cheapest months to travel

Interesting question given your location. You can get a midweek round trip nonstop Philly to Munich for $920. From Charlotte, on the same dates, the round trip nonstop to Munich is $6500. Why the difference? BMW Carolina facility means tons of BMW engineers and executives flying back and forth and since they are traveling on expense account, they could give a RA about the ticket cost. Generally, winter is cheaper exept of course, Christmas-New Year period. A route with lots of competetion helps (that CLT-MUC flight is only $1054 if you change in Philly). Use Kayak or ITA Matrix to research routes. We've found good fares flying to Dusseldorf. Frankfurt has a lot of competition, so it often wins the low price slot. You never know.

Hi Evan, If someone can answer that, I'd be interested myself.
We've flown NJ to Munich in 10/01, 10/03, 4/05, 10/06, 9/09 and 11/10 plus once into Frankfurt/out of Munich in 10/07. I believe it's generally cheaper in the fall or spring. I usually book the flight roughly 3 months in advance. I've been researching fares for this Oct. for Munich or Frankfurt and nothing is "cheap" anymore. Prices change almost daily, but flights to Frankfurt are the only ones I've seen under $1,000. I've seen NJ/Munich as low as $1,025 and NJ/Frankfurt as low as $930. The flights I've been checking are all non-stop flights. It's tedious research, but just keep looking. Sign up for fare alerts, etc. Good luck.

Your local Charlotte airport has more U.S. Airways flights than any other carriers. U.S. Airways is dropping Gatwick and moving over to Heathrow 3/30/13. Otherwise, all you have to Europe from Charlotte is Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Rome-Fiumicino. A flight on U.S. Air to Germany is only to Frankfort through Philadelphia, their gateway city to Europe. It's hard to say what the cheapest months are to Europe, but it's safe to say that from now until the end of the Summer, prices are increasing. They drop slightly the end of September.
Who knows what the future holds for this very competitive industry. Airlines continue to get better at controlling the supply and demand and thus control the prices.

In very general terms the winter months (except Dec) tend to be the cheaper months. Nov, Jan, Feb and it depends on where you are going. Obviously less winter as you move south. Cities do not make much difference. London can be expensive but high usage like Frankfurt, Amsterdam can be cheaper but not always.

Ticket prices are driven by supply and demand. If there are empty seats the price drops. That's why you can generally get better deals in winter (fewer people traveling) while the highest prices are in summer (more people traveling). Fuel prices tend to make the northwestern cities somewhat cheaper. It's at least a 30 percent shorter flight (for 'great circle' routes) to Amsterdam vs. Rome. Other factors drive prices too but searching alternate airports, days and time of day is primarily a search for a flight with extra empty seats that are going cheap. I like to travel shoulder season. You can get a little better price on your flights but you also have long days and decent weather while you're there.