Typical Airfare to Italy from DC questions

If you think a package may suit you, it may make sense to call a couple of the airlines and see what they say about multi-city package. You mention BA, their package website invites provides a number "1-800-247-9297
Calls are charged at local rate. Flight bookings made over the telephone incur a $25 booking fee per person, vacation bookings incur no fee." You can then compare to separate airfare and booking hotels yourself. There are a number of search engines for flights. Be sure you put "multi-city". And include "nearby airports". A quick look on Kayak from DC area to Pisa (for Florence) and from Rome back to DC area shows United or American for Oct 1 - Oct 15 about $1200 in economy.

You could just plug your info in here and get current prices and options.
https://matrix.itasoftware.com/search

How much more expensive is RT Rome than RT Milan? I'd be really, really reluctant to use Milan on both ends of a trip that doesn't include time any farther north than Florence. You're going to lose one full day of your trip. That said, I flew into Madrid a few years ago when I was headed to Andalucia because I saved $500 on the inbound flight. But that was just on the front end of the trip, and it was a very long trip, so loss of a day didn't seem so critical. (I stay in cheap hotels.)

I wouldn't know what to tell you about reasonable airfare without looking at what's out there now for your dates, as Laurie Ann has already done. Fares to Europe have not been stable since 2019, so it's more or less a guess at this point. As a solo traveler, I've never noticed a flight/hotel deal that would benefit me. What I do is monitor airfare to/from my planned gateways for my approximate dates to see what looks typical, then I try to buy when the fare's near the bottom of the range I've seen. I have the advantage of being retired, so I have massive date flexibility. I once saved $100 at the last minute when I decided to check the cost of departing on April 30 rather than May 1.

The "geniuses" at the Open discount website have what they call the Greek Island trick (or something like that).

Their take is, get to Europe as cheaply as possible and then transit to your final destination either by train or cheap internal airline. After raving about this for a while, they admit it's more work and eats up part of your trip. And your internal travel may eat up most of your savings. So there.

As noted, start tracking prices on Google flights. You'll see patterns. Also realize those fares for a year from now are placeholders and will change constantly, sometimes several times a day. It also looks like the Rome-Milan train takes about 4 hours, so that's half of a day.

Hi NoNegativeVibes! I just wanted to say how much you sound like me and my travel planning :) I've never traveled solo before and am hopefully planning a 2 week trip to Italy this September. Airfare is so hard to pin down. I do as others have mentioned I watch it and get to know the "normal" prices and routes and then when a good one comes along I feel more confident grabbing it.

Enjoy planning for your trip!

I would suggest focusing on value rather than cheapest - which flight pair makes the best use of your limited time in Italy?

Obviously there's an advantage to fly directly to Florence or Pisa, then working your way south, flying back from Naples or Rome. Going from Florence to Naples, then ending up in Rome should position you in the city with many more available seats back to DC, which should give you more flight options, and also hopefully better prices.

You have plenty of time - start tracking various itineraries to get a sense of how prices fluctuate over time.

Thanks for the advice and matrix link.

It's insane how the airfares fluctuate. I have my notes from January 2019 when I was trying to book a two week trip to Switzerland. On one day the airfare in the morning was $2300, and by the afternoon it was $896. By the time I got all of my lodging info plugged in on the BA package site, the price shot back up to the $2300. I would check the airfare every day, several times a day. The day I finally booked my package, the round trip airfare went from $1672/$1896/$1672 and after my lunch break while at work dropped to $815 and I was able to snag it.
In December of 2022 I began checking into airfare for a two week trip to the Azores. The airfare on a single day went from $1400/$1100/$769/$1047. Two weeks later it started out at $1047 and I booked at $715.

For this trip, I'm checking the airfares daily and at times more than once. I know there will be a decent fare out there, I have to work at finding it.

If you set up price alerts on Google Flights, you'll be notified of price changes. You can also look at the price differences between different days of the week, and review the price flunctuation graphs.
Good luck!

I just booked round trip Boston to Florence with a stop in Amsterdam. Tickets were 1420/seat for comfort plus both ways. I don't usually book this far out, but I actually thought that was a good price. My spouse needs specific seat configurations. He likes just two seats so its just us in the row. Not all flights have the 2-4-2 seat configuration. Times of connections and arrival and departure was perfect. I usually plan my itinerary and secure hotels, tours etc then book flights and usually about 5/6 months out. This time flights booked about 10 months out. Now to build my trip.

Frankly these days it's very risky not to buy refundable tickets, so just accept that you have to pay the going rate. Which as you have discovered changes all the time. But you'll see patterns after a few weeks and you'll know when it's a good time to leap.

I'd vote for "spend the money" and fly into the first city (Florence). I've noticed Milan seems to be the cheapest Italian city to fly into lately (cheaper than Rome a bit), too. But it's not worth losing your time. Your tickets could range from $800 to $1300 that time of year. We just returned from an October long trip in and out of Milan. I too use Google Flights all the time, especially the calendar view. Good luck with your decision.

After looking further at flight/train options to my first base of Florence, I am excluding flying into Milan even though it was cheaper. It does not appear to be easy to get from the airport there to the train station. From what I am reading flying into Venice and taking the train to Florence seems to be less of a hassle. I'm still playing around with flights and dates and even willing to change the order of my bases of Florence/Rome/Naples in which ever order is cheaper, though it is suggested if it's my first visit to begin with Florence.

Has anyone flown TAP from the US to Italy? I've only flown with them once from Sao Miguel to Lisbon in October, great experience. The flight was basic fare was $754 (then $857 with seat selection and checked bags added).
IAD/LIS/FCO/ZMS (I had no clue what airport code ZMS was, but it turns out it is the code for the Florence S.M. Novella station. The details of the booking makes it seem as though the train ride is included, giving departure from Rome (XRJ) to arrival at (ZMS). I went to the online chat and asked if the train ticket was included and was told it is not and the agent was confused as they said they do have flights to Florence. They do, but mostly likely not with the routing I chose.

I'm sorry I can't post the link but if you go to the Transportation section of this Forum, Kateja made a post about her bad experience on TAP.

I've flown TAP to/from IAD to Florence with a layover in Lisbon. From the Florence airport, you catch a tram to the stop just in front of SMN train station. I've heard people say TAP is problematic, and maybe I've just been lucky so far, but I haven't had a problem with them. I've flying with them again to Rome in a few months as well.