Airfare to Rome best tips?

Hop on Google Flights and check a few dates and see what comes up in August mid-week vs. weekends. You can set a fare alert so you'll get an email if fares drop on certain dates below a certain price.

Otherwise, you're rolling the dice about whether to buy now vs. wait a few weeks. The Euro has been falling recently - if that continues, that might improve fares a little.

There is no magic formula. You book when the price is acceptable. You can waste a lot of brain cells waiting for the price to go down and it doesn't. Lot like buying stock. August is high season so I would not wait too long to pull the trigger. For us, this would be late in the buying cycle. We would have bought closer to the six month mark after watching the prices for a while.

You can give the alerts a try but we never had success with the alerts. Being in the Mt time zones the alerts come in around 2,3 AM and the fare is gone by the time we see it in the morning. BUT -- give it a try. Just don't bet the bank on the alerts.

The charging in the euro will have little to zero effect on near term fares. Maybe a year from now but not in August.

I generally book my flights as far in advance as I can - like 11 months ahead.

Frank's correct: there's no secret formula. You have to do the work (search) and book when you can live with what you find.

I also agree that right now is pretty late for booking for this summer. I'd get going sooner rather than later.

All that said, there are some things that you should consider when searching...

Try to avoid fighting for what everyone else is trying to do - the airlines factor in "demand" into prices...anything that others want, they price higher. For example, prices are often lower for flights mid-week (less demand). Avoid holiday periods (they're popular).

If you're going to other cities after Rome, fly open jaws (in to one city, return from another) to avoid the wasted money and time of backtracking to your arrival city.

Finally, don't obsess on price alone. If you only use one criteria (cheapest price) when shopping for flights, don't complain if you get a miserable seat, a miserable routing with multiple miserable connections in miserable airports, etc., etc. What's more important to you? A non-stop flight (or at least a flight with minimal stops, at reasonable times) or are you willing to suffer more to save a few bucks? I also think it's worth comparing the details of the seat you will be stuck in - check seatguru.com or other resource for the specific flight (the airline, flight number, date/time and seat) you're considering - there are differences.

Rome in August...hope you like the heat.

We are flying Iceland Air from Anchorage to Oslo, Norway. I booked about 10 months out and the price was $1,200pp.
Now that same route for the same date is $1,800pp. Sooner is better IMHO. And also I start watching fares a year in advance since I usually have my trips planned that far out.

We booked our mid-October flight to Rome nearly two months ago, selecting Comfort+ seats. It seemed a bit premature but as it turns out we got some of the last available seats for the return flight.

Scott's Cheap Flights gives you fare alerts

I found a combination of monitoring flights on Google and Kayak provided me with the best results.

For travel late February 2017, we started looking September 2016 and booked early November. Exactly the itinerary I wanted (Chicago/Frankfurt/Rome; Naples/Munich/Chicago), carrier (Lufthansa), the right layovers (btw 90 min-3 hrs), time of day traveling (overnight to Europe, arriving late morning, noon leaving Naples, home to Chicago early evening). R/T flight started out at $1300 pp, fired in when it was $900, it went down for a brief time to $750 but then shot right back up to $1100.

Unless you live by a very large international airport, you are too late for cheap fares. Anything peak season like August should normally be booked 7+ months in advance unless you live by an airport served by at least 10 international airlines.

My rule of thumb, as is others on various bulletin boards, is when you find a price you can live with, buy it. Then, stop looking because you will only make yourself crazy. We usually fly mid week and, depending on our itinerary, we fly multi-city, open jaw, to eliminate backtracking.

Buon viaggio,