It’s been a few years since I’ve flown to Europe. Twelve, in fact. So, please excuse the question. Current price for an open jaw flight in June and July, flying on Friday and Sunday, into CDG and out of LGW, from/to JFK is about $680. Good price? Jump on this or expect it to lower significantly enough to risk the wait on four tickets? (Budget airlines do not interest me.)
Thanks!
This sounds like a good deal for summer travel. You never know about airfares - sometimes the good fares disappear quickly. In late September I purchased round trip in April-May 2019 Boston-CDG tickets for $492 (including checked bag and advance seat selection). This is the lowest price we have spent on a flight to Europe since we started traveling regularly (2004). I usually do not look at flights after I have booked, but in in this case I checked today and found that the price has doubled.
Grab it and run. Norwegian Air Shuttle flies JFK to Paris for about $214 (lowest June fare) and from Gatwick to JFK for $399 most days in July. If you returned in June, you might beat $680.
Can you give us your exact travel dates? I'd like to take a look. I'm curious about whether you've caught a particularly cheap pair of travel dates or that price is widely available.
I felt very lucky last month to grab a ticket from Washington DC to Madrid on April 8 and back from London on August 22 for just under $600. The same flights had been sitting at about $900 for at least two weeks. I was confident that the price wouldn't drop a great deal, but I figured it could (and eventually probably would) go up a lot, so I pulled the trigger. Since I bought my ticket, I've seen the price rise to over $1100, but today it's back down to $635. I'd happily buy at that price if I didn't already have a ticket.
Fares are volatile in general, but the amount of movement probably varies with the routing. NYC is such a competitive market that I wouldn't be surprised if fares there are a bit less wacko. However, I haven't been monitoring NYC fares and could easily be wrong.
Washington is usually a bit more expensive than NYC, and I think Madrid is usually a bit more expensive than Paris. If we were traveling on the same dates, I'd expect you to pay less than I have, but our travel dates are wildly different, and I have no idea how to factor in the impact of my April departure vs. your June departure.
acraven, we depart June 28 and return July 14.
Thank you. The best I'm seeing for non-stops on a legacy carrier (not Norwegian, and not XL) is $808, and that's Basic Economy. I should have warned you about Basic Economy in my first response. The carriers are rolling that out on transatlantic flights now. That's a very stripped-down service that gives you pretty much nothing except the right to board the plane and sit where the airline tells you to. You pay a lot more if you need to check a bag, and I'm not sure how seat selection works, either. Be sure you know what you are getting and that you are comparing prices for the same type of service. It's not always clear that you aren't comparing apples to apples until you go farther into the flight-selection process.
On Google Flights I can only find a roundtrip in your price range on Norwegian Air. It appears that traveling eastbound on Friday is costing you an extra $40, but that's really small change.
The legacy carriers are either not non-stop or a lot more costly.
Not non-stop isn’t a bother. I expected a layover heading east, and the flight I was referring to (on BA) stops in Dublin or LHR en route to CDG.
Personally I would jump. It may go down but I doubt it would be significant and it's more likely to go up. Buy it and don't look back.
I would buy it. I travel to Europe a few times a year from JFK and that is a good price for summer travel.
If the fare can be found at the airline website, so much the better. I try to avoid buying air tickets from third party vendors.
With that price in June/July both legs non-stop arr CDG and dep. Gatwick, I would book it immediately. Those months will be my trip too but only from SFO, non-stop. I also plan on a few days, if possible, to tailor my dates according to price.
I hope you booked it because that is an excellent price for BA flights. I checked this morning on the BA website and that itinerary (with the outbound flight on Aer Lingus, stopping in Dublin) is over $1500 each.
Keep in minds that taxes, government fees, and duties run about $190 per ticket (current exchange rates) for a flight departing the major UK airports for a USA arrival. The same government charges for CDG-USA are about $95 at current exchange rates.
So strip away the taxes and such, and it would seem like the airline flying you across the ocean and only getting about $500 into their coffers for that long haul flight as a very good price for the consumer.
Jump. The tickets I bought three weeks ago to Paris for $1495. are now $4150. Same day. Same flight. Oh- and that first price includes insurance and seat upgrade. The second one does not!
So what did mountainmama do? it would be nice to know.
So, I got them. They ended up being a little more (more like $725 each) because the price that came up on Kayak was for the “basic economy” apparently and not the “standard economy.” I want things to be comfortable and as painless as possible for our first overseas trip with the kids, so I felt okay about booking through BA at the somewhat higher price, and I still feel confident (based on all of your feedback) that it was a good move to get them because they could go up quite a bit more. Thanks, all.
