Best/cheapest Airfare to Italy from Seattle Recommendation?

The major search engines should held you find the cheapest connections but I limit my search by convenience, too. My preference is to make just one connection, in Europe instead of the USA, and hopefully to get some frequent flier miles. Delta, British, and Lufthansa all fit the one-stop rule, and maybe Icelandic and Condor do too. For cheapest fares, also check departures from Vancouver, or from Seattle via Toronto on Air Canada.

If your return flight connects in the USA or Toronto, you'll go through immigration and customs/FDA inspections (with all luggage) at that spot.

Go to Google Flights. Choose multi-city from the drop down box arrow next to round trip. Put in SEA to FCO and the dates for the trip over. Put in VCE to SEA and the dates for the return trip.

Fool around with options, including RT, until you find something you can live with. It is a little late to be making airline reservations for October.

Not knowing your dates, and the dates can make a big difference, I used 7/10/16 for the flight over and 21/10/16 for the return.

The multi-city price was from roughly $1300 to $1500 per person with 1 stop.

RT SEA FCO ran from about $850 to $1500 per person with one stop. You'd have to take the train to and from Venice.

There were several RT SEA Milan (MXP) one-stop flights running around $825 per person. Again you'd have to take the train to Rome to Venice to Milan, but it might end up being cheaper overall if you have the time.

You can check with real dates and more multi-city options. Have fun!

Venice tends to be a little more expensive because it is a small airport. Looking at tickets into Rome home from Venice in Oct I see $1251. Shift to Milan and the ticket drops to $902. Granted you save about $300 but that is reduced by having to get to Milan. You can get train tickets in the range of $75 so it would be worth it to spend a day or two in Milan.

Probably the cheapest location to fly out of will be Venice after you add up the extra time, train expenses, possibly an overnight hotel in a location such as Milan, etc. to make your flight. Check an airline website for flex dates, too. Sometimes there will be a noticeable difference between two consecutive days.

I really try to go nonstop, but with Seattle as our mutual home airport, it's not possible for your trip. We do have nonstops into London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam...none into Italy. To get to Italy, I usually use Condor. They're nonstop to Frankfurt and then you can continue on from there. The Condor website will sell you a ticket right into Rome and out of Venice as they partner with a few airlines. Their least expensive fares are sold well in advance...so you'll find higher fares for October but they're still a good option. You can check price variations by day on their booking site.

I know people often mention flying out of Vancouver to save money...if you decide to do it, think it over before committing. As you know from living in the Seattle area, Vancouver is hours and hours north on Interstate 5 and requires driving through some awful traffic that I can't really face anymore and then also requires a border crossing. I've never felt any savings I've seen was worth it.

Best and cheapest aren't necessarily the same. We pay extra to have a shorter overall travel time to get to Italy from Seattle and back, and to have flights at times of the day that aren't insane. We met people once who paid only $800 or so to get to Italy from somewhere in the US, but their flight had three different changes of planes, with looooong layovers. No, thank you.

I use Matrix-ITA to compare flight times and costs. They allow you to compare days if you use the 30 day search option. Often the cheapest fare is a day or two different than that date I originally planned.

Linda, I just returned from a trip and usually fly in and out of Seattle. However, this year it was $600 cheaper to fly in and out of Vancouver BC instead. I have a NEXUS card so the border crossings were just 2 minutes in length. I was happy to discover this same NEXUS card also gave me access to a special expedited security line leaving and a special line at Passport control on entering at the airport. The best part was getting an offer from KLM when I checked in for the flight home to upgrade to a business class seat for 260 euros. I decided to indulge myself!

Look at possibilities and prices out of Vancouver as well. You might find better options.

Try to compare via Skyscanner.com you can also compare the entire month. The best is to fly to Milan or Verona.

You should certainly start with Kayak, Skyscanner, or Google Flights to learn about your options. For leaving Venice, Venice Airport (code VCE) is the easiest, but you can also try Verona (code VRN) or Milan Linate or Malpensa (use code MIL to pull up "all Milan airports"). Of course, you have to account for the time, money, and hassle of getting to these other airports - particularly if you didn't want to see things in these places. Since most flights that will connect to Seattle will leave Italy quite early, you will probably need to spend the night before departure in the departure city or at an airport hotel.

However, once you see who flies where, go directly to that airline's website, to see if you can get a better fare. I just booked a trip to the UK, and Kayak showed that Aer Lingus had the best fares. However, Aer Lingus's own website was about $50 cheaper than booking through the links at Kayak.

I agree with all the other people saying that you have to weigh both price and convenience. Only you can say how much "pain and suffering" you will put up with to save money.