Airfare to Venice from west coast

I hate to tell you this, fellow Left Coaster, but if you really want a good rate for June you should check every day starting now and look at LOTS of different sites. On Sunday, October 30, 2011, I went to airlineconsolidator.com to look for flights from Seattle to Milan, 5/15/2012 and from Verona to Seattle 5/30/2012. Found the following: Delta for $1050. 5 fares left at that price Seattle – JFK – Milan Verona – Paris (Air France) – Seattle Alitalia for $1181
Same itinerary Went to Delta's own website to look for same flight figuring it might be cheaper, and the tickets started at $1436.90!!! Good luck.

Have you checked any of the internet sites that give a list of airlines and their prices such as: Kayak, travel.bing, sky scanner.com, fare compare.com ? I use "Kayak > Tools > Explore" a lot.

Actually I've been checking a bunch of the airfare search websites almost daily for 2 months! The flight I've been tracking went down this week almost $200. That's why I was wondering if I should continue to wait or if I should book now. I'm not sure if the trends in the past have been cheaper after the first of the year for summer travel, or if this is as low as it gets!

I would give a few weeks still.

regardless of when you travel, fares into smaller european airports (i.e. venice, florence) will always be more expensive than fares into larger airports (i.e. milan, rome). during high season, a round-trip airfare to venice will likely be at least $100 more expensive than a round-trip airfare to milan (very likely it will be more than a $100 difference). with this in mind, i'd start searching for fares into milan and then take the train to venice (certainly far less than $100). it's up to you to decide how much the possible convenience of flying into venice is worth. if you need to pin down your dates in advance, you'll probably want to book 3-4 months in advance to get a decent deal, regardless of where you're flying into. however, if you're just 1 or 2 people and you can deal with the possible stress of not having you're flight nailed down until the "last minute", i regularly find the cheapest fares about 2 WEEKS prior to departure (usually using farecompare.com). (airlines would much rather fill their seats at discounted rates than not fill them at all; that's why scoring good "last minute" deals is possible). if you would like to try this yourself, you can go to farecompare right now and search for a round-trip fare to milan departing a couple of weeks from now (always travel on weekdays) and you'll find the fares to be very reasonable-even more reasonable than if you booked the same flights a few months ago. the fares will certainly be more expensive for dates you'll be traveling on (even if you try this strategy), but they'll still be much cheaper than booking months in advance (i.e. $1700). it's totally up to you how you want to balance convenience and supposed peace of mind with your desire for the lowest fare.

This doesn't exactly respond to the original post, but it may help compare flying to Venice vs flying to Milan then taking the train into Venice. To fly USA to Milan then Venice there would be some time at the Milan airport waiting for flight to Venice. Then when arriving at an airport near Venice, it is necessary to take a bus or boat (probably) ride of an hour or so into Venice. It may be necessary to transfer to a vaporetto in Venice to get to somewhere near your hotel. The alternate route would have you fly to a Milan airport then take train or bus to Milan train station. From there you can catch a train into Venice. Once in Venice, a vaporetto will take you to somewhere near your hotel. I can't estimate the difference in time involved. There is likely to be a wait of at least a couple of hours with either route. The cost involved may be much less with the fly-train option. This is the option I would choose because I like arriving in Venice without that final long bus or boat ride into the city.

I've always seen flights from west coast to Venice to be very expensive I always fly into Milan Linate from LAX British Airways with quick layover at Heathrow starfly shuttle to Milan Central train to Venice airfares in general seem high right now watch fares daily
probably will see some drop after the holidays

Thankyou everyone for your suggestions! I checked the flights into Milan and there is only an $11 difference in the day I'm flying, so not worth the trouble of the train. I am flying into Venice the night before a cruise so I don't want to chance any problems with train strikes anyway. I am actually looking at an open jaw ticket to fly home from Naples because I have rented a house in Positano after the cruise. I even checked whether it is better to fly home from Rome, but there isn't much difference between Naples and Rome either. I'm pretty sure I've found the flight I want, I'm just wondering whether to wait a few more months to book it in the chance the price will drop. I keep reading reports that there are supposed to be less flights to Europe this summer because of the economic problems there, so I'm not sure if the prices will go down any further.

The London Olympics are also affecting airfare prices for next summer. Prices for June and July may not go down from what you are seeing now.

The Olympics don't start until July 27, so that shouldn't affect June prices all that much, I wouldn't think. Robin, do you have flexibility as to which day of the week you leave/return? That can make a difference of a few hundred dollars. The problem with late June is that it's high season, as you're finding. You get better deals if you can leave earlier, but I recognize that might not be an option for you. Good luck.

I need to be in Venice by June 23 when my cruise departs, so I was leaving San Francisco on Thursday, June 21st and arriving in Venice the evening of the 22nd. As for the return, I'm traveling by train for a week around Italy and then have a house rented in Positano for another week ending July 14th. I am looking at a Sunday return from Naples on July 15th. If I wait until Monday, it does drop a little bit, but I would need another night's hotel so it's a wash. I wish I could have made this trip a month earlier, but I am traveling with my college age son and his girlfriend who don't get out of school until the middle of June, so I can't be as flexible as I'd like.