Would you be amenable to flying to (say) Newark or New York, staying overnight and then using that as your jumping off point? You could use a different carrier from what you use to fly transatlantic. Just from quick kayak searches, coming from DTW or YYZ doesn’t give great routes.
Frankfurt airport is wonderful. I’ve actually had good luck arriving at CDG, for what it’s worth.
The flights/fares you see on some of the sites are not valid. The company will charge you a booking fee, then the price for the ticket itself will be more than the advertised amount because the low fare was never there to begin with. It all in the fine print. Look at the Air Travel forum on Trip Advisor for details. Booking directly with the airline on one ticket/itinerary is always the best choice.
My husband has done plenty of business travel from here to England, and his words of wisdom are to avoid JFK for connections if at all possible.
We had an amazing time in the Alsace region of France this fall. Beautiful towns, delicious food and drink.
You’re going to go crazy if u try to avoid any particular airport. Don’t sweat it. It’s early June. It’s not going to snow; there’s not going to be a hurricane. Europe high season hasn’t started yet so the airports won’t be crazy.
I’ve flown through nearly every major airport. Yeah, some are more annoying than others, but really none of them are a big deal.
Just make sure whatever airline/airport/route u select that it has adequate time cushion to make your connecting flight.
You might want to avoid traveling around these dates if you need to fly to CDG:
Dunno how good your French is. A translator app for your smartphone is pretty darn useful. You don’t even have to type nowadays. U can speak directly into your phone and it’ll produce an audio translation.
What’s even more amazing is that u can snap a photo, and the app will translate the text in the photo. This really saved my butt in japan!
Did give some thought to getting to NYC and then flying out from there. I know I’m a PITA, but in addition to needing to be a bit thrifty, we are going to be lucky to squeeze out 10 days for this trip including flying time so would try to avoid any lengthy trip delays - like overnight. I realize at some point, something may have to give - $$ or time, but initially operating on “let’s try for both”. While I don’t expect to purchase tickets a few weeks before the trip, I thought we might have January to feel things out and then perhaps make ticket decisions Feb/March - realistic, yes or no??
It’s not just how many weeks in advance that u purchase the air tickets that affects the cost, it’s when in the week and when in the year.
If u have flexibility on the day of the week u can travel, u might be able to squeeze some savings on the air ticket by flying mid-week. Air tickets are priced by supply/demand, and mid-week is low demand.
Also, the deeper into the heart of the peak summer travel period, the more expensive. May should be cheaper than June. June, July, Aug (esp July & Aug) are high demand because that’s when most families are able to travel: when kids get out of school. When our kids were little, we used to do europe in may & sep “shoulder season” (i.e. when the weather is still good and older kids have to be back in school).
I suggest u play around w different departure dates on Expedia or Kayak to see the impact of travel date on air fares.
Some of your party will be less time-constrained than others. Consider breaking your party up and flying on different days to optimize schedule vs. cost.
I think you’re fine, but what I might suggest is playing around on Kayak. Take a certain route and see what happens if you go Wed-Sat, or then Thu-Sat, or Tue-Fri, or whatever. You may seize upon a particular combo of days where there is a drop in fare. Also think about what you are willing to do / not do regarding time of day. I sleep like a baby on flights, so I’ll take a flight any time of day, but with your mother you may have to think about the tradeoffs of flights at odd times of day versus minimizing the number of stops / transfers.
GMT is as usual totally on target re international travel, but I will differ with him in one regard and that is avoiding transfers in LHR (London Heathrow). I have had no problems with transfers at CDG (Paris), but LHR really is untenable, IMO. If you get routed that way, I’d play around with other Western European cities - Paris (CDG), Frankfort (FRA), Munich (MUC), even BCN (Barcelona) or Amsterdam (AMS).
For example - earlier this year I had to get to Bordeaux, and ORD-AMS-BOD turned out to be far better than trying to connect through CDG, which would be what one would typically think of connecting through. That’s why you might want to consider playing around with those other cities.
Going to a city such as Toronto or New York will open the doors to more possibilities. We know that Aer Lingus will have good rates and convenient flights between Canada and Marseille. From New York, there are other airlines that come into play. A simple one is to look at Brussels Airlines which has easy connections between JFK and Brussels and additional flight to Marseilles. The cost in May should be around 600 to 700 dollars to Brussels and an additional 200 (or less) to Marseille. Brussels is a cheap hub in Europe with many low cost flights.
Just a word of warning regarding luggage in Europe. The counter people might not accept the fact that you flew on an international flight to waive the connecting baggage fees. Many have 23 kilos limits and will charge for excess bags as Europeans have been coached to travel light or pay for the pleasure of carrying half your belongings.
Again, let google be your friend and play around searches that go beyond the first choices of the well-known cities and especially the well-known airlines a la United or American. One should not fear the lesser known airlines as the service in coach will be equally abysmal. 
PS Regarding CDG, in all fairness, I have never encountered real problems --safe and except to be there twice when the French probably protested not being allowed to wear facial air at the local Disney park or the price of their goat cheese. My biggest issue is that, in their Gallic tradition, tourists are a nuisance and that providing information is on limited scale. People who travel often will not find it very difficult but people who did not might find the experience of large airports (think Madrid) exhausting. Not to mention that daily travelers are often mixing with the occasional traveler and that hauling luggage is complicated.
Reading guides with recent experience will help, and especially the ones with pictograms.
When you use Kayak, they have a +/-3 days you can tick on each travel direction, this gives you a box of assorted options.
I made a real rookie mistake last time I booked, I guess I was in a hurry to get a good fare, I did all the searching and kept seeing Expedia’s “24 hours free cancellation” pop up so I used them, thinking it would be like Alaska Air back in the day when you had 24 hours to make changes. Ha! Naif! The next day my email said Expedia does not charge you to change, but your airline might. Thankfully the dates were all just right so no changes needed, but I would not have used Expedia, though I did run the fare on the airline site and it was $100 cheaper pp on Expedia, I have no clue why, same exact route & dates & times.
I had been reading all the details, even the whole travel insurance policy, so not sure how the scammed me on that.
Also check what your medical coverage is outside the US.
When u get closer to departure time, start another thread about packing tips.
For a better flying experience, try to avoid the American-owned airlines, and definitely try not to go thru Heathrow. I agree with the carry-on only tip, but if you have frizzy hair like me, you will have to check your vats of hair taming unguents and salves because of the liquids/gels limit. You should also check out the comments boards on the Rick Steves website. Lots of very helpful tips from experienced travelers.
Here is my trick for finding stealth cheap airfares. I ** look up the airport on Wikipedia**. At the bottom of the airport’s wiki page, there is always a table of “Airlines & Destinations”.
Here’s the wiki page for Nice Airport, an alternate airport to consider for Marseilles. Nothing is far away in europe. For all its swagger, France is actually smaller than Texas.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_airport
Check out the websites of the airlines on the list. The airlines don’t all appear on Expedia, Kayak, etc.
By using Wikipedia I was able to suss out some incredibly cheap fares for some unlikely routes: Qatar Airways to Bali, Lufthansa to Bangkok.
Maybe I just got lucky, but we recently connected at Heathrow for a flight to Berlin and it was pretty uneventful.
What is the beef with Heathrow?
It’s huge and customs and immigrations is often very lengthy for those without an EEA/Swiss passport. I avoid at all costs (unless I’m actually going to London) and that’s with me being an EU national.
I have never been able to go from one terminal to another in LHR in less than 2 hours, and I move pretty quickly and know where I’m going. It’s just not well laid out / designed for transfers, IMO.
Here’s an example. On a flight between the US and Brussels, I had a plane change at Heathrow and arrived at Gate XX. The friendly staff pointed everyone to the exit and the mandatory immigration check and sizeable queues. After schlepping through one line, I could proceed to the lines for people with a European passport. Next it was back to the general departure hall and the required security checks and more lines.
At the end of the airport “tour” I arrived at the tunnel leading to my departure gate and … it was the exact same I came in one hour before. I had my boarding pass and did not get a single stamp or review of the passport – which was not even checked once. They only looked at the burgundy color and waved me through. I assume they knew it had been checked prior to boarding the first plane. My departure gate was XX + 1 and the plane that brought me to the UK was still there! Why was I sent on that roundabout? I could have simply taken a seat and waited for the next flight. And, fwiw, I did inquire about the need to follow the herd and was told that I HAD to enter the country “legally.”
That is British organization at its best! They should hire a few Germans to reorganize that airport.
You know, it just now occurs to me…we were delayed 2 hours in Dallas and were worried about our connection in Heathrow. Our flight attendants gave us some kind of coupon which got us bumped to the front of the line in Immigrations and in security. I forgot what it was called…we flew British Airways business class, so I don’t know if that played into it or not.
We would have barely made our connection, but it was delayed 45 minutes so all went really smoothly.
I was flying AA/BA business class (not sure which airline’s metal we were on) into LHR, with a 2 hour connection to our next flight. We were delayed by a whopping 10 minutes and that was enough to miss our flight. And we were the very first ones off the plane, and ran through that airport - everyone in our party was fit, we didn’t stop to go to the restroom, nothing. There are just lines, lines and more lines at LHR.
FRA and MUC on the other hand are absolute pleasures. They run like clockwork, not surprisingly. You can be comfortable with a short as a 30 min layover there.
FRA = Frankfort and MUC = Munich???