Flights into Palermo and out of Catania (from/to Asheville NC)

You should fly to Rome the day before you want to be in Catania (and maybe you want to be in Catania the day before the tour starts). And you want to be in Rome the day before your flight back to the US.

There are plenty of options from Rome to/from both Catania and Palermo with ITA Airways and also local European low cost airlines like Ryanair.

It is difficult to make it all the way through from AVL to CTA (or PMO to AVL) in one day because there will be a minimum of two layovers no matter which airline or route you use. You can reach Rome via Atlanta (ATL) with Delta, via Newark (EWR) with United, and via Philadelphia with American Airlines. AA flies to Rome from Charlotte as well, but only seasonally so not sure it would be available when you fly.

After January ITA Airways, the Italian national airline, will become part of the Star Alliance, of which United is also part, in case you want to fly through with one ticket via Newark, maybe on the same day. United/ITA Airways ticket could be the best option of you want to get there with one through ticket on the same day without spending the night in Rome and also be covered in case of missed connection.

I’m taking this tour next April and am doing something similar to the suggestion above. I ‘m flying into Rome, spending two night there and then ITA flight to Palermo. Afterwards I’m taking a flight from Catania to Naples where I’m staying for 3 night before taking the train to Rome for my return flight.

We did the amazing Best of Sicily tour two years ago, which I highly recommend. If you can fly roundtrip, non-stop from the states into Palermo &/or Catania, then I would recommend doing so. That was not an option for us. After arriving in Rome, we flew on ITA from Rome to Palermo, and at the end of the trip, flew from Catania back to Rome.
I suggest planning to arrive a minimum of 2 days early. Our planned non-stop flight into Rome took an unexpected detour into Philly due to a woman going nuts in the back of the aircraft and the main purser unable to control the situation. At 11:00 p.m., due to the crew "timing out" 312 passengers ended up having to disembark and stay overnight in Philly, leaving for Rome the next day. Since we had a buffer of a few days before the RS tour, although we lost a day to visit Cefalu on our own, we did not miss any of the RS tour.
This year our non-stop flight into Rome left 5 hours late. I've heard of too many instances where planes do not arrive as scheduled, so give yourself some leeway and have travel insurance. Fortunately, on the RS trip, the $300 stay at a hotel at the airport in Philly and the $200 trip change for the ITA flight were covered and refunded.

The flight challenges for this tour have come up before on the forum, the Catania leg being the issue. We ended up doing a two ticket itinerary.
Outbound we went from Greenville SC(GSP)-Charlotte- Munich on American then on a (separate ticket) same day on Lufthansa Munich to Palermo arriving one day before tour started.
Homebound we went Catania to Frankfurt on Lufthansa (aforementioned separate ticket) and spent that night at a airport hotel. Following morning from Frankfurt-Charlotte-Greenville on American.
This all went fine. We did look at possibly transiting from Catania to Palermo and catching a flight there but ultimately it wasn't viable or worthwhile for our situation.
The Sicily tour is totally worth the travel! Hope it works our for you.

I agree with the others about arriving early for the tour. But do check on the multi-city ticketing option: AVL-PMO and CTA-AVL. You don't want to price out two one-way tickets.

Although it is often less expensive to pair a round-trip (or multi-city) transatlantic flight with a separate round trip to Sicily (or a second multi-city ticket into PMO and out of CTA), but that approach usually means no protection of the second ticket in each direction if the initial flight doesn't work. That can be very costly on the way home; a last-minute, one-way ticket back across the Atlantic would probably be $$$$.

Catania is the largest, busiest airport in Sicily, but there are occasional issues there when Mt. Etna is active.

I’m doing a Sicily tour in February with another company that includes air, and what they booked for me is Washington Dulles to Palermo and return from Catania, both being one-stops on Swiss Airlines via Zurich.

Thank you all for sharing your experiences & tips...a big help! I will dig in further & research these various routing options.

Did you check out of Charlotte via Munich (Lufthansa or United)?

Once you get to Europe, you have a lot of options for discount airlines. You can easily tack on your open jaws hops back to the European "hub" or hubs of your choosing. You can get creative if you think about what you actually want to accomplish. And you can evaluate if it makes sense to think about this as 6 flight segments.

For example: Because we wanted to A) use miles and B) fly the transatlantic leg overnight, we ended up with a ATL-BCN outbound on Delta and a MAD-CHA on American return for the transatlantic part.

Take a look at flightsfrom.com and search for PMO for example to see direct flights to and from there.

Wow! All of your suggestions are SO helpful. Thank you, thank you. I should be able to make this work....