Another summer airfare question

I would expect u could find a gd fare now. The fares have not been this lo for many yrs. also try Iceland air as an option. I am going sfo-lhr-sfo late june retn early july for $700 on united. Try using a consolidator like Expedia? Be flexible.

I am afraid you suffer from the dominance of Delta Airlines in Atlanta. I am seeing round trips to London from New York for $750. Even Charlotte has flights for $1250.

You could tie it together with a round trip to New York. I am seeing prices of $200 on Delta, spend time seeing the Big Apple a day before and a day after, and you've got it down to $1000.

Answers to this question from people living in NY, SFO, Seattle, will just depress you and the rest of us
:--) because not only do we not have those great fares, but the airlines are making up for those prices in other markets. So as stated above, you have the Delta hub to deal with or you can figure out a cost-effective way to get to a bargain gateway.

There is no silver bullet to getting fares...the key is flexibility, flexibility, and flexibility. You are traveling during peak summer season, so you have to be realistic as well. My advice is to track fares over a number of weeks/months and not count on pure luck. There is no perfect time to bite - it purely depends on when you see a fare you like. Be open to budget carriers like Turkish Air, WOW, Norwegian, Iceland Air, and Aer Lingus, and Air Berlin. Atlanta Hartsfield is one of the largest airports in the US (and London likewise is a huge travel market) - that is in your favor. You should be able to get a decent fare although you probably should have snagged one earlier since it's already April. I use http://matrix.itasoftware.com and play around with dates and times to see their effect on prices.

There are plenty of bargain fares this year from Orlando - since you have at least 4 in your party it might be worth driving down and catching the flight from here. You could look into getting 2 one way car rentals and dropping at MCO, then getting on a nonstop flight. Since they leave just around 7:30pm you could knock out the driving in the morning, or even come in the day before and experience one of the theme parks.

Not seeking sympathy but sadly noting that round trip airfares to London for mid-summer from my remote location are currently well over $1,700 per person...less if willing to risk flying on unrelated carriers with a ridiculous connection going to London. My successful plan is to buy tickets several or more months out to gain the best prices and connections...the quant "experts" be damned. Predictions are just that.

Not sure if I'm allowed to mention these by name, so I won't, but there are several email services that will contact you as soon as great deals on international airfares pop up. We live in Atlanta too and had basically given up on Europe this summer, then I signed up for one of these deal emails and the next day, there was a $550 R/T from ATL to Frankfurt in July. We snagged it and built our trip around it. The fare was gone in less than a day so you have to act fast - hence it's sometimes worth paying (I paid $39 for the year) for one of these services to alert you as soon as the sale happens.

It depends what kind of routing you're willing to accept. This one's available for $1000 to $1010 on lots of dates in June/July right now, but it adds about 5 hours each way vs a non-stop: JetBlue to BOS then Aer Lingus to DUB to LGW.

Well, there have been some sales, but it appears you either missed them or they didn't work out for you. At this point it's less likely that there will be a great sale for summer IMHO.

One trick is try nearby airports. Not sure where you live but GSO (Greenville, SC) or Chattanooga might be an option. Sometimes it's cheaper to connect through ATL (and yes you have to do the connection. You can't buy a flight from GSO to London with a connection in ATL and just hop on in ATL, you have to take that first flight!)

I am actually flying to Orlando this fall and flying from there to London. Flights to Orlando are cheap so even with the flight to Orlando and an overnight in Orlando on both ends I am still saving about $400. Several of the discount carriers fly out of Orlando so it's a more competitive market.

I agree with an earlier poster. Since you live in ATL do the Clark Howard model. Find a cheap airfare and figure out why you want to go there. :)

I subscribe to Scott Keys emails on flight deals, you could do something like that or set up alerts on Google or Kayak. I don't think it is too late for some good deals, you just have to be ready to buy ASAP when you do get an emailed deal as they usually only last 24 hours or so. Make sure when you purchase to read luggage restrictions on fares.

Keep searching airfares every day. After seeing weeks of $1100+ airfares to London from Minneapolis for my Best of England tour in September/October, they suddenly dropped into the $600 range for about 36 hours recently on most major airlines/alliances. Then back up to $1100+. Admittedly, time is getting short for your trip, but could get lucky. You can set up an alert on Google Flights to notify you of price drops on your desired route and dates. That's what alerted me at about 6AM. (Some other search engines alerted me hours later.) Good luck.

Do you HAVE to go to London this summer? Sometimes there will be bargain fares to places you hadn't planned -- I believe one of the financial columnists suggests finding a bargain fare and then figuring out what to see there. But as others have said, keep looking and grab a good deal if you see one.

Thanks everyone! I know its a shot in the dark now and I did just miss a sale on American earlier in March for London this summer, I'm still kicking myself for it!!! London is just the city we want to go back to and if we could find decent airfare we were going to bite the bullet and go. I do have my notifications set up on Google and Kayak but I rarely find them. I'll keep looking but I have a feeling we'll be doing our trip to New England instead, which is just as good. Driving to Orlando is something we wouldn't do, my husband has no interest in driving 6-7 hours to fly. Thanks again!

If you don't mind making a connection, look into flights to Manchester. I have no idea if it's cheaper or not. But last month, I found that flights from New York to Zurich were 1/2 to 1/3 the price of flights from New York to Geneva, for no clear reason at all.