Is anyone else seeing this?

Hi Sarah! I am having the same issue with my tickets STL to Rome in late September to early October, only mine have been hovering at just over $1400 for several months. I am holding off buying for now, but I am am thinking this is about what I will end up paying.

Patience Sarah. The airlines are too busy ramping up their summer sales and PR strategies to focus on the fall. You should definitely keep tracking flight costs, but don't expect to see a break in the numbers for a few more months. With fuel prices bottoming out, $1400 is awfully high. Of course rationality has never been the handmaiden of airline prices.

If people are buying for that price and planes are full, price won't go down. Fewer airlines less competition. No incentive to lower prices despite oil being half price now. It used to be fuel surcharge but I doubt we will see fuel deduction.

The reality of supply and demand economics is that since all the airline consolidations / mergers they deliberately control the supply and thus demand what they want in the way of fares. TC

Fall sales are usually announced in summer, even late summer. I'd stop looking now, get on the airlines' email lists, join the FF programs and you'll be one of the first to get the announcement when there's a sale. I doubt you can get open jaw on sale, but you should be able to wrangle a cheap intra-European flight to get you back to AMS in order to book a lower-cost round trip.

Sarah, I have been looking for a few months for rates from Nashville to CDG, and back from FCO to home. They have stayed in the $1350 to $1400 range for over 6 months and have not varied more than $40 at any time. I'm looking at Sept/Oct time frame. When you pretty well decide on the exact time you want to fly I usually watch the seating charts. If the plane is about full I book but if plenty of seats still available on it I just keep waiting and watching to see if rates come down. If they have not started to come down by the end of March or April, I would just book it. Chances are you would not save more than a $100 or so anyway. The planes are usually full so they know they don't have to reduce prices to attract travelers.

I see this too and the reason is the dollar getting stronger increases demand for air travel from the US to Europe as people take advantage of a strong dollar to vacation in Europe. Its all supply and demand.

Check out this article: http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2015-02-02/what-a-billion-kayak-searches-reveal-about-the-way-we-ll-travel-in-2015

According to the article if this trend holds out the best time to buy airfare to Europe for the summer is now.

Kayak suggests booking flights to Europe six months in advance to get
the lowest airfare, a considerable change from their advice last year
to book only eight to ten weeks in advance. As Condé Nast Traveler
reported last week, a strong dollar is making European travel more
desirable for Americans—at least once they get there. With airfares to
Europe likely as high this summer as they were last year, deals,
particularly at the last minute, will be scarce. If you do feel the
sudden need to flee the United States, head to the Caribbean instead
of Europe: You'll find the best prices just two to four weeks in
advance, according to Kayak.

Here is a link to the Kayak data: http://www.kayak.com/travelhacker/global/europe

I've seen similar pricing running around $1400. Last year prices drop to around $1100 but with high demand this year they may not drop that low. Even if you buy tickets now, like the article says, you'll make it up with a strong dollar once you get to Europe.

DJ

We just booked an open jaws for SFO -> LHR, Rome -> SFO. Prices did not seem to change in the months I've been watching even though the dollar has risen against the pound (using British Airways).

Was shocked that we had to pay for reserving seats in economy. Is this normal or new? (EDIT: I looked it up and this policy has been in place for a few years. Oh well. ) This pushed up our tickets by about $100 each. So total was about $1660. I hope I don't regret this but it's peace of mind right now. BTW, when we reserved almost all seats were available. Maybe others are just going to take the reservation at the 24 hours checkin point.

Thank you all very much for your advice and commiseration! The suggestion to save money by flying round trip STL - AMS is a good one, but I might only break even when I factor in the extra costs of flying back to AMS and staying in a hotel that night. I'm staying with a friend in London before I return to STL.

I found the flights I want, on United, and am checking the seat availability about once a week. So far the flights are pretty empty, which is good. I can wait a while longer. And I'm glad to know I'm not alone, that other people are dealing with this too. I don't know why $1,400 seems like a big deal; in September 2012 when I flew STL-CDG and LHR-STL, I paid about $1,360 so this is only costing me $40 more.

@Les, I guess paying to reserve a seat depends on which airline you choose. Seat selection is still free on United, I think, but I'll find out for sure whenever I buy my tickets.

I got mine last August for a trip to Scotland in June. We payed 1700 a ticket

Careful about advice from someone who doesn't have dog in the fight. Glenn could be correct and could be terribly wrong. Fuel prices have little to do with ticket prices. Most airlines work with long term fuel contact that flattens fuel prices changes. Airline prices are very rational from an airline perspective. The bigger issue driving prices is the reduction of seats that need to be filled. Read an article that suggested that airline capacity to Europe has been reduced in the range of 25% because of the mergers, code sharing, etc. In the airline's perfect world every flight has no empty seats. And they have computers that are much faster and smarter than we are at figuring how to achieve that goal. And they are doing a pretty good job. When was the last time anyone flew on a plane that wasn't full or nearly so.

If you think 1400 is a fair price then do it. Otherwise you are engaging in a lot of brain damages that is not very productive. You might sale a hundred buck and you might not. It is far easier to save that hundred bucks somewhere else in your travel schedule than with the airlines.

Greetings,

I played the same maddening game for our June trip to London and Paris. Prices kept hovering for months in the range you describe and hardly moved beyond 100 bucks here or there. I'd been advised to be patient, but not to go much closer than four months to our dates. One Friday afternoon, prices started shooting up. Tired of the game, I conceded defeat and booked tickets at $1,500 apiece. Exactly one week later, prices plummeted. Our same one-stop itinerary could be had for around $1,000, with non-stops running $1,200-1,500. Which all means I "overpaid" by $1,000-$1,500 for the three of us. But what's done is done, and in the grand scheme of the cost of this trip, that's not really so much, and we have an itinerary that we're comfortable with. So I guess it just depends on how much mental anguish you want to put yourself through.

Frank and stoutfella, thank you for your additional advice. I feel comfortable waiting until about 6 months out from my departure date. I'm watching the flights and seats on United and the price is still around $1,400, but there are plenty of seats in the sardine-can section of the plane - otherwise known as economy. :) When those seats start filling up, or when I get to the 6-month mark, whichever comes first, I'll go ahead and purchase. I assume I'll pay $1,400 and checking the flights once a week doesn't bother me.

Yep, it's not like the old days when airfares to Europe were r(supply your own word here) reasonable/affordable for those of us who are not trust fund babies or otherwise wealthy.
These days, more than ever: if you wanta play, you gotta pay. (at least for airfares, esp. from the US West Coast)

Of course, where you are going makes a difference. We are looking at flights from Den to Istanbul in mid Sept. All between $1000 and $1100. Doing open jaw home from Ankrana adds $70. Turkey and that area probably is not high on everyone's travel list.

We just purchased our flights, PDX --> LHR, CDG --> PDX for late June/early July. Averaged $1442/ticket (2 adults, 2 kids). I'm not seeing much fluctuation.

We are flying LAX-FCO back CDG-LAX in October. I watched fares for quite a while and, in April, landed up paying $1,400.00 each with Air Canada, and no charge to pick seats. This was the best route with nice long layovers in Canada. That very night each ticket went down $50.00 and I was able to call my rewards card and get a price adjustment, so $1,300.00 each. They went down even more a few days later (yes I looked!) and then went wayyyyy up ($1,700.00 each). Its about looking everyday about 2-4 times a day. My budget was $1,400.00 each based on historical prices so I came in under budget which is great! I also booked a flight with Air France to get from Florence to Paris and those were $77.00 each. I purchased those long before my actual flight to europe and those tickets are fluctuating from $90.00- $200.00 each.

Oh I should add that the flight from Los Angeles to Canada has TONS of seats, the flight from Canada to Rome is getting packed, and this is still 5 months out. On the flights back, the flight from Paris to Canada is getting full and the flight from Canada to LA has lots of seats left. This also pushed my decision to buy so I could get the flights/times/layovers I wanted.

Letizia, my discovery about the fullness of flights was the same as yours. In early April I finally bought my tickets for a new itinerary: STL - AMS on Oct. 12, MAN - STL on Oct. 28. I ended up paying around $1,300 and haven't looked back! The transatlantic flight from ORD to AMS was filling up when I purchased tickets and I came to the same conclusion you did: I knew the flights and the type of seat (window) I wanted, so why wait any longer? That flight filled up even more the last time I checked a few weeks ago. MAN - EWR still had plenty of empty seats.

Airfares have been, generally, high for a year or more.
Nobody here knows what's going to happen to airfares.
You're probably going to have to bite the bullet. The rest of us have.
As they say, if you want'a play, you gotta pay. At least when it comes to vacationing in Europe starting from N. America.
For lower airfares, go in February.

After reading everyone's reviews, I feel great about my Purchase. I live in South Florida and when I checked prices for June 12 (next weekend) back in November the flights I wanted (MIA-LHR / MAD-MIA) was about $1,950 per ticket. I work for a major hotel chain so I had to work around my hotel employee discounts and then fit the flights around the hotel's availability. The prices wouldn't drop, so I decided to check flights leaving from JFK and it was $1,069 per ticket. I had enough miles with Delta and JetBlue to book the domestic flight. I ended up selecting BA (not knowing about paying for seats) and paid $1,069 per ticket for two (JFK-LHR /MAD-JFK) and used my miles/points to book the domestic flight to NYC and stay in NYC for a day visiting family.

I agree with everyone, the anguish of checking for flights everyday and not knowing if they will increase or decrease in price.