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$663 RT Seattle-Amsterdam

Posted by (Seattle, WA, United States) on

My boyfriend and I are planning a trip to Europe October 5th - 23rd (thereabouts). We were originally planning to fly into London and out of Amsterdam, and I've been casually looking at airfare since we got our approximate dates pinned down. Until now, the cheapest airfare for these dates & cities has been about $800 (although it was Vayama which should be avoided to some posters here).

However, I decided to check for RT fares to either London or Amsterdam, and I just found a round-trip to Amsterdam for $663 (STA Travel, we are both under 25). Even though we'd have to fly to London from Amsterdam with that itinerary, it looks like it'll only be about $50 extra to fly AMS-LON via EasyJet. In your opinion(s), is this fare something to jump on, or are prices for our original route likely to drop to around the same level later in the year?

Posted by
3250 posts

If you can get a flight for $663 for October that sounds good to me. Even with the additional cost to fly to London! I haven't seen a flight that low in awhile!!

Posted by
873 posts

Steve -- you think it's a good idea to book even this far out? (just double checking since you seem to be the airfare guru around here!)

Posted by
9099 posts

I agree, $663 is an excellent fare, especially from Seattle. $600-700 is about what I would expect to pay in October from the NYC area.

Posted by
1317 posts

I got tickets SEA - Rome in Nov 2008 for $650 which I thought was a screaming deal, so I think your Amsterdam price is very good. If you feel comfortable with the flight and the price, then I would go ahead and book it.

I know many people find good open-jaw prices, and depending on how much back-tracking is involved, it can be cheaper, but I've never had any luck finding open-jaw flights to be cheaper than roundtrip so I would be hesistant to expect those prices would drop to the same level.

Posted by
4555 posts

The best time (despite what Pauline Frommer and others may say) to jump on an air fare deal is when it feels like a good price to you. By tracking air fares over a long period of time, you'll get a good idea of what the regular prices are like. That way, you can jump on a big price drop when it comes by.
Airlines are using complex software these days that analyses capacity on an hourly basis. It involves dozens of parameters, and generates a curve of where ticket sales should be at any point in time. If they start falling behind the curve, the airlines will put on a sale, some times only for a few hours, to bring them back into line....no matter when the flight is set to go. If the sales stay at or ahead of the curve, there may never be a big sale on that flight. With the large capacity cuts in seating capacity last fall (and the continuing decline in North Atlantic air travel), airlines are much more conscious of their load factors than they ever were before.
You're getting an excellent price.

Posted by
80 posts

That's a great fare, especially if its on Delta's direct flight!

You won't see it get better than that.

Make sure you can commit to those dates, STA's tickets are often consoldiator tickets (nothing wrong with them - but hard/impossible to change) and go for it!

Posted by
873 posts

Tickets booked! Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I guess now we can start slowly carving out the rest of our plans.

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