So having finally convinced Mr SM that ex DUB, INV or even AMS would not be a major upheaval I’m not finding much in the way of flights. I may well be searching wrongly as I thought with options as varied as Nashville, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas and Denver and any combination of round trips or multi cities I would surely be able to find something reasonable but so far no joy.
Im looking for early September for 16 days in CW with car hire and as a I said, pretty flexible about the end location. Home airports are Glasgow or Edinburgh so need to be able to position from there.

Have searched on BA, Oneworld and also google matrix where I’ve set price alerts but nothing so far. Am I missing something or is it sinply a case of checking daily to see what I can get?

Setup price alerts on Google Flights and hang fire. September is a long way off so I’d (almost) bet my house on something appearing ex INV or AMS in the next 2-3 months. DUB seems to have been less blessed recently but as a ballpark figure I would jump on anything that appears in the £1k pp region. Upto £1,250 I’d accept especially if I was heading into July. It’s once you get below 6 weeks pre departure that the chance of any great deals dries up.

There was a very recent ex AMS deal that I took advantage of for 1k pp to almost anywhere in the States (I bookedNYC in Sept) and I’m currently in California for £2.5k for me & my wife in J with 10days SUV rental ex INV.

Be prepared to move fast if something appears though as the AMS deal lasted less than 1 day.

Also keep an eye on the Premium Fare thread and the TP run one. Whilst you’re not specifically mentioning TPs that’s a good thread for cheaper fares as inevitably those are the ones that trigger interest. ARN often seems the go to origin, and is convenient for HEL if you do fancy routing in some extra TPs.

I saw the ex AMS deal just too late or that would probably have been just what I was after.

will hold on a bit, there’s no desperate rush (other than my own impatience). The car hire can be separate if it restricts options.

Ex INV would probably be the best I could do - ease Mr SM in gently before I start taking him off to more unexpected destinations to start trips to the US!

Special deals can be very random and route specific. I got Berlin to Sydney for £1100 in Premium Economy recently for travel in December, which is ridiculously cheap. The offer was only available from Germany and Austria.

I’ve found CPH to be very good for WTP, we are paying £2800 for 4 in February to SAN with an SUV for 12 nights, UUA’d to Club. Word of warning though, we booked online on a Saturday and had to wait until the German BA holiday office opened on Monday to upgrade.