Rome to home?

Sometimes flights from Milan can be less expensive than Rome. You could spend 1+ extra days at the end and take the train up to Milan for your return flight if they are significantly cheaper.

I know your feelings. This summer one direction of our flight had a stopover because of the fickleness of frequent flier miles. Fortunately it worked out fine this year but we try to take nonstop flights too because of a few missed connections (usually weather related) in the past.

retgumshu, are you looking at multi-city (aka open jaw) fares? Or are you looking just at a one-way fare back from Rome? Multi-city tickets are pretty close to the R/T fare to and from one city.

I am seeing EWR to CDG, and FCO to EWR for $739 on United. And I am seeing PHL to CDG and FCO to PHL on American for $701. Looks pretty good to me

Stan, I checked multi-city and one-way.

Sam, where the heck did you see those fare prices??? If you can tell me where to get those prices, I'm a happy man.

Booking the multi-city trip gives you the best price and protection against connection issues. One-way tickets are almost always quite expensive for trans-Atlantic travel.

If you were to buy a separate Easy Jet or Ryan Air ticket to Paris, you open yourself to a variety of risks. You would have to collect and re-check baggage, and go back through security, and you'd have no recourse if a late or cancelled European flight made you miss your trans-Atlantic flight.

Sam are those prices non-stop flights? Prices seem too low to me to be direct will be good news for the OP if I am wrong though.

As to what Laura stated, if it works out much cheaper (and it does not shock me that Paris non-stop flights are much lower than Rome) I would only do it if you are staying a couple of nights in Paris at the end. That way the issue of it being a separate ticket really doesn't factor in. If the savings are what I suspect you can pay for a couple of nights stay in Paris with the difference.

(my recent trip "ended" in Venice but once I figured out the airfare home to Boston I reworked the trip and added 4 nights in Paris at the end. Got a super cheap Venice-Paris flight via Vueling Air and then a cheap flight home from Paris to Boston)

@retgumshu. I was on matrix.itasoftware.com and yes, those were nonstops. However, I did not know which BOE tour you were on so I guessed May 7 to May 20. Let me know which one and I will check again. It looks like all the airlines are going to boost their fares for summer about May 14 leaving the states, so that could be an issue.

Sam, you're the man! I checked your web site and, indeed, the round trip air fare from Philadelphia (closer to home) to Paris are around $700-750, round trip. We were planning on traveling May 12-28, but I noted the airfares increase significantly after May 14th, as you mentioned. So, we're going to go earlier and take advantage of the lower prices. As for getting from Rome to Paris, we'll take a regional flight and, as mentioned above, stay in Paris for a day or two in order to avoid possible trouble making the return flight home. Thanks, everyone. I'll let you know how it turns out.

You can fly home directly from Rome. Use the Multi-city tab and put in PHL to CDG for the first flight, and FCO to PHL for the second flight. Check the options for "non-stops only". I also like to put in the "1 day before" for the outbound flight and "1 day later" for the return flight to see if there is any advantage to flying a different day.
You will have to do this on the American Airlines site and buy the tickets there.