My husband and I were eating at a German restaurant tonight and the owner is from near Frankfurt. We began talking about the cost of tickets to Germany and she mentioned that buying them in Germany (originating in US, but purchased from Germany) is less expensive than buying them in the US. The owner booked a flight through a family member residing in Germany and is traveling home in Dec. She was able to get her round trip ticket for around $600. I can't seem to find any tickets for under $1200 (I have plugged in different dates, just to check out various scenarios). This frustrates me since we are buying 4 tickets total and the savings would be extreme. She also gave another case-in-point about a family that had searched online for tickets in the USA and then had a friend in Germany check from their end. Booking through her friend via Germany saved $2000 for her family. Does anyone have personal experience with this? And is there a way to circumvent the inflated ticket prices when booking? Thanks so much. BTW, we are going to be traveling in June 2013.
Posted by
Auburn, Alabama
1064 posts
It sounds like a good way to make the no-fly list. Besides, your friend may have said dollars but meant euros. You may already know this, but you can buy roundtrip tickets from ATL to Germany at certain times for $750-$800 (about 600 euros) but not for June travel.
Posted by
Huntsville, AL, USA
8319 posts
I've begun using http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ They have a calendar that shows the flights' lowest prices day by day. The ITA did an in depth study of airline fares last year, and found the least expensive time to purchase fares is 60 days before departure. I try not to plan a trip too far in advance, as it'll just run me crazy. I do watch fares from time to time, and pay attention to fare trends. At 60 days, I'll get serious about booking flights. Remember that different cities have different fares. We fly cheaper out of Nashville than Atlanta, even though the flights often link up with the Atlanta flights. Some Chattanooga flights thru Atlanta are cheaper than flying on the same planes from Atlanta. You have Savannah, Charleston, Atlanta and Jacksonville airports as available airports to fly from. Maybe one is less expensive than the other.
Posted by
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2779 posts
Sherri, just look it up on a German online travel agency, like expedia.de, opodo.de, fluege.de...
Posted by
2541 posts
The price is virtually the same (U.S. v. German websites) for our planned trip this summer.
Posted by
Seattle, WA
17442 posts
It isn't the booking site (US versus German) so much as the direction of travel that makes a difference. It is a bit cheaper to fly Germany--US---Germany than US---Germany---US. Here's is what I found on expendia.de and Kayak, looking at a RT flight May 1 to May 15: On expedia de, going FRA to New York to FRA, the lowest fare was 555 euros on Iceland Air; you could fly non-stop on Singapore for 631 euros (that would be my choice!) Prices on Kayak.com for the same flights were $740 and $820 respectively (so actually the Kayak price looks a little lower for the Singaporte Air flight). Going the other way, NY to FRA and back on the same dates, costs more on Kayak: $843 on Iceland Air, $881 on Singapore. On expedia.de, they don't offer those flights. The least expensive going JFK--FRA--JFK was 654 euro on Air Berlin; other airlines (Air Canada, Lufthansa, Delta, etc.) were all 700 euros or more.
Posted by
OP
Aiken, SC
56 posts
Wow, thanks for all the replies and info... Lots of planning left to do, but I guess I won't get too stressed out over the prices, as it's still early. I hate that buyer's remorse that kicks in when I feel I didn't get the best deal to be had!
Posted by
Stafford, Virginia, USA
143 posts
About a month ago, I tried buying a dummy ticket round-trip IAD-FRA from both the Lufthansa US website as well as their German website. After I had put my information into the German site, it said something like, Your itinerary indicates you are based in the U.S., and then kicked me back to its US website. So I don't know if it's cheaper to buy tickets in the US or Europe - it wouldn't let me buy it from the Europe site. But it is true that it's cheaper to fly RT from Europe to US than vice-versa.