US is offering great fares to Europe for summer travel. The only problem is if you wanna go anytime soon you have to stay over a month before you can return. Here is the link to the promotion.

http://www.usairways.com/promotions/specials/diamond_deals.htm

Those are pretty reasonably for mid-summer. I don't think you have to stay for a month though--that's just poor layout. The US Airways employee who formatted thhe page must be preoccupied about something.

Actually, you do.

For example - select the first available date to Paris - July 14. It brings up the valid return dates - the earliest is Aug 22, just as listed on the initial page.

From the Fare Details (KE7WN)
FOR OUTBOUND TRAVEL TRAVEL IS NOT VALID 28JUN-13JUL02, 18-20JUL02, 23JUL-3AUG02, 10AUG02 OR 15AUG-30DEC02. OR FOR INBOUND TRAVEL TRAVEL IS NOT VALID 28JUN-21AUG02 OR 31AUG-1SEP02.

4JUL02 IS THE FIRST DATE THAT TRAVEL MAY COMMENCE. ALL TRAVEL AT THIS FARE MUST BE COMPLETED BY 7SEP02.

You don't have to stay a month. You can select any outbound from its list and any return from its list. For example, I chose Amsterdam departing on August 21st, and the return options were August 25th through 29th. You could stay a month, or for few days, and I would think for any amount of time in between.

I don't know why I am going to step into this war of words, but the original point was "if you want to leave SOON, you have to stay a month". It is generally true that the departure and return dates to get these fares might be more than a month apart if you want to leave SOON - just look at the dates.

Defining "SOON" as the next 3 weeks (until 7/21), the earliest returns would be:

AMS 8/7
Madrid 8/27
Paris 8/23
Rome 8/27

London doesnt have any dates coming SOON. But otherwise 3 of the 4 cities would need roughly a month-long stay to leave in the next 3 weeks.

The Amsterdam 'counterexample" above just happens to pick the last departure dates and grabs convenient return dates that are only a few days away.

The bottom line is that, as advertised, there were some seats left on these flights and they're offering lower prices for them (not bargain basement prices, I might add - higher than fall/winter fares). If you want to take advantage of them, the dates are listed. If you cant, too bad. US is under no obligation to offer cheap seats at convenient times (deelmakur will be happy to know that).

Using the AMS example above, the fare sale code is KE7WN. If you book both ways with in the restricted dates, the base fare is $577 ($659 total).

Luckily, this fare sale is combinable - If you do Aug 14 departure (fare sale ok) and August 21 (not in fare sale) return then the total is $793 - you get KE7WN outbound from the fare sale, but a higher HHXS* fare on the return. Still end up saving at least $150 off the $840 base fare valid in that period.

So yes, in general you need to stay a month to leave soon, but with the range of dates in July and August generally given, this can save some money even to come back sooner.