Tips for which airports to fly home from?

If Paris works well, then save Paris for the end. You can still pass through on your way to wherever, even Marseilles is 6 hours or so from London by fast train, plus transfer time in Paris. Then you can work your way up through Switzerland back to Paris.

While you have lots of time, Spain is a bit far, and complicates your itinerary. Another thought is to consider Milan as a return airport, should be direct flights and a big enough airport for reasonable prices.

Otherwise, for the free days, look to Northwest Italy and Southern Germany for options.

I’ve flown out of the airport at Nice, France several times, although coming home to Denver, not NYC, I’ve always had a connection flight. I’m not sure if Nice has direct flights to New York.

Having plenty of travel time and pending options works in your favor. Open jaw travel or multi city (flying into one airport and returning via a different ) may work well for you. Choose your outbound destination and then toggle returns from different airports in your itinerary looking for the best fare. Departing a day later or earlier also may yield cheaper fares. Sometimes a round trip may be cheaper but not when backtracking encounters additional time and cost. However, make sure to aim for convenience over expense. A cheap multi legged flight itinerary isn’t worth it when a few additional dollars for a direct flight gets you there faster. I’ve scheduled tons and tons of international flights (primarily open jaw) over the last 17 years and have not been disappointed.

May be a tad early for accurate pricing. Into London. Don't know where you are going in the south of France, there are direct flights to NYC out of Toulouse or Nice.

For my way of travelling, the fewer the bases the greater the enjoyment. I'm also travelling for six weeks, later this year, only three bases, not terribly far from each other.

Apartments are the best way to go for me, though those offering part weeks (such as 10 days) during the summer may be harder to find. I've never been to Paris but there are many offerings on VRBO for London.

Look for transition days which have fewer train changes, then bases which have good rail or bus connections for a weekly stay. Before you reach Interlaken, look at Strasbourg or Colmar, Konstanz and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. All these locations, with their fairly close surroundings and activities, have enough to fill your time for a good week at least. With kids, the latter two particularly.

Push your time in Interlaken to a week. Expensive, yes, but so are London and Paris.

I would argue for starting with the most distant destinations from the US, and work your way back to Paris or London for your return flights. This is basically what we do, and have done for years.

In your example, save either Paris or London for the end of your trip. We try to end our trips to Europe in one of those 2 cities, makes for a non stop flight to our closest to home international airport (DFW or IAH) and a short puddle jumper to home.

You can use Google Flights and just search for "Europe".
Have you considered putting Switzerland at the end, and flying out of Zurich?
Or reworking the trip and leaving from Amsterdam?
Have a wonderful family trip!

There are direct flights from Nice to EWR, but they might be expensive. Are you renting cars sometimes? Check out the Dordogne area. You could visit Nice and other south areas without a car, pick one up and explore Dordogne, the drop car in Paris. Flying home from there would probably be cheaper.

I tend to fly on Delta and its partner airlines like KLM or Air France. I rack up so many points that I frequently get a free trip.
If that doesn't work for you, check Kayak.com for flights and check several airports.

I have never flown into or out of Milan, Italy, but I know others that claim to have saved $$$ using that city. Milan is not terribly far from Switzerland.

Milan would be a good option as it has nonstop flights to the US.

Lyon is worthy of a couple of days, and you could potentially string something
together involving Annecy and Chamonix as well, especially if you want to end
up in Mlian.

Flight schedules get loaded into the system ~330 days out, so you won't see flights
for summer 2026 for another couple of months, and they will mostly likely be
expensive to start, with no real sales until maybe Thanksgiving. You can look
at schedules for this summer now, but there is no guarantee those will be
replicated next year. If you don't want to go all the way to Milan, you could end
in Geneva. While it has few nonstops back to the US (only Montreal, I believe), it
has good connections to the gateway cities.

At the same time, Geneva to CDG is a 3 hour train ride. The overall flight time
is not much different when you count all the parts involved.

As some other threads have discussed, best routing and best price do not always
(often?) overlap. It will not be easy buying tickets at the same price for 5 of you
at the same time, either. If you find a good routing from any city, consider taking it
and finding a one-way positioning flight for cheap to get you there.

Whatever you do, don't plan to book with miles unless you can do it round trip. The
oneway fares in $$ for transatlantic flights are much more than 1/2 the one way fare.

Family of 5,
I believe I read somewhere here that London has a pricy surcharge of sorts for departing flights that add a decent amount to the airfare to the US. Anyone here have info on that? I don 't think I dreamt it, but quien sabe?

When we finished the Eastern France tour we flew out of Marseilles to Paris to Boston on Air France, purchased via their Delta partner. I'm sure you could do that to NY rather than Boston or Nice rather than Marseilles. What we did was less expensive and less problem-prone than taking the hi-speed train back to Paris and we didn't have to worry about rail strikes and if we missed the connection in Paris it would be Air France's problem.

These are great tips, thank you! And good to know on London flight surcharges, I'll check that! I think ending in Paris makes sense. Maybe we'll do a backwards C and do London, Switzerland, South of France and end in Paris. Makes more sense?

Europe is totally new to us so recommendations on beaches in South of France would be greatly appreciated!

Lastly, has anyone flown French Bee and can share feedback?

Answering Judy's question/comment; there are two potential rather hefty charges that
get added to departing flight fares out of the UK (not just London):

• there are quite high airport departure fees and taxes levied by the UK Airport Authority. All airlines deal with these, so the effect is somewhat muted if you have to fly out of England.

The big point to make here is that those fees are baked into the fares you pay for in cash,
but are added to the cost of your booking if you pay in miles.

• if you book with BA using miles (either coming or going), BA does not remove the XY fuel surcharge which is often a major component of airfares. UA, AA, etc. do. Technicality - if you book on aa.com onto a BA flight, you still pay the surcharge, as it's the plane itself that matters, not the storefront you booked on.

End result, using miles on BA is often of fairly dubious value.

There are various ways to minimize this cost, but that's probably getting beyond the scope of
the original post.

I agree that the Dordogne Valley is a great destination for this age range. You'll want a car there, for sure.
Not sure what you mean by "South of France," but for kids, I would recommend the Camargue to see the flamingos (probably best with a car, TBH). Carcassonne is cool. On the other side, on a day trip from Nice to Monte Carlo (on the most scenic bus ride ever!), you can visit Jacques Cousteau's aquarium (I mean, he worked there) and the prince's car collection. For Carcassonne and Monte Carlo, you'd want two bases. I would pick Montpelier and Nice (although I had a free place to stay there, so I don't have as great an understanding of how expensive it is).

London - Paris - Nice - Interlaken - somewhere in Germany - fly back from Frankfurt

Family of 5,
I think cindyeb has a good idea of Nice-Dordogne-Paris.
Based on our experience with kids and grandkids (9 and 12 at the time) I would rent a car and spend a week in the Dordogne (5 days at a minimum)....prehistoric caves, real castles with 100 Years War history (easy to visit two and not be bored), kayaking on the river, local markets, neat countryside and villages, truffles and honey and walnuts and duck and pate and strawberries.... yum! rent a pace with a kitchen We stayed at a place found on Gites-de-France...seven of us (2 were kids) with a pool and BBQ and nice grounds and very updated kitchen and baths...10 days, near Vitrac and La Roque Gageac. Our little ones and big ones loved it. A fun-filled yet relaxing time. Lots more to see and do, but you get the idea. Also, in July and August there are the night markets plus displays/shows/reenactments at the castles.