Cost of flight to Spain

If you can get to Toronto you can cut the price in half.

That is not a bad price. I have a similar situation, leaving from a regional airport always at least one stop, sometimes two to anywhere in Europe. In the good years, off season, I could count on $800 tickets. Any time recently though, it has been at least $1000, usually $1100 to $1200 (Last month it was $1129 on Delta to Madrid).

I myself am looking for fares for September to Germany (Open Jaw Munich/Prague) and seeing odd routes for $1200, better options for $1400-$1500. Since in my view I have some time, maybe as late as June, I will probably wait, maybe find a sale. I hope for closer to $1000, but probably would take $1100-1200 for the right itinerary as time progresses.

I booked last week for a flight from Atlanta to Madrid in late April. I used miles for part of mine, but the "real" price (including my hopper flight to get to Atlanta from central IL) was right at $1300. Your price looks good to me.

You can try looking at Google Flights to see what dates have the best prices. If you have not used it before play around with it to see some of the features.

www.google.com/flights/

There are direct flights to the US to and from Malaga(AGP) so if that could fit into your plans you might check out of flying through there.

If you have flexible dates, then try Google's ITA Matrix web site. It can display prices for a month at a time. There are some powerful advanced filtering options available. Click the site's 'Help' button for information.

Thanks so much for the input! Our dates are not flexible because my husband has some conferences that lock us in. I looked into Toronto but the cost to get there almost erased the savings. I ended up discovering that I had enough points on a credit card to pay for our flight (Yay!). I booked it at $1300. It could have been as low as $1189 if we were more flexible. Maybe the price will come down, but if it went up I wouldn't have enough points, so I decided to take it.

I appreciate the recommendations for the google sites - I will use them in the future!

I live in Ohio and typically fly from CLE. Twice I flews to Spain on frequent flyer miles so I can't speak to those two trips. When I was researching my last Spain trip, I primarily was looking at $1200 fares through different carriers. However, I was able to get a very low fair through Delta ($605) in Frebruary (booked it in October). My brother gets a lot of cheapter fares out of DTW and I have some friends that will drive to Pittsburgh.

October is shoulder season so you will save in other ways. Hotels / Air BnB prices go down. Subscribe to TheFlightDeal.com or google "Google Flights Explorer". Once you see a fare drop, act immediately, and I don't mean overnight. Airlines will drop fares sometimes for a couple of hours and if you think twice, you might loose it. Once I decided I would book a flight after I took my shower and it was gone 20 minutes later.

Google Flights Explorer really can help you get an idea of the fares but you need to get the hang of how to use it. A lot of travel hackers use it to decide where their next adventure might be. The score a deal and that is where they go. https://www.google.com/flights/explore/#explore;f=CLE;t=MAD,XOC,XTI;li=3;lx=5;d=2016-03-26

You will never get a direct flight to Spain from Ohio. Both CLE and Cincinnati have had international flights in the past but both are long gone.

Thanks for the advice, Kina. I took notes for future reference!

Delta still has a route from Cincinnati to Paris CDG, but that does seem to be the only nonstop to Europe.