors developed an algorithm to see if prices tend to down up or down over time. They found, overall, they either go up or stay the same.</p>
<p>For the last month I’ve been checking out fares for a late spring trip to France. Have seen no change in that month, and all destinations, London, Madrid, Paris seem like they’re the same price, which is significantly more expensive than when I went two years ago. Check Kayak, as they will make you aware of any specials.</p>
<p>I’m in the same boat - headed to London in early summer - and I agree with the above post; prices have been pretty stable over the past few weeks, with only a +/- $30 difference. If its a price you’re comfortable with, I would say just go for it. I’ll probably pull the trigger sometime this week on my ticket.</p>