Airline from Seattle to Venice and Florence to Seattle

American Airlines and British Airways will fly you to Venice and back from Florence, either alone or in combination. There are several caveats.

First, American does not fly directly from Florence to the US so you would have two stops on the return, one n Europe and another in the US.

Second, while we are loyal to British Airways and fly them by preference ( we use miles to go business class) I do not recommend using them to Venice. Most of their flights to Venice from London depart from Gatwick, not Heathrow, so you have to change airports. There is one flight combination on BA that does not involve this change, but you have only 1 hour 40 minutes to change planes at Heathrow. The connection is in T5 so it meets the minimum connect time of 60 minutes, but it would still make me nervous. If you should miss that flight ( it departs LHR for Venice at 8:50), the next flights are from Gatwick so you would have to transfer.

The good thing about BA is they have a daily flight from Florence to London that easily connects with the BA afternoon flight to Seattle ( which is the one we always take). The Florence flight actually lands at London City Airport so you still have to transfer, but that is a much simpler transfer, using the airport transfer into London and then Paddington Express to Heathrow. You have over 3 hours to do this.

American Airlines has flights from Seattle to Venice with a flight change in Chicago, with a 3- hour layover time. You can book this and the BA flight from Florence all on one ticket at either AA or BA website. I priced it for random dates in August and came up with $1137 for the lowest fare ( basic Economy, no checked bags). Regular economy would be around $120 more per person. Or Economy Pus for $200-$300 more.

It depends on your comfort zone whether you want to take flights with a change in airports like that. I can't advise one way or the other, since we always build in an overnight or 2 in London on our way home from the Continent. We love London and can make good use of any amount of time there, so it is worthwhile to us.

FWIW, I also checked Condor and they have flights into Venice, out of Florence for $1109, with one stop in each direction ( and no airport changes!) The connecting airport is Munich, and the shorthaul airline is Air Dolomiti. Flights via Frankfurt with the second airline Lufthansa are higher.

We flew Condor coming home one year ( we ran out of miles to fly BA) and were pleasantly surprised. ( But again this was business class; I don't know how theynare in Economy). The biggest concern with Condor is their financial status, since they separated from Thomas Cook. I don't know if their situation has changed since I last looked, but maybe someone else does.

For flights where Customs is not involved, I prefer 90 minutes between flights. Also, try this site to see many available flight options: https://www.google.com/flights

I will add that of the flights you are already considering ( KLM/Delta), most people would adviise AMS as the connection airport. It is easier there than CDG. And connecting in Europe is generally preferred over connecting at a US airport like Atlanta. The idea is to get all the way to Europe on your first flight. If something goes awry and you miss the second flight, there are more options. If you were late arriving in Atlanta and missed the second one,, there likely is not another direct flight to Venice until the following day.

All things equal, KLM/Delta SEA to AMS. AMS is efficient and if you do have a significant SEA to AMS delay and miss the connection you will have more alternative flight options to VCE from AMS.

Howdy, fellow Northwesterner.

We've flown all sorts of different ways to Italy and back from Seattle. Our hands down favorite is Delta/KLM through Amsterdam. Often they give you two choices of flights out of Seattle to AMS that then catch the same AMS flight on to your Italian destination. (The first has about a 3 hr layover and the second more like 1 1/2 hrs.) Take the earlier Seattle-AMS flight with the longer layover! We made the mistake of taking the later one and barely made the connection. Our checked luggage, however, did not. It arrived in Rome 23 hours later. The Catch-22 was that if we had done only carry-on luggage (as we often do), we would have missed the connection ourselves because we literally had to run the entire way.

Bonus: The Amsterdam airport has a really great central section with a wonderful food court.

Thank you, All

Do take a look at the departure times from Florence when you are connecting back to SEA thru AMS. I've done that years ago and decided I just was not going to fly at stupid o'clock in the morning, so prefer to return to AMS the night before.

BTW, the flight from Florence was on Alitalia (SkyTeam code share partner) so you have to go by their carryon limits for that first leg instead of Delta's which are more generous. Now I just check my bag on the way back home for no hassle.

As another "Northwesterner" we prefer flying Delta/KLM route through Schiphol. We usually have about a 3 hour layover. We have never been disappointed. The service is efficient, easy to navigate. We now avoid CDG due to a previous 3+ hour line in Passport Control. Total chaos.

Joining the chorus.

Connect through AMS. Avoid ATL (or any other connection in North America). You want a nonstop to someplace in Europe for your long outbound flight. Coming back that's less critical but personally I find connections in Europe to be easier, and connections in North America to be a PITA. One exception to that is if you can't get a nonstop straight out of SEA to Europe, do the hop down to SFO (or even LAX) to connect to the long nonstop to Europe. Just don't connect in ORD, DFW, ATL, EWR, etc, as then you have two long-ish flights rather than one, but neither is quite long enough to get decent sleep on. For me, the outbound flight is all about getting some shut-eye so you don't arrive miserable. Nonstop from SEA-AMS, then a connection to (anywhere) works well.

Have you checked flights from Vancouver? We probably fly from Vancouver or Portland more often then Seattle.
Joining the choir - avoid CDG unless you have at least a 3 hour layover. Even AMS can be tricky under 2 hours BUT they are way more organized and will call flights while you are in line to make sure people make their flights.

We did fly YVR to CDG to Florence but got rerouted to Bologna due to winds in Florence.... apparently it happens frequently. They bused us to FLR.

Donna, we've looked at the possibility of flying into and out of Vancouver BC but that would only work for us if we had the luxury of tacking a day onto each end of our trip. You can't be sure that you can make it from Seattle to Vancouver in the same day. Throw in the cost of a hotel, the hassle of driving or taking the train and where to park the car for two weeks and it just never made sense for us.

Michael - I will say that when you reserve your parking at YVR ahead of time it is darn cheap. We were gone almost 3 weeks and it was $128 TOTAL. But I get the extra day hassle. Coming from Kennewick we almost always have to tack on at least one day in the front end but thanks to time zones we can make it back to Kennewick the same day we land in YVR or SEA or PDX.

If Sky Team (Delta/AirFrance KLM/Alitalia) is your team then the best option is
going
SEA - AMS or CDG - VCE
and return
FLR - AMS or CDG - SEA

AMS is much more user friendly than CDG, however FLR to CDG (operated by AirFrance) has 6 or 7 daily flights while FLR to AMS (operated by KLM) has only 3 daily pairs, therefore CDG may offer more flight options, and in my experience it is usually cheaper.