Hello everyone,

My fiancee and I would like to travel to BsAs as part of our honeymoon in July 2010. We're considering flying into Brazil (any number of airports, I'll use GIG as an example for simplicity) and out of EZE. I've been looking at flights from IAD as I live roughly 5 miles from the airport, and I do see that UA offers nonstop, but at the moment the IAD-EZE-IAD is in the neighborhood of $1600. I know this wouldn't be the actual flight we would take, but UA seems to "average" the IAD-GIG roundtrip and the IAD-EZE roundtrip to arrive at the cost for IAD-GIG, EZE-IAD, and the EZE-IAD leg seems to be the more expensive of the two. I also realize that it is still 10 months until July, so prices may change. Here are my questions:

1) Is there an expectation that this price will come down dramatically? Is there a historical level that I should be looking at, perhaps closer to $1000?

2) If prices do come down, when would they usually do so? I've heard that November tends to be a good time to book for the following July, any experience with that?

3) Should I consider nonstop options? As an example, I see COPA offering one stops through PTY in the $850 range. While I wouldn't mind paying $100 or even $200 more to keep it a nonstop, the COPA flights sound appealing at almost half the current price. However, it looks like the layover times in PTY are either an hour or 10 hours, both of which sound rather unpleasant. Any experience with COPA on this route from anyone? Alternate airline suggestions? We will also consider flying into or out of DCA, would rather not fly out of BWI unless it saves a small fortune.

Thanks for your help everyone, I'm really looking forward to the trip.

Eric