how long to wait for a better fare

Ruth, if you mention the airports that you think you could depart from and your exact travel dates, you will get help specific to your trip.

Toronto is almost always cheapest in the northeast-ish region, unless you are looking at budget airlines with special routes.

I would keep the $1100 in mind as a benchmark, watch it for another month or so, and then buy if it’s that or lower. Keep looking at various airports, but my bet is on Toronto. I’m a little risk averse and have seen fares rise as you get closer. Not all the time - sometimes they drop. But I’d rather pay $1100 and risk missing out on a drop to $900 vs. end up paying $1300. It’s a gamble either way, I don’t think anyone has figured out a real way to tell.

Are you quoting fares from Toronto in Canadian or US dollars? In your currency you can get to Vienna on LOT (Poland) or TAP (Portugal) for about $900, with one stop. Air Canada, selling Austrian going east and Air Canada Rouge return (read up about this "budget" branch of AC to see its restrictions) for about $1000. It's worth the extra to go non-stop each way in my opinion. You are flying at peak summer rates so these prices look reasonable. Trying to dig out a hiccup in fares may sometimes pay off but burns up a lot of time and energy for what is effectively a gamble. My info source, aside from Air Canada, is the Google information site matrix.itasoftware.com which has good coverage but doesn't sell the tickets itself.

On skyscanner.net Toronto - venice, vienna - toronto I am seeing 11hr flights one stop rd trip at approx 850pp. Sounds very gd to me. And that is for june 5 return 2wks later.

Just watch out for early morning flights from Venice. Many depart around 7 am, Nd we see a lot of questions here on how to get to Marco Polo Airport in time for that flight. It can be done, but if you do not want to pay for a water taxi (adding €100 or more to the cost of your trip) it means rising at 4 am to catch the first vaporetto trip.

Thanks, everyone. I'm looking at fares converted into US dollars. I'm trying to avoid Air Canada Rouge (based on what everyone on this site has said!) which is why I'm looking at the Lufthansa return with stop, versus a direct flight on Air Canada Rouge.

Although I've seen flights listed from $750 to $900 USD on many of the search engines, including skyscanner, when I then go to the airline pages I am seeing fares of $1050-$1700 for the same flights. I'm not sure whether this is before or after the seat selection charges kick in -- it looks like there will be about $80 per person to book seats.

Does anyone have any experience with TAP or the Polish airlines? I tend to go with names I know, but there's not really any rhyme or reason to that...

In terms of where we're flying out of, pretty much any of the major airports in the northeastern US (Boston, all the NY airports, Philly, and Toronto are all within about 4 hours). We live in Upstate NY with nothing but regional airports nearby. We really liked flying out of Toronto on our last trip, and long term parking was much cheaper than at the NY area airports.

Thanks!

Also, in response to the other questions, right now I'm looking Thursday May 31-Thursday June 28. I think the flight out of Marco Polo is at 10:00 a.m. We will be in Venice for several days, so I was thinking of leaving the island and going to an airport hotel the night before. Thanks!

I just played with your dates, maybe this will help. I booked a trip on Fareboom.com last week, at a savings of about 30% over the airlines. And I have my misgiving about using OTA sites rather than the airlines. I even started a thread here as to why certain flights with real routes, etc could be offered here for substantially less, and among other received the answer that airlines want to fill seats without "cheapening" their product, so they sell some seats at a discount to some travel agents. I did some research and found Fareboom.com to be reputable, booked, could not have been easier, and even obtained American Airlines seats that were not available on their site for the same flight as they want people to pay up front before releasing them at check-in (couldn't get seats for the BA flight as their seats are all for $$s only until 24 hours).

Anyway, playing with your dates and choices, I found an SAS ticket in and out of Newark that was $882 on Fareboom, the same itinerary is $956 on SAS direct. And, you get a choice of a whole lot of seats for free with Fareboom, these are not offered without pay on SAS, this includes many of my beloved aisle+window pair on either side of a 2-4-2 airbus 330/340. Return flight out of Marco Polo is at a civilized 2:20 PM, also. You could even get this for $777 if you wanted to first spend a night in Oslo, although the flight out of Oslo on Saturday is at 6:45AM.

if you decide to check out Fareboom.com, make sure you UNCHECK the prechecked compare site boxes at the bottom of the search page, and even that might not prevent extraneous background search windows that will slow your main windwo down.

Great sleuthing by Larry.

If you took that SAS itinerary with a 2:20 flight from VCE, there would be no need to give up a last night in Venice for an airport hotel. (And actually making a 10 am flight would not be bad, but you would have to rise around 6 am.)

Although I've seen flights listed from $750 to $900 USD on many of the search engines, including skyscanner, when I then go to the airline pages I am seeing fares of $1050-$1700 for the same flights.

It's common for the search engines to cache data to reduce server load and increase search speed. So the information on the first search page can be a few hours old and between then and now, they could have sold out their cheap fare bucket for part of the route, or repriced a few things. They can also cache long enough that a 21/14/7 day advance purchase rate first displayed no longer meets that cutoff time & date.

That is true, as I discovered this over the last few weeks I saw prices disappear from Kayak and its referral to Priceline fares. The fare that I purchased on Fareboom on January 2 and saw that weekend is still available.

But this is also true of the airlines. The last couple years I've been in the right place at the right time (partially from posters here stating that a fare sale was on) and gotten an incredible price from the airline, and in under a week it was no longer available at anywhere near that price.

Ruth, if you don't mind going to and from Newark, you should think about grabbing the SAS, especially with that late departure and not having to rush out of Venice.

Thanks, everyone. I'm still wavering a bit, because I love that the flight from Toronto to Venice is nonstop....meaning better chance to sleep a few hours on the plane and no worries about missed connections. I suspect that once the cost of parking near Newark is factored in, I'm looking at about $100 more per person to fly out of Toronto. But the flights Larry found are by far the least expensive I've seen out of the US.

Hi,

I much prefer flying non-stop from SFO or newly for me, OAK since #1 no worrying about missing a connection, #2 the longer flight offers a better chance of sleeping which I count on during the flight. Now if the lay over 4-5 hrs and the price is too tempting, then I'll take that if all other factors are all right.

Hi Ruth, you are wise to stay away from Air Canada's Rouge. I've flown that twice from Toronto to Europe and will never fly it again. I have read on this site many times that you should look for flights on sites such as Orbitz, Skyscanner, etc, but book through the actual airline. While I understand the logic, it has never worked for me as I find the prices on the airline websites to always be more expensive. Personally, when I find a price, as you did that looks good compared to others, I just go ahead and purchase and then not worry about it. I have been burned before waiting for prices to drop only to have them actually go up.

Vienna is a large airport, however few flights come to North America.
You have Austrian Airlines going non-stop into Toronto, but I didn't look at airfares.
Another option would be to take the popular budget airline, Norwegian Air Shuttle out of JFK to Oslo and taking their connecting flight info Vienna.
Otherwise, I don't see budget airlines going in that direction with easy connections.