photojojo

Did I miss a memo or something? I'm trying to book two trips to Germany in April and October and normally there is a nice linear fare increase from Main, C+, Premium and D1 but (at least at the moment) the lower fares are on par with what is expected but D1 is between 3-5x higher than Premium. All of the outbound D1 fares are >$6600 but the return fares drop to the more typical ~$4000. Why the premium to get in to Europe this summer?

CPMaverick

Pretty sure there are two years of pent-up demand for summer travel to Europe. We are not in normal times.

FlyingPants

I have noticed similarly ridiculous D1 fares when trying to purchase flights to London in September. One thing you can try removing a leg and booking it individually if you are connecting. I am traveling from IND and booking a multi-city trip JFK-LHR and LHR-IND was $3000 cheaper just by eliminating the one IND-JFK segment. It's easy to then book the other segment and link the reservations so your baggage flows through. You don't get other schedule change benefits, but it's worth the price difference.

DataPlumber

You will have to get creative. I booked * tickets in January to Europe in July and was pleased to get tickets at $3700rt. Now same flights and dates are $6K and up.

xliioper

It's largely due to not meeting advance purchase requirements and minimum stay requirements for the cheaper D1 fares. There are $4.2K roundtrip D1 fares ($4000 base) on CVG-MUC (fare basis IN1J57D2), but they have a 50 day advance purchase requirement which means the fares are only available for flights in May and later as April is simply too close-in for buying such fares in mid-March. If you had purchased the flights back in early February, you could have gotten the fares for April dates since the flights would have been more than 50 days out. These also have 7-day minimum stay requirements and mid-week departure/return requirements. Staying less than 7 days or booking departure/returns on weekends will result in higher fares. The Fare Rules can be found at bottom of page after you selected flights at the "Fare Rules" link.

photojojo

Interesting, I thought I did the "my dates are flexible" and didn't see these fares. The April trip is a quick one, in on Friday back out on Tuesday. Outbound in the 6's and 7's (and 10's even) but return is ~$4000. I may have made a goof when I looked at October and left the original 5 day 4 night schedule.

photojojo

Oh good call. It's been a long time since I had to pull that trick and completely forgot about it.

sdix

You should try flying SFO to anywhere in Florida. Crazy Crazy fares

xliioper

Sometimes they will have discounted D1 fares that only require a Saturday night stay (measured from arrival, so you have to leave Friday or earlier). But I'm seeing no such fare filings right now. The only way to get D1 fares in the $4K or less range is to have a roundtrip booking with at least a 7 night stay and at least a 50 day advance purchase (which means April dates are now too close in). For October, the 7 day minimum stay D1 fares start at $3.7K roundtrip. There are also 14 day minimum stay fares starting at $3.2K roundtrip. The cheapest 7/14 day min stay fares require mid-week departures. There are also somewhat higher 7/14 day min stay fares for weekend departures.

FabCW

My August D1 fares to France were around $2300 I think. I bought them in January. If your dates are flexible, it helps a lot.

photojojo

Heck yea! I'd take CDG for $2300 any day of the week. That's a great fare.

After posting this I called my favorite tour guide in Munich to see if he was going to be around and he informed me that yes he would, but also that he was allotted two dates for Oktoberfest, so I'm doing that instead. Surprisingly the airfares for this are better than mid october after everything is over. Go figure. I really can't make heads or tails with the D1 fares this summer/fall.

xliioper

Definitely nothing that cheap to CDG right now. It's not always just about flexibility, sometimes you also have to be lucky and book when there are some cheap fare filings out there. About the only thing I see under $3K roundtrip to EU right now on DL and main alliance partners are JFK-LHR D1 fares from $2K RT. Although you'll have to likely connect to get that fare as there are very few flights with Z bucket open on non-stop's.

Keith2004

I got in on the JFK-LHR prices
i got RT D1 in early and late November for under 2k

I also had a trip that dropped from 4.2k to 2.8k when I started with JFK-LHR for a JKF-LHR-KRK-BWI

As for summer i got a one way late June AF biz IAD-CDG for 120k miles....thats what passes for a skymiles deal nowadays lol

xliioper

You can still get from North America to EU in J for 65K miles with some creativity. Granted this option will likely only be appealing to someone based in south Florida or if you want to combine vacations.

photojojo

See... Like... WHAT?!

Trying to different city pairs just for giggles and see this little gem just above a two stop for $7700.