We flying into Paris and want to fly out of Italy. Which airport is more convenient to fly out of, Florence or Venice? We will be traveling with kids and will probably be taking public transit. Thanks
Barb
barbara, Given your location, I suspect you'll find a greater availability of flights from Venice. Florence is a very small airport, and doesn't usually handle international flights. Connecting flights from Florence to larger hubs may be dependent on which time of year you'll be travelling. Depending on which airline you'll be using, it's likely that you'll have to change planes in Frankfurt regardless of which airport you use. Which parts of Italy will you be visiting? Another airport you might consider is Milan / MXP. Happy travels!
She posted the same question in the Italy section and it has some answers. Might want to review those answer prior to responding. It is getting confusing.
I'd suggest either Florence (FLR) or Pisa (PSA). Air France appears to have some of the best fares and schedules from both locations back to Vancouver.
I'm always amazed at how airlines do their pricing....no apparent logic. The AF route flys you down to Seattle to catch a non-stop to Paris, however, if you started from Seattle on the same plane the fare is almost $500 higher. Go figure.....
Also consider the time of the flight, especially if you are flying all the way back on the same day (no stopover in another city). It seems that the Venice flights leave early in the morning (like 7). We see lots of questions here on how to get to the airport at that time of the morning. It might be even more difficult with kids. I second Ken's suggestion to consider Milan as well, and possibly Pisa.
barbara, A few more comments on the flights..... I had a flight last year from Milan / MXP to Vancouver with Air Canada. That involved a short flight to Frankfurt and then a change to a Lufthansa flight to Calgary (one of AC's Star Alliance partners). You may find the same issues with flights from Pisa as from Florence. It's a smaller airport, so less availability of international flights, especially from this area. I've been using Calgary lately as my departure airport rather than Vancouver as it avoids a bit of "backtracking" and saves me about an hour. However, I look at all the options when I'm planning flights and one advantage of Vancouver is that service to Europe seems to start a bit earlier in the year, especially with the charter airlines (ie: Air Transat). Cheers!