Flights out of Rome to west coast US

I don't like booking as early as possible - because prices often drop and airlines have big sales. Last fall, Delta has a huge sale in November - flights from PDX to anywhere in Europe for under $500 round-trip, in May or even September. (I used award miles instead to fly to Venice / home from Paris this year, but was very tempted at that price, trust me.) Had you booked early, you would have spend hundreds of dollars more on airfare. Who knows what will happen this year - but I doubt prices are going for next year if you don't book right now.

I like flying directly to Europe and back if possible and avoiding connections in the US. Delta has a regular flight between PDX and Amsterdam, a connection I've used several times. It would have easy connections to Rome - easier flying home if you spend the final night in Amsterdam, as I've done a few times, but sometimes you can find a crack-of-dawn flight out of a European city that would connect to that flight in time. Delta also has a direct flight to London now, I think. And Condor flies seasonally to Frankfurt. Those are the flights I'd be looking at and putting fare alerts on myself for next year. However, the stop-over in Reykjavik might limit which airlines you can use.

If you can get a good flight via London with your stop in Reykjavik, why not book your own one-way flights between London and Italy? Or at least open-jaw, so you book one flight separately, maybe a flight back to London (or Amsterdam or whatever) at the end and spend the final night there. It helps to pick a city where you'd enjoy spending a night or two at the end, then have an easy direct flight home the next day.

Your problem may be that you are looking at the price for a one-way ticket, which, in most, cases is much more than half the cost of rt. Rome is one of the more expensive airports, however. PDX is also an expensive airport because not so many lines fly internationally from there. You've thought of one solution. Maybe other posters will come up with more ideas.

Actually, PDX isn't that expensive to Europe, relatively speaking. All the major airlines fly in/out of Portland, and connect easily to Europe, so prices are pretty competitive, generally.

Our hop between London and Naples isn't even a factor... I am treating this trip as PDX to London and Rome to PDX for now... most of the overnights out of PDX go thru Iceland anyway, so I decided to extend and do a stop over in Iceland, why the heck not? lol

Really what was killing me is if it's 11 hours from PDX to London (or less, I have seen a non-stop for 9.25 hours ish) why is it 33 hours from Rome to PDX, there has to be a better way.

As far as prices... granted this is our 1st venture to Europe... but typically domestic, Canada and Mexico... I have better odds booking early and getting the seats I want, together, the connections I want, and the flight times I want. Sometimes there is a sale, but usually at the cost of something I would prefer... like not connecting in LAX.

I'll check out Amsterdam tho, thanks!

It's easy to fly Rome to PDX on Delta: depart Rome 6:30am, an hour to connect in Amsterdam, arrive PDX 11:25am. About 14 hours total travel time. But the price at this moment is quite a bit higher than $700 pp (open jaw direct PDX-London, then Rome-PDX via AMS, next May: $1,208). And it doesn't stop in Iceland. Prices may drop between now and then.

Are you adding Reykjavik because you really want to stop there? Or because you think you have to to get a decent fare? Reykjavik complicates your itinerary for sure - Delta flights won't show up in your pricing if you add it as a stop-over, most likely.

Take a look at skyscanner.com

I plugged in a mid August date( just to get arouting) for FCO-PDX and found 1 stop flights that are in the 14-15 hour travel time range

KLM/Delta FCO-AMS-PDX

Condor--FCO-FRA-PDX

Iceland Air shows a 16 hr one stop routing from Rome

If you end up using a European budget airline (Easyjet, Ryanair, etc.) for any part of the trip, please read the fine print. Many travelers have been surprised by extra fees for checked bags, selection, etc. or by carry on size restrictions.

No, not adding Reykjavik on purpose... but for PDX to London... most of the red eyes went thru there. I am limited to flying on Fridays due to work... so we were looking at a red eye to Europe on a Friday. The cruise actually ends on a Thursday, but I doubt we will make a flight honestly, most I have seen were too early, or so late, that we are stuck with bags and no place to hang for the day, so I was looking at flying out the next day. Coming home, I really don't care how it happens, but I would prefer to fly on Thursday or Friday because if we wait till Saturday... it's pushing it for work on Monday, and this trip is already 3 weeks long :)

Never played with skyskanner, looks cool... so if we fly out of Rome to Pdx Thursday, the day we disembark, the earliest flight on a random May Thursday is 13:25, at $856 isn't awful I guess... but will take almost 42 hours to get home. Friday it's worse...

Going to London however... if we just connect in Iceland, but don't actually stop over, it's $356 pp which is pretty stellar. That would be worth it for me to just say we waved at Reykjavik from the plane lol

I don't think most of the flights to London go through Reykjavik, though the cheaper ones might. As I said, Delta has a direct flight to London now (who knows what the schedule will be next year?). AA flies to London via Chicago and Dallas. United through SFO or maybe Denver or Chicago. Delta direct or via Detroit or Atlanta or Minneapolis. All flights from PDX to Europe (with or without a connection) should be red eye flights, I'm pretty sure.

Try Google Flights. But as you know, you are just guessing until the real schedule comes out. I picked next May for example. The airlines routinely change schedules anyway after the publish them, FYI, so don't pick a flight based on the perfect schedule eleven months before departure - because it may well change.

I love google flights... I am well versed in schedules changing just getting from here to Orlando can be an exercise in patience... but usually it works out in our favor, if they change something too bad, it's typically something I can rectify. This trip we will have days between each leg, so time to readjust if we need to.

I appreciate all the ideas everyone!

I am missing something here or you are. All flights to Europe are over night flights except for a very few from the east coast that leaving in the morning. So you they are all red eyes flights. Second, I don't see any flights going through Reykjavik. All are connecting flights but the connects are everywhere. I am only aware of Icelandic airline that goes through Reykjavik. Are they flying out of PDX? We always do open jaw tickets - into one city, home from another. Generally very close in price to a regular round trip ticket to either city and much cheaper when you add in time and money to get back to your starting point. So what exactly are you trying to do?

PS The only reason you take 44 hours getting home is plane changes and lay overs. That is excessive. Return to Denver from Rome rarely takes more than 12 - 14hours and that generally includes a plane change and immigration. Something is off in your planning.

Are you looking at one-way flights in each direction? That is only cost-effective with certain airlines, which price their flights one way at a time, so a roundtrip is 2X one way. Icelandair is one of these. Also Norwegian, Condor (I think).

Most major "flagship" airlines price roundtrip, and if you want a one-way it is MUCH more expensive. The solution with these is to book multi-city ("open jaw") if you are flying into one city and out another.

Looks like you are flying into Naples and back from Rome? If you really want to fly Icelandair on the way over and buy a one-way ticket, then you should look at the same airline or one of the other one-way-friendly airlines for the return. That may mean flying into someplace other than PDX, since some of the budget fliers do not go every day. Condor, for example, flies into SEA, probably on different days from their PDX flights..

Following up on Sasha's point about multi-city flights, when doing a flight search you should put in all your segments, and you can skip a city. In other words, you can fly to Naples, then in your next segment fly out of Rome, if you plan to connect them by land.

For instance, you can enter PDX to Reykjavik as your first segment, Reykjavik to London as your second segment, London to Naples as your third segment, and Rome to PDX as your fourth segment. Then, see what comes up.

Harold raised an excellent point. We have had up to five legged flights and total was fairly reasonable.

Traveling to and from the US(NC)/Europe (Vienna) I refuse to do more than one change.

I think you are not doing something right as your routes seem long and over complicated. Do not search for one way routes.

Norwegian Airlines is starting direct service between LAX and Rome (FCO) in November and from Oakland to Rome in February 2018.

If you're taking a cruise, also check with the cruise line - some of them have special air fares available through programs such as air2sea, Princess EZair, etc. I've read these programs can be especially good deals for one way fares from/to the US or sometimes for roundtrip foreign travel if you book two one-way tickets

I fly out of SLC and search the multi leg option. SLC-AMS, SLC-CDG, SLC-London. Delta would like me to go to JFK. Even when I try ATL (busy) the connections are bad. I have family in SEA, I have played with that route to try to kill two birds with one stone, no such luck. AMS is an efficient and modern airport. Food pricey. KLMs service is a bit above Delta. Their budget Transavia was fine to good. They had an off check in process due to the Pope's visit in Fatima. And we all should forgive. I recently played with PDX with no luck. Upcoming trip is SLC-Detroit-FCO. Return is through JFK (slow international process) for $600 each appx 90 days before trip. Now, I await the next sale. The sale can beat anything I come up with. Wish those first class would come down!

If I were flying from SLC, I'd most definitely try for the SLC-CDG Delta flight both ways, if possible (or SLC to/from any other European airport. I might choose AMS over CDG given the choice myself), though the pricing of those direct flights might be high. I might even consider buying separate tickets CDG-FCO, all depending.

I recently flew CDG-PDX. I was supposed to fly direct CDG-SEA and then connect via Alaska home to Portland - but the flight to SEA was delayed five hours. So Delta put me on the CDG-SLC flight with the connection back to Portland. The woman sitting next to me was flying home to SLC. To save money, she had booked CDG-SEA/SEA-DEN then a separate flight on Frontier DEN-SLC. But because she had been on that same delayed flight via SEA, Delta simply put her on that direct flight to SLC - her lucky day! The flight had originally been very expensive, but she got it after all and saved about seven hours of flying.

I'd definitely avoid JFK as a connection too if possible, just because it's such an awful airport to connect through. My last time there, it was so crowded that there wasn't even anywhere to sit, and the A/C was broken, so the whole terminal was hot and muggy. Plus, JFK back to the west coast means another long flight after the first long international flight. I'd much rather have a better connection either in Europe or on the west coast. East coast connections aren't good if you are flying between the west coast and Europe.

Any 30hr trip is going to have a night arrival and a morning departure from an intermediate airport, like my Milan-Dublin-Chicago routing coming up.

A trick I like is to use either Heathrow or JFK as a hub. Fly from wherever to there, booked as round trip from home, then work the open jaw from there to wherever and second wherever back. This opens a lot of flights and some cost efficiency that is often not captured by search engines, even ones that consider "hacker" fares.

Andrew, I totally agree! Prefer SLC-CDG and avoid JFK. Flying through Minneapolis was not too bad in the past. Recent trip we went through CDG and returned through AMS. AMS connections on return worked out well. AMS has Kiosk to print boarding pass as you walk from domestic arrival to international depart. Passport check was no line, very brief bar code check and a smile. CDG from international arrival to domestic depart has you stand in an efficient luggage and scan check line, maybe 30 minutes. I did love those buses in CDG and departures as walk ons in the past. I would think I was in Hawaii. Max, United from Chicago does not work for you. How about Toronto?

Aside from constant disappointment with United beyond their beating up a passenger, they never seem to work best for me. Lowest cost from here to nearly anywhere in Europe that comes up in search is Turkish to Istanbul and connect from there. Done that going to Istanbul, but wouldn't do it to go to Italy just on the nonsense. Upcoming is to LHR, switch to the other airport and there to Venice. Then doing the 30 hr back, Milan-Dublin-Chicago.

I dunno why United never comes up with a good flight combo. I have long dislike for them, but would fly them if they had workable flights.

I'm looking now for April to Spain, and the JFK trick is pricing much better than anything Kayak or SkyScanner are putting together.