Airfare to Paris

Hi Saluki,
You may already be aware of this in your search, but a Delta non-stop to CDG from Indianapolis starts in May 2018. I think Delta also still has a non-stop to CDG from Cincinnati-Covington.
Just bringing this up because I'd rather drive a short way and park in economy to get a non-stop than have to switch planes, but you may have a preference to fly out of Louisville.
(Louisville's my hometown.)

I buy when I'm ready and the price looks decent and use Kayak for my searches, but I buy direct from the airline site.

If you see a price below $1k and without a lot of crazy connecting flight buy it.
The prices from Louisville don't look good right now for September 2018.
They only look good if you buy your tickets separately from a port in the USA to Paris.
For example if I were you I would buy this for early Septeber 2018 since it is direct to Paris from JFK for $369 dollars!
https://goo.gl/flights/foQ4b

The flight does not leave from JFK til 10:30

Then, you find cheap flight to JFK hopefully a direct one.

Great info. Thanks very much.

Just remember that if you buy a separate ticket to NYC and anything goes wrong (the flight could be canceled, there might be thunderstorms, critical computers could crash...) and you can't make the NYC-Paris flight, you have no recourse. Your round-trip flight will evaporate and you'll have to buy a last-minute replacement ticket. I am risk-averse and would only put together two separate tickets like that if I planned to get to NYC a day early and stood to save hundreds of dollars after paying the extra cost of a NYC-area hotel. Even then, I'd be nervous for weeks in the period leading up to the flight.

I wouldn't feel pressed to buy right away. I'd try to keep my travel dates at least a little flexible, and I'd watch fares for quite some time, to get a feel for what "normal" is. Then if there was a sudden, significant dip, I'd be pretty confident I had found a good deal.

Edited to add: Also check Cincinnati, of course. I don't think it's known for great fares in general, but I believe some great opportunities cropped up from Cincinnati during the fall of 2016, so you just never know.

Check out Iceland Air...great fares and good schedules. Their stop and change in Reykavik is generally less than 2 hours. I am going on Air France in Premium Economy in April for $1700 RT Dulles-CDG. ( I am taking my dog with me and wanted a Non Stop and the ability to change if necessary)

For airfares I like to use Kayak to identify airlines with cheap fares....THEN go to that airlines website. Many many times the fare will be cheaper there than on the conglomerator site. Often times by signing up for their frequent flyer program you can get an additional percentage off.

La Compagnie flys out of Newark, NY and is 1000% Business Class. Now it's not Emirates Business Class, but still more room to stretch out. Usually around $1,300 RT. I've got a trip booked for May. You have to get to NY, but I hear a lot of planes fly there :-)

I generally watch fares for a long time and set up alerts to watch different options (airports, times, dates). If I spot a great deal, I'll jump on it. If not, I get an idea of a decent fare and probably book about two months out. I prefer to travel Spring or Fall (May/September). My last three round trips to Paris from DC (over the last two years) have been under $500.

I'm exploring two trips this year, one to Ireland and the other to the Dalmation coast. So far this year, I haven't found any impressive fares.

It’s too frustrating to read the posts by people with access to NY, DC, LA or even Boston airports. Those of us in the non-competitive markets are stuck at 1,200-1,400. Ok, I do gymnastics too, to get these great fares, by taking Southwest to DC or NY, crashing with my children as long as they’ll put up with me, and then grabbing a $450 flight. But it’s a lot of schlepping from BWI to Dulles a few days later, or Newark to Brooklyn to JFK. If you don’t have family or friends to put you up, if you hate schlepping and changing airports or flying in the day before and spending for a hotel in NY, your best bet is to watch Chicago fares and drive up there. You can get a park, fly, sleep deal at a hotel near the airport and sleep off the flight upon return before hitting the Interstate. Otherwise it’s 1,200-1,400 for Louisville, Indianapolis, Columbus, ....

Pay careful attention to acraven's and Bets's posts.

1) If you fly on separate tickets, be aware of all the risks. Here's a good summary: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g41707-c207311/Newton:Massachusetts:Connecting.On.Separate.Tickets.html

2) A great airfare from New York will only help you if you can get to New York easily and cheaply. If you're risk averse and plan to stay in a hotel in New York the night before your trans-Atlantic flight, and then have to stay in a New York hotel for a night on the way home, there go your savings - unless you wanted to see New York anyway, in which case you can make it part of the total trip. Of course, if you have someone you can stay with for free, or you don't mind the risk of a same day flight on a separate ticket, that's different.

As for your original question about a good time to buy airfares, there are many articles written about exactly how many days before travel to buy. We've had posts here from people who had to pay several hundred dollars extra because they followed this dubious "advice." The problem is that these articles are all based on past prices. Just like a stock, past performance is not a guarantee of future performance, and just like a stock, you only know the lowest price after it has gone back up. All you can do is:

1) Start looking now; use Momondo, Kayak, Google Flights, etc, but don't forget to look at the airline's own websites.
2) Decide now what kinds of risks and inconveniences you are and are not willing to accept. Will you do a 10 hour layover to save $100? How about $500? Will you do separate tickets or not? Will you have multiple connections to save money? There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, but you need to figure them out now, so you're ready.
3) Sign up for email alerts about sales from the airlines and flight websites, for the routes you want. You may need to sign up for multiple alerts (for instance, Louisville to Paris, New York to Paris, Chicago to Paris).
4) By tracking over the next few weeks, you will learn what various routes cost. You will then be able to recognize a sale and pounce. Be aware that fares can disappear in an hour - hence the need to have made decisions on what you want, so you can buy a fare while it is still available.
5) Once you've bought your tickets, don't keep looking - you'll just drive yourself crazy (I wish I would always obey this rule, but since affordable tickets are non-refundable, it really is better to accept what you can't change).

I'll second Iceland Air.

As mentioned, the price is generally hard to beat (just pay attention to whether your fare includes baggage — something you have to do with most airlines these days anyway).

Another pro: Iceland is in the Schengen zone, so you take care of your passport control during your brief layover there. That means no passport control on arrival in Paris — and there's a good chance that layover will be less time than you'd have spent in CDG passport control.

Deal alert!
WOW has some new Midwest routes to Europe including Cincinnati starting May 10. Introductory airfares are as low as 210 rt. They’ll have 4 flights a week from CVG. You won’t be able to do better than this!

I got this info on The Points Guy this morning.

Edit: just tried some dummy bookings from CVG, the airport I’d use too, and there was no or little savings over the legacy carriers’ prices. The cost of living in non-competitive markets.