Plane fare

Are you renting in Paris for a week? If so, you'll find most people will want to rent Saturday to Saturday, or maybe Sunday to Sunday. So that may lock in your flights more closely. Start looking now at what's available to see how flexible people will be with renting their places. We've used homelidays.co.uk quite successfully over the years in Paris, among other places. It's just a listing service, so you deal directly with the owners.

There's absolutely no way to predict when you'll get the best fare. Start checking the various websites listed, sign up for the fare alerts, then start monitoring airlines and prices. Over the next week or 10 days, you should get an accurate idea as to what the current going rate is. Then, if there's a good-sized drop in the price one day that you feel is within your budget range, then grab it no matter how far in advance it is. The best prices I've found over the past 2 1/2 years have been 9, 8, 8, 6, and 5 months in advance.
I will assume you want to fly out of Portland. But don't pass up Eugene, since sometimes you can find better prices flying out of a smaller city, as the airlines try to draw traffic from outside the major hub, so sign up for alerts out of Eugene.
Consider several different entry points to Europe, if you can. London is USUALLY the cheapest airport to access Europe, but also think about Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, and Frankfurt.
If you can, target flying Tues-Thurs...these are when fares are cheapest.

Hi Norma,

We usually buy our airfare in June for October our trips. Flying out on a weekday (Tues., Wed. Thurs.) should help lower the price, but not guaranteed, of course. We have had good results by buying late on a Tues. night. Prices seem to be lower at this time. At least it's worked out for us on our last 6 trips. Last year we paid $462 pp r/t non-stop from NJ to Munich through www.lufthansa.com

Paul

thank you so much for your replies. i actually am probably going to fly out of eugene because i've found there's not much (if any) difference in the fare from here or from portland, oddly enough. the difference, if any, so far that i've found, is not worth the cost of gas to drive up the freeway and park my car for a couple of weeks. i want to fly into amsterdam and out of paris. a question i have about waiting is that i want to rent an apartment in paris. i assume i should get my plane ticket before i reserve my accommodations, so i can keep my fly dates flexible. will waiting on renting an apartment be a problem or is it best to grab something as early as possible?
this is my first trip to europe; i'm excited beyond measure as you can probably tell. thanks again.

Under "Transportation" there's a thread titled "Tell me to jump or talk me down" that explains this really well, which helped me a lot. The consensus there is that 8 wks before your flight is the "sweet spot" for buying tickets.

"There's absolutely no way to predict when you'll get the best fare."

Boy, is that true! My partner was looking for an affordable fare from San Francisco to Paris this week. Air France wanted $3,000 round trip, because if was last-minute. Suddenly, a $700 fare on US Airways came up on Expedia. Booked it Monday, left Tuesday!

You never know. Sometimes, an airline has trouble filling up the plane and gives a big discount at the last minute.

Tyler...I guess the big question is....would you want to wait until the last day before your vacation to purchase? ;)

"Tyler...I guess the big question is....would you want to wait until the last day before your vacation to purchase? ;) "

Of course not! This was just a fluke. My partner had not made a reservation before because he couldn't nail down dates that he needed to be in Paris. But, normally, he books way in advance.

2 years in a row, I bought my tickets for a Europe trip in Nov/Dec in June. Both times, the airfare NEVER went down after, in fact became more expensive.