Air Fare Creativity

Hi Camille,

Check different days of the week to see if you can save some $ X 8. Also, I see that the train between Venice & Florence is only 2 hours, and it's $55. So, if a round-trip is a lot cheaper, you may want to consider it.

Mid week flights are generally cheaper. You might also look into other cities to fly into/out of. I've always found Milan to be far cheaper than Venice, and Rome to be cheaper than Florence. And thankfully April is mostly off-season and thus often cheaper than busier times of the year.

When I was looking at flights out of Newark to Italy for this past May I found that a round trip to Milan was far cheaper ($400 per person) than flights to any other Italian city. You can buy a lot of train fare for 8 X $400. The secret to finding the fare was starting about 6 months in advance and checking the fares every day for a spread of about plus or minus 5 days from the "perfect" day to leave.

Camille:

You'll have to go through an European gateway airport, like London or Paris, to get into the Venice Airport.

If flying out of Florence, you may have a very early morning departures (6:00 a.m.) to another gateway airport where you will sit around 3-4 hours before flying home around mid day. Getting up so early for a long, long journey would be tough on a family.

The best airports for flying into Italy are Rome, Milan and Pisa. You might want to avoid London Gatwick coming home, as they have substantial taxes on flights to the U.S. On our last trip, we flew London Gatwick to Pisa and out of Rome thru Philadelphia.

Since you have so many people in your family, I suggest you go through a local travel agency to see if they can get you a "volume discount." You might also have them check into alternative departure airports like JFK or even Philadelphia for better flight connections or lower fares.

There is no APD tax applied to passengers connecting through, or arriving at UK airports.

Go to www.kayak.com and try the various alternatives.
To check an open jaw ticket (arrival in one city and departure from another) select the multi-city option then do EWR to VCE and FLR to EWR.
It is true that Milan (MXP) offers the most options and is generally cheaper, however a departure from MXP will require you to spend the last night in or near Milan. Also trains aren't free. Therefore you must take that into consideration. If the savings of flying to Milan aren't very substantial, it may be worth flying to/from the cities you actually want to visit, even if the airfare is a little higher.
Also check the nearby airports. EWR has very limited options compared to JFK or PHL, which also have non stop flights to VCE (Delta and US Air) and PSA (Delta). Pisa is near Florence (1hr via train). I don't think there are non stops to Italy from EWR.
If you depart from Florence you need to connect via a EU hub. The options are (codeshare partners): FRA and MUC (United/Lufthansa), CDG (Delta/AirFrance), ZRH (united/Swiss), AMS (Delta/KLM), FCO (Alitalia/Delta). No LHR is available from FLR. If flying British via LHR, Bologna (BLQ) is the best option.

As roberto said, use the multi-city option on kayak. I was looking for tickets from IAD to Milan and then Naples to IAD. If I searched for two 1 way tickets I was looking at $2000 just for the return flight. If I did multicity it was around 1,000 round trip.

Hi Camille -
My husband and I are flying Delta direct from Venice to JFK. I know that JFK is a longer hike (and more of a pain than Newark), it might be worth the sanity savings to try that route. Currently the flights look to be able $1250pp for that route for early April (all adults).

Good luck on your travels!

Camille, given that you are located in New Jersey, you might look into the non-stop US Air flight between Philadelphia and Venice. I took this flight back to the States recently, and it was fine. I would think that for a group of 8, non-stop would be a big bonus, compared to making a connection at an airport somewhere in the middle. One nice thing about the flight out of Venice is that it left at 11:00 am, compared to most airlines which depart early in the morning, and getting to the Venice airport very early is quite a hassle. Certainly worthwhile to check into any group discount plans. Once you narrow your search to a couple airlines, you might just call their reservations desks, which can offer information, and perhaps even book the tickets in some discounted way not available on their web sites.

Lots of good advice above.