Budget Travel - Looking for European Deals out of DC

Have a BF in Europe that I'm planning to visit over Labor Day and am desperately seeking a reasonably priced flight to Europe during that period. Incredibly flexible on dates -- just looking to capitalize on PTO on the 1 September and hoping to stay 6-8 days.

Willing to consider any European location (would prefer Southern Europe -- Italy, etc) just need to fly out of the DC area (DCA, IAD, BWI).

Would appreciate any tips/suggestions FT has on how to cope with these crazy gas prices! Thank you!!

Try Farecompare.com.

Please read the sticky at the top of the mileage run page. This forum is to post deals you've already found. Asking for others to find you a deal isn't appropriate here.

Have a BF in Europe that I'm planning to visit over Labor Day and am desperately seeking a reasonably priced flight to Europe during that period. Incredibly flexible on dates -- just looking to capitalize on PTO on the 1 September and hoping to stay 6-8 days.

Willing to consider any European location (would prefer Southern Europe -- Italy, etc) just need to fly out of the DC area (DCA, IAD, BWI).

Would appreciate any tips/suggestions FT has on how to cope with these crazy gas prices! Thank you!!

You just missed a great sale on LH ;)

Welcome!

Try searching every day or so at http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch/ Do a "month long search" to find out which days in Aug/Sep have the lowest prices, then go to kayak or expedia to book it. Put in WAS as the city code for "all DC airports", LON, for all London airports. When you've narrowed down some cheaper days, you can go to date specific search, and put in "up to 300 miles away" to find nearby airports.

Also, Farecompare.com's map page will tell you which cities in Europe have sales currently.

I would recommend http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/ to sign up for email alerts from your city, and maybe another airport nearby. But you need to open the emails as soon as you get them, and search right away if you see a good fare, because the best fares only last a few hours.

Good luck!

Have a BF in Europe that I'm planning to visit over Labor Day and am desperately seeking a reasonably priced flight to Europe during that period. Incredibly flexible on dates -- just looking to capitalize on PTO on the 1 September and hoping to stay 6-8 days.

Willing to consider any European location (would prefer Southern Europe -- Italy, etc) just need to fly out of the DC area (DCA, IAD, BWI).

Would appreciate any tips/suggestions FT has on how to cope with these crazy gas prices! Thank you!!

Welcome to FT! Concerning dvs7310's comment, it is true that "low fare" requests are discouraged on most FT forums, but Budget Travel has been relatively welcoming, so you are in the right place as far as I am concerned.

(1) The best for you to research this is matrix.itasoftware.com.
Click on 30 day search. Fill other fields as follows:

From: Was
To: Lis;Mad;Rom;Mil;Ath;Ist
Date: Sep 1
Staying: 6-8 nights

Leave the rest as it is. This will search for lowest airfares for a 6-8 day trip starting between 9/1 and 9/30 from any Washington area airport to any around Lisbon, Madrid, Rome, Milan, Athens, Istanbul. Change dates and cities as you wish.

As you can imagine Sep is expensive. November-early December is cheaper.

(2) Having targeted a date and destination as promising, do the normal round trip search just for that combination.

(3) Repeat at Kayak.com and at the airline(s) that came up as most promising.

Good news or bad news, this will give you an honest picture. Final note: ITA does not sell tickets. Kayak would send you to a link that does. Any airline would of course be glad to. Everything else being equal, I would suggest buying from the primary airline.

Good luck. Feel free to pm me if you wish.

From: Was
To: Lis;Mad;Rom;Mil;Ath;Ist
Date: Sep 1
Staying: 6-8 nights


As 1 Sept is desired to be included in the trip, I'd suggest starting with Aug. 24.

Other than that smallest of quibbles, great post and attitude, Aktchi.

As 1 Sept is desired to be included in the trip, I'd suggest starting with Aug. 24...Other than that smallest of quibbles, great post and attitude, Aktchi.

Good observation re the date, and thanks for your kind words.

I have taken courier flights to Europe that were pretty cheap. Since your dates are flexible, you might look into that option. This was about 10 years ago and I lived in NYC. Don't know what the landscape is like for courier flights after 9/11 and out of the DC area.

This was about 10 years ago and I lived in NYC. Don't know what the landscape is like for courier flights after 9/11 and out of the DC area.

Several threads on courier flights throughout FT fora over the past couple of years, and consensus seems to be that they are pretty much a thing of the past. There may be a smattering of them, but nothing like it used to be.

EmailKid

I just booked a (relatively) cheap ticket from Richmond to Bordeaux for August 25 - Sept 16 ($1050 on LH & UA through travelocity -- flights have been confirmed by the airline, so hopefully no travelocity nightmare as of now).

I used cfares -- they were offering free platinum membership for 90 days (note that this offer did not show up until two weeks or so into my free "gold" membership) -- and I just ran searches all the time. Tuesday or Wednesday departures will be the cheapest, so look at that. I had decided on the dates that I wanted, so several times a day, I ran a search. It's amazing how much prices fluctuate even within a certain date. One day, there was a significant drop in price, so I booked it. The low fare lasted 3 days, and it's been back up to 1200 since. Since I was booking two tickets, the 150+ savings per ticket was significant for us.

The above strategy is going to be difficult for you to implement since you're also flexible on airports, so I would follow the already given advice to isolate the best date/city pairs, then just run searches and hope for a drop. Oh, also, re: cfares -- they have this "cAgent" service ... it didn't work for me. After I booked my 1050 fare, cAgent wrote to say they had reserved for me a ticket at 1130 or something like that.

Airfarewatchdog is a good idea.

Good luck!

Look at some of the site for the LCC's inside the Budget Travel forum...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=468908