Need help selecting an airline from US to Europe

Where are you flying from?

I usually start looking around seven months before traveling, and usually buy tickets around five months before.

For an additional fee you can choose your seats in economy, varies with different airlines and also with type of seat. For example, emergency exits or bulkhead seats will cost more as people like them for the extra legroom. I personally prefer to pay the extra cost so I can be assured of an aisle seat, near front of plane.

If booking on-line you usually book your ticket, provide payment info, and then the seat choice pops up. Again different from airline to airline and have never flown United so can't give specifics.

Re. United: Several months ago United created a new fare class called "Basic Economy." In that fare class you can NOT preselect your seat and it will be assigned to you at the airport. This from their website: "With Basic Economy: Seats are assigned prior to boarding. You will not be eligible to purchase Economy Plus® seating or premium cabin upgrades, or receive Economy Plus subscription benefits. With standard Economy, customers traveling together can choose seats together if open seats are available." However, with the standard Economy fare, (just called "Economy" on their website) you CAN preselect your seats. HOWEVER, my fairly careful reading of the United website shows that NONE of this matters on their transatlantic flights. They do NOT sell "Basic Economy" fares from the U.S. to Europe. No matter what fare class you book your United tickets in, you WILL be able to choose your seats ahead of time. Does anyone else read United's website differently?
One more thing to be careful of: If you want to make sure that you CAN preselect your seats, make SURE that your transatlantic flight in actually on a United plane. If it is on a "companion carrier" then you will likely not be able to preselect your seats. There is small print just below each choice that tells you who the carrier is (ie "includes travel operated by Lufthansa Airlines.").

With regards to United, in economy you will select your seats as part of the ticket booking process, after selecting the flight and prior to paying for your ticket.

United's basic economy ticket does not allow for seat selection, however, BE is only available for domestic flights.

I've had no trouble making seat reservations on United at the time I buy my tickets. However, there are lots of code-share listings--flights assigned United flight numbers but operated by other (European) airlines. Some of those may have different rules, but I'd be very surprised if it was impossible to make a seat reservation early. The issue is usually that you must pay to do so. I had to do this last year (flight operated by Air France, I think) at a cost of about $30. I was annoyed, but I got an incredible price for the ticket itself--under $550 for a May-September trip into Nice and out of London, from Washington DC--so I wasn't going to be stubborn about the seat-reservation fee. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have higher fees.

You can test this out for yourself by going through the booking process (not supplying a credit card number, of course) and seeing what happens. If you're asked for a credit card number before selecting a seat, stop what you're doing and do a Google search for "seat reservation fees on XXX airline".

In terms of timing, I buy when I see a price I like. I start monitoring fares as soon as I am sure of my destination and dates (or date ranges). If I see a give-away price early on, I buy then. Otherwise, I keep watching and may end up grabbing something in the "acceptable" price range. The movement in transatlantic fares is totally unpredictable. Last year demand to some destinations was seriously down, and there were repeated periods with sharply-reduced prices from at least some US origins. This year could be totally different.

I use Google Flights; there are other options. Several of the airfare sites allow you to designate flights to be watched, and you'll get an email periodically as fares change significantly. If you're serious about saving money, I urge you to check yourself as often as you can. Daily is not too often.

If you tell us your point of origin and planned European gateway cities, someone here may have some useful tips to share. There are some low-cost airlines whose flights don't show up on the flight-aggregator websites, and one of them might be convenient for you. The ones I've heard of are Icelandair, Norwegian Air Shuttle, and WOW Air.

Remember that you don't have to fly in and out of the same cities. Choose "multi-city" rather than "round-trip" when exploring flight possibilities. Sometimes that doesn't cost more than a round-trip, and it avoids a basically wasted day spent returning to your point of origin for the flight home.

Also: Take advantage of the flexibility now built into a lot of the flight-search websites. Often you can say that your destination is "Italy" rather than "Venice", thereby learning of possibly-lower-cost cities that would work well-enough for you to allow you to take advantage of the lower fares. You can usually also indicate that your dates are flexible (though perhaps only when pricing out round-trip rather than multi-city flights). It's not at all uncommon for one day to be $200 cheaper than the preceding and/or following day.

I will be flying economy with my two daughters on United to England in late May. I have already chosen my seats. It's so early that I pretty much had my pick of the seats, as no one else has chosen any seats yet on these flights. I am thinking about upgrading to economy plus to have more room, but haven't decided yet. Does anyone have any thoughts on whether it's worth it? It's about $150.00 per person.

If you buy your ticket from United but it has codeshares (i.e. if the flight is operated by Lufthansa, Austrian, Air Canada, or some other star alliance airline) then you most likely will not be able to get a seat assignment unless you pay extra (if at all possible). If the flights are all operated by UA then you will be fine.

Also, remember you can cancel the ticket with 24 hours if you are not satisfied and get your money back. This is very useful to keep in mind.

From the United website: "For all fare classes, except Basic Economy, you will be able to select a seat or change your seat assignment." I guess that's pretty clear. If you want to select your seats you must get tickets in a class other than Basic Economy which, as some others have noted, is only available on domestic flights.

Where are you flying to, London, Paris, Croatia, Rome? I prefer not to use "American" carriers. For Paris I use Air France, Germany I use Lufthansa, UK its British Airways or Virgin. For my Paris & Italy trip it was Air France.

We will be flying from Raleigh, NC to Florence, Italy; training to Cinque Terre; flying from Pisa to Munich; train to Salzburg; train back to Munich; and flying from Munich to Raleigh, NC.

I see a fares in April starting at $1200 going RDU to FLR and return MUC to RDU.

United lets you select seats. That information you heard is wrong.
Delta in my experience in economy is better than United.
You will find if you really want to go that the bottom line is the price. Or you will just have to pay a lot more.

Take a look at flights into Pisa and Milan as well as Florence. At the moment, Florence seems no more expensive, but you never know. And Munich is currently quite a bit more expensive than Florence.

The cheapest tickets I have found with decent times are between $1800 and $2000--this includes the flight from Pisa to Munich. I have looked at Expedia, Kayak, google flights and the United website. If you have found a $1200 fare, I obviously am missing something! Where else should I be looking?

You need to give us your specific travel dates. Otherwise, we're all just guessing.

RDU to FLR. 4/25/18
Pisa to MUC. 5/3/18
MUC to RDU. 5/10/18

RDU to FLR. 4/25/18
Pisa to MUC. 5/3/18
MUC to RDU. 5/10/18

I would book that Pisa to Munich separately since you are going to Salzburg

Thanks! I was thinking about doing that.
Great help, thanks to everyone!

Or you can fly FLR to MUC This was listed at $61
Thu, May 3

9:45 AM – 11:00 AM
Florence (FLR) – Munich (MUC)
Air Dolomiti 8193 · Economy Class · Embraer RJ-195
Average legroom (30")
1h 15m

Just looked at expedia and for RDU-FLR, FLR-RDU, comes in under $1200 there are multiple flight variations available--- you can then look at the individual airline sites for booking or price comparison

to make fare shopping simpler, do the PSA-MUC as a stand alone booking

I did notice using matrix.itasoftware.com That you save about $100 per person by going April 23 and returning May 8. $1162 on Delta.
You go through Paris on the way over and Atlanta on the way back. It is always beneficial to fly over the ocean on the first leg. Then you are close to your destination with options if some glitch delays you.

Jazz & Travels: We want to leave Florence and go to Cinque Terre for 3 nights. Since we will be so close, we don't want to miss it even tho you can't easily get from CT to Salzburg.

I see an American option, one stop in each direction, for about $1160 if you fly into Pisa.

Beware of connections in London (or any other city) that require you to change airports.

Thanks everybody! I have found a United flight for $1152.86 to Florence and returning from Munich. Separately there is a Lufthansa flight from Pisa to Munich for $132. I have put price alerts on these but so far this is the best I've found with good times.

@marychampagne
We now always pop for economy + on our outbound flight. I'm short (5'1"), and it makes me a lot more comfortable. I can't imagine a tall person enduring regular economy. I can start my travels in better condition. On the return, we figure we'll just crash at home and not worry about wasting a precious vacation day. That being said, I would just keep checking the flight seating chart. If the e+ seats start filling up, you can always make the leap. On the other hand, if for some reason the flight has many unsold seats, reserve ones that have no neighbors. A couple of years ago we did that and wound up with 3 seats each. Lifted the armrests, stretched out, and slept for hours at no extra cost.

Rosalyn, I chose the seats in the middle on an exit row (there are no restrictions on who can sit in the middle, just for the seats on the side) because on the chart it appears that there is more room between those seats and the seats in front of them. Don't know if that will turn out to be true in real life, of course. You got really lucky having all those seats to yourself! I have had a blood clot in my leg in the past, and I would like to have a little more room to stretch out and move around.

Mary, Economy Plus gives you a few inches more legroom and seat width, better food, free drinks, a little bag with eye shades, tooth brush, etc... and you get to use the Business Class restrooms which are much nicer than coach (this is on an American 787, so might be different on United depending on the plane type and configuration). How old are your daughters? If younger, then the free drinks are useless and they should be fine in regular economy ... and if you are on an aisle, you can get up often to keep the blood flowing without having to climb over others. You are going to be tired when you arrive regardless ... I have travelled both Business and Economy classes in my travels over to Europe and, even with the Business Class lie-flat seats on the night trip over, I'm still dragging that first day. I would personally put up with economy class (and who knows, maybe you will get lucky like Rosalyn did and have extra seats but these are usually towards the back of the plane) and use that extra $450 to splurge on some things during my trip.

Thanks DQ. The seats on the sides of the exit row are Economy plus, so I just changed my seat to the side exit row seat. My daughters will be in the middle right next to me in regular economy. (also exit row, but not on the sides with extra room, so regular, and no restrictions on who can sit there). Much cheaper to just upgrade myself. I hope they're not too indignant about it! lol. They're 13 and 8.

have to respond re united. We flew United Premium econ Chicago to Frankfurt last April. This was the transatlantic portion E+ on a 777. We specifically were told the these seats were not allowed to use Business class restrooms, specifically told to use economy restrooms, They closed off the access to the bathrooms for bc adjoining E+ seats at the front of the section. All
UA gives you is space for the price. Everything else is the same as economy. I preferred BA premium economy as it is an upgrade in service as well as seating space but the tickets cost more. For the cheaper added cost of UA E+, I can settle for UA additional space only E+ seats, I was comfortable the entire time.
If you are under care for a history of blood clot, I would discourage you from economy on either airline. Both were cramped and really restricted movement. I gotoff our return flight from Rome to SFO determined never to pay either airline UA or BA for e seats again for trans atlantic flts.
If price is the issue UA E+ was good, BA would be great. We just tried Air New Zealand LAX to London economy a week ago, looked at premium economy while walking past and it looks better than both UA and BA. Still we had comfortable seats in E with more room than UA or BA E seats.