cornellalum

My first trip to Europe! I'm vacationing with 2 other family members and we have tickets from JFK-FCO on American Airlines. We arrive at 8:25am on a Thursday morning in mid-Dec and want to immediately head out to Athens. We intend to check 3 bags. We're a bit pressed for time (3 days in Athens) so we're planning to fly.

Airline options for 3 people, roundtrip travel FCO-ATH:
1) EasyJet: 10:40am departure 270 Euro (includes 3 checked bags)
2) Aegean Airlines: 11:00am departure, 600 Euro
3) Aitalia: 3:25pm departure, 713 Euro
4) Olympic Air: 10:00am departure, 390 Euro (priced using ITA but I can't book it on Orbitz)

Prices listed above include taxes and fees and are for roundtrip travel.

I don't know about the reliability / comfort / convenience of either of these airlines, or about the convenience of transiting in FCO. I'm pretty sure I'll have to re-check luggage since AA doesn't have interline agreements with any of the airlines above.

Any recommendations about which airline to choose? I will be traveling with elderly parents, so I'm thinking that Aegean Airlines would be a good choice comfort-wise, except that it's much more expensive compared to EasyJet. Any recommendations for EasyJet?

el_cid_cdor

In that case, take easyjet but pay for priority boarding. In flight comfort will be same on most of the airlines.

757DUD

The only point to consider is, whether one of the tickets rebookable. If you head into a delay, you probably have to buy a new ticket from easy jet. The comfort is mostly quite the same as long as you book speedy boarding (OK, you don't get anything to eat for free, but you can buy quite a lot for 300 Euro directly from easyjet.
cheers
757DUD

cornellalum

Thanks -- we'll probably be booking EasyJet because of the huge difference in cost. We'll be getting trip insurance which should cover any delays. I missed a connection before in Argentina and trip insurance covered the cost of a walk-up one way ticket to reach my final destination.