peak season airfare to London and Dublin

I haven't been looking at fares recently, but I tracked fares last year and $1100 is not out of line for what I saw for summer fares out of one of the New York airports. Fares have been trending upwards so I don't expect to see any dramatic reductions. However, last year I bought an October ticket in May from Raleigh-Durham to Heathrow through Boston (with an overnight in Boston) and then direct back to Raleigh for just over $900 and was happy about that. You are working with about the same lead time. It's really difficult to say when you should book to get the best deal. I do not believe in the notion that waiting until the last minute is a way to get a cheap flight. So, my recommendation would be to give it a few more weeks and then bite the bullet. Have you tried the FareCompare.com site? I also like the ITA site (http://matrix.software.com). You can't book there, but you just need to go to the relevant airline site, search for the flights, and book. Air India and Kuwait Airlines often have the best London fares out of NYC. Also, if you can get to Boston, check for flights there. If nothing else, its's only a 6 hour flight.

Remember it is peak season and sales are few and far in between. Since I grew up near Ithaca, did some searching on behalf of a fellow CNYer. http://tinyurl.com/46tvoxz Play around on ITA and you'll find some other days where this fare will work. If you like it the price, I wouldn't delay in buying.

Last July we flew into Shannon and out of Dublin, it was about $1200. I think $1100 is pretty normal, but keep checking the sites. I did see the tickets for $900 for about a millisecond. Airfarewatchdog.com is good for letting you know about deals for itineraries that you customize.

Just found this on Orbitz; The price is 973.00 Flight 1 Fri, Jul 15 Aer Lingus 110 Depart: 6:30pm Arrive: 5:50am New York, NY (JFK) Shannon, Ireland (SNN) 1 stop Economy 6hr 20min Airbus A330 Change planes. Time between flights: 1hr 40min Aer Lingus 380 Depart: 7:30am Arrive: 9:00am Shannon, Ireland (SNN) London, United Kingdom (LHR) Economy 1hr 30min Airbus A320 Total duration: 9hr 30min This is an overnight flight. Choose flight 2 Flight 2 Tue, Aug 2 Aer Lingus 105 Depart: 10:45am Arrive: 1:15pm Dublin, Ireland (DUB)
New York, NY (JFK) Non-stop Economy 7hr 30min Airbus A330 This flight departs from a different airport.

Thanks for all the input -- really helpful!

Ruth, Here is a search I set up on kayak http://www.kayak.com/flights/NYC-LON/2011-07-13/DUB-NYC/2011-07-27 Just paste this into your brower window and hit return. You can play around with it to suite your dates and adjust the airports you wish to fly into/out of. Airfares have recently increased over the last 2-3 weeks when US based carriers upped their prices by $100 and then fuel increase occurred. Also, the prices may go up or down slightly with the currency conversion of USD to that of a code-shared airline based in Europe. I myself, have missed two dips in the price only to find that the price incresaed later that day (3-4 hours later). I am waiting for the next dip to jump on the ticket. Sometimes the dip occurs on the weekend and sometimes the middle of the week. But they are occuring less often than in the past. Edwin

look into iceland air (out of jfk) and, possibly, iceland express (out of newark). for some reason i've never seen them come up in a kayak search, so check out the actual websites. and good luck! i'm looking for almost the same thing, so i hope you find it, too!

Ruth, you didn't mention how you were traveling from London to Dublin, so thought I'd mention that if you fly Aer Lingus (stops in Dublin to/from London), you can do a round trip JFK to LHR with a 'Stop Off' in Dublin on your return. For example, in July round trip to London shows $974. If you stopped off in Dublin for a few days on your return it's $1,065. Do the search on Kayak.com then click onto the Aer Lingus site.