Airfare to Italy - How far in advance?

I would probably start looking 8-9 months in advance. With some airline websites you can see how full the plane is before actually purchasing a ticket. If you have a specific flight that you want to take but you're monitoring the cost, you can keep an eye on it to see if/when it starts to fill up. As for lodging, some place won't start taking April reservations until January, but I'm finding that to be less and less true.

Book the flight 151 days in advance. Seriously. There was a study reported here: http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2014/03/03/new-study-finds-absolute-best-time-to-book-cheap-flight/

The hotels can wait much longer, except for super crowded destinations and special events.

I don't think you'll find many deals advertised during summer, but some sales could pop up in fall that would be valid for departure in April. Booking in October or November sounds about right.

Hi Diana,

I usually watch the prices for a month to see how they're fluctuating, but this year I found the price of our Seattle-to-Zurich, Rome-to-Seattle flights to be within the range we like to pay the first time I checked flights. So, we bought them 9 months ahead. The huge bonus is that we're in the first row of economy, so there's no chance of the reclined backseat in our face this time. That's worth a lot to us.

We have our trip planned for October and I bought our tickets the end of February. I track the prices on yapta.com and our purchase stayed about the same level (+/- $50, mostly +) until the end of March when they jumped up(+$100). In our case, it looked like 7 months was the break point. Right now they are $405 pp higher then when I purchased them.

Remember that the 151 days figure is an average, not a magical date. (Reminds of the definition of a statistician: Someone who sticks his head in the oven and his feet in a tub of ice and says "Overall I feel fine.) :-)

I booked 5 months before our July trip. Prices were a couple hundred dollars lower just before that....but our dates weren't firmed up yet so I couldn't buy. Prices jumped $200 more a week after I bought, and went up another $200 soon after...and I didn't see them drop again.

Good luck playing the game!!!!

Peg

Anyone willing to comment on an airfare quote Seattle to Milan, returning Paris to Seattle mid Sept-mid Oct?
I have a hold on USD $1150, which looks good to me. But what do I know, I haven't flow to Europe in 15 years. I feel lost without bing's airfare price forecast, that I had become dependent on for domestic flights.

That sounds like a good price to me...right now I have Detroit to Rome, returning Paris to Detroit for $1390 each. I'm hoping it goes down a bit before I book it.

Diana, for what it's worth we are traveling the same time as you next year and just booked flights on Delta flying round trip from JFK to Milan for $800. Good luck.

Personally, I would be happy with the rate you have. I booked my family's flight 9 months before traveling. We flew Miami to Paris to Venice on Air France. Our return was Rome to Miami on Alitalia. Our total airfare for "open jaw" flying was about $1,650 pp. (with taxes included). Commenting on Aly above.

Hilarious! If you lived in Paris and wanted to go to Detroit for 2 weeks and fly back to Rome, it would be $200 less. Delta has such a lock on Detroit flights they can charge anything they want. Even Chicago is $100 less. Do you have a brother-in-law in Chicago?

Diana, an alternative could be flying out of Windsor, Ont., depending on how close to the border you live. In June of this year I connected (on an Air Canada subsidiary) through Toronto to an AC/Lufthansa codeshore to Italy and saved close to $400 over what Delta wanted to fly me from Detroit Metro, my usual carrier to Europe. And that's without the discount on the Canadian dollar. For mysterious reasons trans-Atlantic flights this year have been much cheaper via Canada. No guarantee the situation will be the same in 2015, of course. I bought my ticket in January for the June trip. It does add one extra stop to the route and and one extra border to cross. The Windsor flight is on a small prop-driven plane but Windsor airport is small and easy to use.
http://www.yqg.ca/