are these fares too high?

I do understand your motivation for "protecting" your vacation time. Been there, done that. Of course no one can predict air fares and jet fuel prices, but it seems too early to buy a ticket. That said, you're looking at a few hundred dollars maximum savings if prices fall, so it depends upon how much the blocked-out vacation time is worth. At one time in my life, that was valuable.

Mid-September is still on the edge of peak season so they will be higher than Nov. Truthfully I think a $1100 is not a bad fare. We are headed to Germany from Denver on the 13th and our fare was $1250. Grant it is the holidays but we starting watch at $1050 in Sept and it claimed steady. It might be a little cheaper later but you will not see $7 or 800 fare if that is what you are hoping for. I might watch through January but again I could be tempted to grab it now. The problem with the above referenced article is that it is addresses summer 2010 -- now long past and says nothing about summer 2011 which is what everyone is interest in knowing.

"summer 2011 which is what everyone is interest in knowing" Frank, I'll let you know about it, in 2012.

Actually, that article addresses summer 2009-that is when the "June drop" (an anomoly) occurred. They don't even show the prices for May and June in 2010 (for July travel). Given the anguished outcry last spring on this board, from the people who followed the much-repeated advice (by one person) to wait until "2 to 4 months out" or wait for "summer sales", I'm guessing that prices never did drop this year (2010). The so-called summer sales were for undesirable routes-with 2 or more stops and long layovers. Also, that article touts country-wide average fares. Those fares and trends in fares from all around the country are not relevant to what happens in a market like San Francisco. My own experience, in 16 years of flying to Europe almost every summer from Seattle, and choosing to fly only direct flights to Europe (no stop in the US), is that prices on those routes stay pretty much the same from the time they are listed, at least for high season travel. Off-season yes, there might be sales or good fares (we've flown to Paris for as little as $700 in April.) But it is never even close to that in high season. So that $1100 looks pretty good.

Thanks all for your insights! Most helpful!

It's never too early or too late to snag a good deal. It's unpredictable and the only sure-fire method is to know what the going price is and check daily to see the current fares. There is no crystal ball.

"Given the anguished outcry last spring on this board, from the people who followed the much-repeated advice (by one person) to wait until "2 to 4 months out" or wait for "summer sales", I'm guessing that prices never did drop this year (2010). The so-called summer sales were for undesirable routes-with 2 or more stops and long layovers." Lola is exactly right. I was one of those people that listened to that bad advice. Before our 2010 trip I always bought tickets 6-9 mos out and always got the best price. But for our 2010 trip, I was swayed by the never-ending advice from Steve (aka Juno) to wait until 2-4 mos out to get the best price. When I started looking at airfares for July 2010 nine months out it was about $1300. When I finally bought tickets 2 mos out I had to pay $1800 each or not go at all. Lola is also right that the "deals" 2-4 mos out are usually many stops, sometimes not to your destination, and sometimes not sitting with your travel companion. For people that don't care, it works, but that does not work for me. We fly from SF as well and the prices you mention sound really good to me. If it were me, I'd get the tickets now. I will never wait again.

Here's another one who listened to Steve last spring and wished she hadn't. And now that several people have mentioned the similarity with Juno, I'd say be careful about her advice as well.

Yep, poor Shasha, you were just about in tears. Just like the gal who listened to the baloney from that guy about the sim cards in Rome and was running all over the place trying to find one. He responded to her first cry for help with 'they're all over the place' and left her in a lurch. Maybe he'd never been to Rome, who knows? Waste time. Waste money. Listen to somebody with bum advice and you've just about ruined a whole vacation. Hopefully those days are gone.

Keep back pedaling Steve/Juno, you might convenice yourself that you actual know something.

When's the next imaginary trip to Paris, what with the expert predictions on low fares and all?

We bargain shoppers often put ourselves at rist of a loss of perspective. How important is it to save, say $200? is it important enough to put yourself at risk of fickle airline prices and wind up paying $400 more? Is it important enough to put your arrival and departure dates at risk? Is it important enough to put yourself through a too-long & awkward flight plan? My approach has always been to know what normal fares are and to buy the first one to be $100/pp under that normal number that also fits my preferred flight plan. That way I feel good about saving a little money and being a good shopper and I am secure in the knowledge that any less expensive fare is either: A) unlikely to be much lower or B) unlikely to arrive soon enough for me to make the good, economical lodging choices I want. By doing a lot of lodging research, I find good, interesting & inexpensive options booking far ahead that I would not have found at the last minute. I save more doing this than I could ever hope to save on airfare. The conventional wisdom of waiting until 2 months out is based on airlines having excess seats. In the current economy, this is much less likely to be the case. Airlines have cut back on flights to ensure every plane is full. The other factor to balance out when someone come here to ask for airfare advice is how constrained are you in your choices; If you are a single retired person who can fly on a moment's notice, you can play the fare waiting game to the bitter end and put up with any crazy layover. If your job requires you to block out vacation time months in advance, you can't. It's a totally different buying experience. I am the leader of my own little family of 5, so good airline prices are critical for us. But so are good, interesting, economical lodging prices. We can never walk into a small town without a reservation like a backpacking wanderer. We have to nail down a decent airfare ASAP.

We fly to Europe almost every summer. We start looking for our tickets in November when we are arranging our house exchange. We can usually get an acceptable airfare in the winter for the following summer. We watch itasoftware and flyertalk daily for unexpected price drops (and mistakes which we have be able to use). We sign up for one or two airfare travel alerts. We have recently been able to get a fare for $1000 or less from the west coast to Europe each summer except for 2010. We did our watching routine from November-April when we finally bought for the price we'd seen all year, $1350 to London! I would not wait for some magical date to buy a ticket. If you know the price you are willing to pay, see a good price, buy! We once called our kids and said that you have < 10 minutes to decide if you want to go to Europe with us in the summer. They said buy, buy, buy. "When Mom and Dad call about tickets, its like the stock market and you never know if you have minutes or hours for a good fare." We all traveled from the west coast to Europe for $400 pp. Sherry, after saying all of this, I don't think $1100 is too much to pay for SFO to Milan for September but I would watch daily for at least another month to see if a better price shows up.

"I was one of those people that listened to that bad advice. Before our 2010 trip I always bought tickets 6-9 mos out and always got the best price. But for our 2010 trip, I was swayed by the never-ending advice to wait until 2-4 mos out to get the best price.When I started looking at airfares for July 2010 nine months out it was about $1300. When I finally bought tickets 2 mos out I had to pay $1800 each or not go at all." Susan, you've had some bad luck. On March 8 2009, I bought June tickets SFO - Dublin in April for $389.60 each RT, taxes and fees included. I saved at least 50% per ticket by waiting. There is no way that you "always got the best price" if you were buying 6-9 months out prior because the historical pattern prior to 2010 was that airlines discounted heavily 2-4 months out when they saw empty seats. Sales for summer travel have been popping up in this pattern routinely for over a decade. The only time advice to "wait" was bad advice? 2010. "Lola is also right that the "deals" 2-4 mos out are usually many stops, sometimes not to your destination, and sometimes not sitting with your travel companion." Maybe some tickets were like that. But it hasn't been my experience. "We fly from SF as well and the prices you mention sound really good to me. If it were me, I'd get the tickets now. I will never wait again." If you vow never to look at pricing trends, you'll pay more. $1100 from SFO doesn't sound good to me at all, but then I've never paid over $600 in summer to anywhere in Europe, and I've been going every other year or so for 20+ years. There's an argument to make for buying your tickets now and having your choice of seats, travel days, etc., but over the years, that's not been an argument based on price; buying early in fact emboldens airlines to keep prices inflated.

The one thing that I don't often see mentioned here is that if you fly on certain days, like weekends or Fridays, your fares will be considerably higher. Or is this just accepted knowledge? Another item to look at is school vacation time for whatever city you are going to. It is different in Europe than in the States, so it pays to look up vacation times or national holidays. Many schools have fall, winter, and spring vacations as well as rotating summer vacations. I have saved quite a bit of money by simply taking a train to another city to depart from, because Frankfurt was on school vacation. Google holidays and vacation times for all of your destinations, prices will go up the week before and the week after these dates.

Russ - I do think it's fair to say that 2010 was a particularly bad year for low fares. And I should not have said "I always got the best price" I should have said "I always got what I considered to be a very good price". After I bought tickets for our 2008 trip, I kept looking at fares to see if I could have done better, and they kept going up. Maybe you and I have different criteria when buying tickets (what airline, how many stops if any, destination, location of seats, etc), which, of course, is a huge factor. You and I will just have to agree to disagree. I think $1100 from SFO is a good price.

Randy makes a lot of ense. we each have our own priorities, situations, and comfort zones

I think the waiting game works generally, but like a stock, if you have a fixed price in mind and find it, buy. I just get to a point where I no longer can stand the uncertainty of not having a ticket. For me, the trip isn't real until the tickets are purchased. Then the real planning can get underway. Then again, I don't have the guts to purchase too far in advance (more than six months), especially with the uncertainty in this economy. Any of us traveling to Europe regularly are pretty fortunate people. I know, many make sacrifices and lifestyle choices to be able to do it, you are still fortunate.