Best of Sicily in November

I use Google Flights, but there are other options. Enter your preferred airport as the origin and Palermo as the destination. See what sorts of connections pop up. You'll need at least one connection in Europe. Whether you need a second connection (either in the US or Europe) depends on where your trip begins.

I believe others have mentioned that the tour ends in Catania, so if you're going straight home after the tour (you could easily stay in Sicily and see more of the island), you'll want to at least consider flying back from Catania, which is Sicily's largest airport. That means you'd be choosing the "Multi-City" option on Google Flights.

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ works well to sort out flights, along with skyscanner.com for flights within Europe. Which airport are flying from?

San Francisco or LA

From SF I flew to London to spend a couple of days and adjust time zones. The into Palermo for the tour. On the way home I flew Catania to Rome and home from there. So my long haul flights were open jaw or multi city. SFO to LHR, FCO to SFO. Other flights were one ways on Easyjet. My friends did round trip SFO to FCO for their long haul flights.

We did this trip last November! You'll love it.

You have various options. The most direct route would be to fly SFO or LAX to Italy. You'll probably wind up with a few plane changes, so possible routes could be SFO to JFK to Rome to Palermo, or LAX to Rome to Palermo. (Just glancing at sample routes, the prices/routes from LAX look better tonight than the ones out of SFO. This may change at any time, of course.)

Anyway, you can check prices on a variety of websites. Google flights. Orbitz. Travelocity. Expedia. Etc. But when it comes time to book your flight, go directly to the airline's website with whom you wish to book. Delta. America. Etc.

You'll want to book what's called an open jaw ticket. When you search for prices, instead of searching for one way or round trip, look for the multi city option. That way you can fly into Palermo and out of Catania, if you like.

Also, for maximum convenience, try to book the entire trip (LAX to Palermo, Catania to LAX) on one ticket rather than booking multiple tickets for each route. If everything is booked on one reservation and you miss a connection because of the airline's fault (late departure, maintenance issues), the airline has to rebook you on the next available flight.

Yes we see the same difficulty in getting there and back. Multiple connections with travel times of 30+ hours. What we might do is break up the trip and stay a few nights in Rome or Munich on the way there. Return from Catania makes sense.

I think there used to be a seasonal flight via Newark non-stop to Palermo on one of the majors, but I assume its not there anymore. Anyone know different?

Though it’s having financial problems, Alitalia might be your best choice. They fly direct LAX to Rome and then from Rome to Palermo. Since their return flight leaves at 9 AM, you’d have to fly from Catania and spend an overnight in Rome. Current prices for those flights start at $664.

It appears that other airlines have multiple flight changes and much higher fares. Here’s a link to the IATA matrix. I flew Alitalia last year when I took the Sicily tour and it was fine. If something happens to its current business structure, most likely another airline will buy their routes and honor existing tickets. Alitalia has been going out of business for years but it keeps on going and going and going and...

Though it’s having financial problems, Alitalia might be your best choice.

And if you fly Delta, you can possibly book the entire trip through them, giving you both Delta (US to Rome) and then Alitalia (Rome to Palermo). We did our trip on Delta from the US with the last leg on Alitalia, booked through Delta.

When we went on the tour, we flew to Rome and spent a couple of days there before continuing on to Palermo. At the end of the tour we flew from Catania to Rome and spent a night before going home.

I believe that the only nonstop flight from the US to Sicily is on Meridiana JFK to Palermo seasonally from 6/1 through 10/31.