Mutli City Flight Plan

Rob, The best suggestion I can make is to try using the "Multi City" option on any of the flight search websites (Travelocity, Hipmunk, Orbitz, etc.), and look for the best prices. You might also check flights with Air Transat out of Vancouver as their prices are often quite reasonable. However, they sometimes only have flights to some cities on a weekly basis so your travel dates might have to be a bit "flexible". Good luck with your search!

There is nothing magic about any of the airports. You best bet is to stick with major international airports - Rome, Milan, Amsterdam, etc. Just try different combinations till you find one that fits. We did well one year with Rome/Zurich, another year was Amsterdam/Rome and Athens.Rome.

The best prices out of Seattle these days are on Iceland Air. You can flyinto Paris and out of Milan, with 1 stop in each direction in Iceland, for about $200 less than other one-stop options to those airports.

There is no consistency to flight prices, so you just have to try all the options. If Turkey interests you, look into flying into Istanbul; several people have reported that flights there were cheaper than flights to closer parts of Europe. Of course, if you don't want to go to Turkey, this isn't helpful (getting from Turkey to almost anywhere else in Europe will take more time and money than you will save, vs just flying there directly). One trick is try (in your example) pricing flying into Paris and out of Rome, as well as into Rome and out of Paris. Again, for unknown reasons, sometimes one direction is much cheaper than the other.

Rob, you have the right idea. Flying "open-jaw"; into one city, and out of another usually can save you lots of $$$$. I just set up our open-jaw trip May-Jun from Portland to the EU. One trick I used was to set up "auto notices" on sites like Kayak, etc to notify me of great roundtrip prices into and out of a list of cities; ie SEA to FRA (Frankfurt), SEA to LON (London), etc. I have never been able to get notices on cheap open jaw flights...just R/T flights. Once I see that certain days/ certain arilines have great prices, I incorporate that data into my open-jaw searches. I found the best prices usually within two to three months prior to the trip. I found prices changing by up to $400, day to day. I just waited until I found a flight and price I liked, then bought an "option" on that flight. Many airlines are now letting you hold/reserve your choice of flights for up to 7 days, for amounts between $15 and $40, etc. Look out; you can waste lots of $$$ on these "fare locks", but in my case, I needed the "Boss' to OK the flights, and this helped.

"I found the best prices usually within two to three months prior to the trip." That's not been my experience, but then I am located in a small market. Around five to six months out seems often to be the sweet spot. Bonus: optimal routing.