Airfare to Istanbul from Seattle

Ryanair doesn't service Istanbul. According to skyscanner.com, the cheapest flights right now Amsterdam > Istanbul are on Pegasus Air, a Turkish carrier. I ran some scenarios using June 2011 dates, and right now the cheapest major carrier RT fare Seattle > Istanbul is on Lufthansa, with a stopover in Frankfurt, at $1537. Cheapest RT Seattle > Amsterdam is US Air, at $990. RT Amsterdam > Istanbul on Pegasus is $231, for a total of $1221. Savings of $316 going the "cheapo" route, if you can work out the connection times to make it feasible. Which can be a big "if."

In May 2010, we flew from Seattle on Air France to Paris and then onto Istanbul on AF regional airlines. That was the cheapest price at that time for a non-stop flight to Europe. Less than $2,000 each - yes, high, but that is "almost summer" flying time. Have you gone to a search site like Kayak?

In Sept. 2010 we flew round trip nonstop to London and booked our European flights separately. Yes, we had a 4 hour layover in London but we saved quite a bit of money. I think our total airfare was under $1200. Booking it as one itinerary for our dates (weekend flights) never went below $1600. Our flight was out of LHR to IST on British Airways. We returned from Athens to LHR on British Airways as well. Sometimes booking into London (or other European hub) and out of another city is even cheaper and you just have to book one European flight. One year we booked SFO - LHR and ATH - SFO as one ticket and purchased LHR - ATH separately for much less than one itinerary or both separate European flights. If you fly into LGW, then you can catch even cheaper flights on easyJet or other airlines but there's no savings (time or money) if you have to transfer airports or can't get a nonstop flight to LGW. I know some posters hate flying through LHR but we have been doing it every year since 2001 and the only problem was a flight delay a week after flights resumed following the 9/11/01 terror attacks.

First off, if "cheapest" is what you're after, June won't be that. But if June is when you can travel, here's my advice. My guess is that it's cheapest to fly from Seattle to a major airport in Europe (London, Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, etc) and then take a "regional" (intra-Europe) flight to Instanbul. But cheapest has its downsides. It might require not only a change of airlines, but also a change of airports (some regional flyers serve only "outlying" airports in certain markets, such as London). So you need to plan enough time and energy for that change. And it takes an investment of time to scope out intra-Europe and US-to-Europe flights to find a match. For intra-Europe carriers, try Skyscanner or other such web-searches. It'll pretty much be up to you to match up the international flights with intra-Europe flights and get yourselves from one to another, unless you know a good travel agent at home who can help. I would start by using the usual online search engines (Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, Momondo, etc) for a baseline and then getting creative on your own using one of those to get you to Europe and then Skyscanner or some such for European flights.

Here's something to consider: If you book a roundtrip to a major city, and then add on an unrelated discount carrier to Istanbul, your discount ticket could be worthless if your incoming flight gets delayed. I would suggest giving yourself a day or so in the major city before flying on to Istanbul if possible. That's what we do most of the time--spend a day or two in Amsterdam and then move on. That way, you have a margin or error for flight problems.

While doing as some of the earlier posts suggest, you might be able to do it cheaper than flying on one airline from start to finish, flying the one airline, as we do, lets your checked luggage get to your destination without having to claim it and then recheck it in Europe. It also puts the burden on the one airline for connections in Europe if your flight from home is delayed rather than risking not making your connection to the regional European airline, or having to spend a night at your first European city. Again, convenience does cost more.

You may want to consider avoiding London airports. Their airport taxes are more expensive. Try FRA or AMS. You can also go via CDG and AF or Turkish Air to Istanbul. I returned from IST last year via Turkish Air and the food service was great. Turkish Air flys to
IST non-stop from Chicago and New York-JFK.

my ticket from seattle was under 1000 after tax in sep/oct this year. i bought it in july, flew into athens in the mid of sep and out in oct from istanbul. it's air canada you can look into.

Here's another potential option: Condor Airlines (ex Thomas Cook) will be beginning no frills service to Frankfurt next summer. And Delta is adding an additional flight to Amsterdam. Hopefully these additions may mean cheaper flights to Europe from Seattle.

Kate,
I like to fly Icelandair to London, spend a night or more there and then fly Easyjet or Turkish Air down to Istanbul. Both are excellent. The Icelandair flights are only about 6 1/2 hours from Seattle to Iceland, then a brief layover, and a short 3 hours or so to London. I find this not as grueling as the straight shots over to Amsterdam or Copenhagen. Also they fly a Boeing 757 configured without the electronic boxes taking up the footspace under the next seat. They also have a personal LCD at each seat with very good music and movie choices. You can also stay a couple days in Iceland for no additional charge but I haven't done that yet. Good luck!

Thank you for all the replies on airfare. Now I need to figure out how to get to Venice from Bodrum, Turkey. Turkish Air has a flight 340ish but didn't know if there was a cheaper or different way to get there?

If you sign up for the Aegean Airlines email newsletter you'll be notified a couple of months before June about their saver fares, both domestic and international. From Bodrum you can catch a ferry to Rhodes, and from Rhodes you can get a €39 flight to Athens and a €69 or €79 flight from Athens to Venice. Those fares include all taxes so they're worth waiting for. http://www.feribot.net/feribot/?lang=en http://en.aegeanair.com/newslettersubscription.aspx