Flight prices

Try flying out of Italy from a major airport (Rome, Milan); more competition= better pricing, sometimes. Florence is a small airport and often runs higher.
Summer is also high season ......

We are flying out of Miami to Milan in May for $575 direct on American. We bought our tickets a few months ago.

Milan is the cheapest destination from Miami. Our kids got a flight for $525 but have to go through London.

Our daughter and her husband live in Atlanta. Prices are much higher from Atlanta and they are coming down and flying out of Miami as well.

We travel a lot and usually fly from Jacksonville, FLA airport. A high season flight RT to Europe will usually run $1200 or more. I used Kayak.com to check on the best prices. The three major US lines are usually about the same price.

What I find is that occasionally, I can find a huge discount flying from Orlando, FLA, instead of JAX. A lot of discount airlines fly from there. Twice, I have saved over $500 pp on tickets flying out of Orlando. We have to drive another two hours to get to the airport and find a hotel for one night, but still save a ton.

Someone on another thread just mentioned getting a RT to Paris for $350 in August. I know several major carriers (BA, Delta, Virgin) were having a say with just over $300 RT prices to London and to Paris from several US cities in the spring (March through May). So there are some amazing prices out there, but some cities are much more expensive than others - both on the US side and the European side. Florence will be more than Milan. I have a traveling companion who lives in SC and her prices are always hundreds more than what I get out of Boston (she searches several airports including Atlanta).

In general, the best prices are on airlines such as Norwegian, AerLingus and Iceland Air. I would see if any of them fly out of any airports you can get to. That will be your best shot other than a sale. I do think Norwegian flies out of somewhere in Florida, maybe Naples.

If you don't mind getting a little creative with your routing you can save quite a bit by flying out of Miami to London and proceeding on from there. Am seeing non-stops from Miami to London for less than $600 round trip in May/June. From London you can connect to Milan, Florence, etc. with either EasyJet or British Air. Prices are very cheap from London, and one-way flights to/from any airport in Italy becomes a cost-effective possibility.
There's also the option of staying overnight at Heathrow and staying at the very nice Premier Inn at terminal 4 so that everyone can get a good night's sleep in a real bed, then proceeding on. Even with the cost of a one night booking at the hotel you'd still be saving quite a lot of money for a family of 4.

I would be very cautious about buying one ticket to a European gateway like London and a separate ticket from that gateway on to Italy. You cannot be sure the transatlantic flight will not be delayed or rescheduled, leaving you with a worthless second ticket to your final destination. If you allow lots of time between the two flights, most of the time you'll be OK. But what happens if it falls apart? How much would it cost to buy four last-minute, walk-up tickets from your gateway to Italy?

Yes—maybe I should have mentioned that this will be first international trip for the kids (age 5 and 7 at the time). I use kayak and see the flights with airport transfers (gatwick to heathrow) as well as the flights with 23 hour layovers, but those are non-starters for us coming off of a redeye with kids. I am seeing a little bit better rates when I play with the dates a little bit.

I guess maybe my question to you all is should I wait to buy, or is approximately $1000 round-trip a pretty good price for the peak summer season? Although I travel a lot domestically, I haven’t been overseas since kids came seven years ago!

What are the starting and end points for that $1000 fare? Sounds reasonable if it works for you.
With little ones you might consider the layover at Heathrow that I mentioned before. It's likely that one or more of you won't be getting much sleep on the redeye, so building a "sleep recovery day" into your itinerary might make for a more pleasant family experience. Will probably be cheaper too.

Keep checking as the prices may go down. I have been watching flights from SF to Poland for about 10 days. I was expecting them to go down but they recently went up over $150, maybe in response to recent events. I'm hoping they'll go down again as things seem to have settled down a bit.

Fl doc,
I have the same problem with connecting flights from the midwest. From my local airport, a return trip to London reaches upward to $1700.00. I can purchase a RT ticket from Chicago ORD for a lot less. It makes a very big saving when you have four tickets to buy. This year, I have noticed European prices slightly increased. I ended up settling on a RT ticket to London from ORD for $840.00 for peak July for this summer. It is more than I have paid in previous years, but it was a price I was comfortable with. I used 10,000 (web special) airline points to get from my local airport to Chicago plugging in my schedule a huge layover. You just have to be creative and willing to do a little more research to get the best deal that works for you. I have used London T4 Premier Inn as a stop over to get to other European destinations and the hotel is wonderful and cheap if paid for in advance. I have noticed Paris appears cheaper than many other destinations, but there are too many potentials for strikes in France this year for me to use Paris as the entry airport. I have also looked at other carriers, such as KLM for cheap flights. I brought a late ticket last year for my daughter through KLM. She ended up on Delta and Virgin and I only paid $501.00 for July. (ticket was brought in April). I do always end up buying my tickets from a major airline website.
Margaret

What time during the summer?

Also, check leaving from Pisa. I had better options as it is bigger airport.

For International flights I usually expect to pay about $1,200pp, but our airport is Anchorage. If I get an international ticket for lower than that, I’m thrilled!

Planning the 2 weeks straddling July 4th. Destinations are lake como, Venice, and Tuscany.

Planning the 2 weeks straddling July 4th

One of the absolute highest-demand travel times of the year for flights between North America and Europe. That's one reason for the pricing you're seeing.

I'd suggest setting up price alerts on Google Flights, using a few different days for departures and returns. Google Flights also lets you look at the prices over the course of the month, [works for RT, not open jar, but I've found it to be a good indicator.] You can also see fluctuations within the course of a day.
I agree that you won't get good prices flying out of Florence; use the major airports.
Have a great trip and safe travels!

Of course I would pick the busiest week...you live and you learn! With kids it works out best with everybody schedule that time of year, but I guess that’s true for everyone else as well.

Thanks for the tip about Google flights, it’s one I don’t have any experience with but will definitely check it out

Another option is to consider changing your trip to a more affordable option? RT between MCO and London is 800 for those dates. If it is their first trip, they probably will be excited for anywhere you take them.

It looks like leaving from MIA is your best choice if you want to save money on flights. Air Italy has nonstop flights from MIA on 6/29-7/10 or 7/11 for $847 on A330. Flight there is overnight landing at 8:05am. Catch the train to your first destination and make your way back to MXP for 1 night and fly home.

Check prices for the last week of school. If they are much less, leave then. Pull them out of school a couple days early if you need to. At that age, all they do is watch movies the last few days of school. Heck, that’s all my middle schooler does the last few days of school!

You’ll have fewer crowds and better weather, too!

We recently stumbled upon some $309 round trip flights from the west coast (SFO) to London, July -August. From there we are going to spend one night at an inexpensive airport hotel (about $60) and then fly on to our final destination the next day on a separate ticket for about $70 more. This was a much more economic way for us to get to our goal.

Last year we did something similar and flew from London to Italy. This year we are flying from London to Germany.

Take a look at AA and it’s partners to see if they have low east coast pricing too.

You want to be in Italy at peak travel time (the most expensive time of the year) and are looking in January which is when people start looking at flight purchases for the summer because the new year is now here.

You may want to look for cheaper entry airports into Europe and then look for a European discount airline to get you to your destination in Italy perhaps the following day or same-day several hours later. Roll up your sleeves and find an affordable way. Good luck!

@Continental
I think kayak already does what you’re suggesting: the cheapest options I see are combos of Norwegian and easy jet. What worries me about these carriers is the price I see prob doesn’t include bags or seat assignments. Anyone fly these guys to/within Europe?

You may not want to do what we are limiting ourselves to this summer, as mentioned above, but our AA/BA flights let us take carryon but not free checked bag. We also won’t get seat assignments until 48h before the flight, a big problem for families.

We do use BA for our next day flight so again we can take a carryon with no additional cost. Coming home we typically pay for one checked bag if we happen to find something we want to purchase on our trip.