netflyer

I am looking at traveling from SFO to Paris, France and Rome, Italy and Venice later next month. I am flexible with dates and the order in which I visit these places.

Is there a good travel search engine out there that can find good hacker fares? For example, if I could buy a round trip from SFO to Paris with a stopover in Rome (or Venice). I have tried some popular travel sites with some of these combinations but it gets tiring and confusing. Perhaps there is a better way out there.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Mwenenzi

Once you are in Eu you are better to have Paris, Rome & Venice Eu travel by a local airline or train. Just find a city to fly into: CDG, AMS, FRA, FCO or what ever. Central Eu is small
Rome to Venice by train is easy. Considering time getting to and at airports point to point (city centers) will be about the same on a train and a more pleasant trip.
Many low cost airlines in Eu.
http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=CDG-FCO-vce&MS=wls&DU=mi
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/europ...il-travel-654/

C W

Most US-Europe fares are not conducive to "hacker" or multi-ticket fares since they require roundtrip travel to not price at a very high level.

Something that may benefit you in your travels is an open jaw. While a normal round trip leaves departs from and returns to the same airport in both directions, an open jaw arrives/departs different airports in one direction. For example SFO-CDG VCE-SFO is an open jaw that might be useful in your travels. Then you would just need to buy a separate ticket for intraeuropean travel.

Many cheap round trip transatlantic fares do offer free open jaws and are great for European vacations. I would suggest starting with Google Flights. Put in SFO-XXX for round trip and find some cheap dates on the calendar. Then once you have a feel for cheap dates from a few cities, switch to multi-city and start exploring open jaws. You'll no longer be able to use the calendar function but you can iterate day by day within your prefound cheap date ranges.

If you want a much more powerful way of searching and more complex options for defining your results try to learn ITA Matrix. This is too complicated for me to explain here, but there are lots of threads and blogs that can teach you the ins and outs. If you start to enjoy searching for airfares as I do and spend a week's worth of evening with ITA Matrix you'll open up a huge new world of possibilities for yourself. But Google Flights is the best place to start. Online travel agencies (Kayak, Expedia, Momondo) are usually not very useful in comparison. Further, NEVER book through them as doing so makes any changes to your ticket much harder the airline and harder and more expensive for you.

Happy searching and feel free to ask any more questions.

I won't say welcome to FlyerTalk since you've been here for 15 years, but nice to see you're onto post #2!

Yoshi212

Open jaw & at least one train ride is the way to go.

One additional point is that it may be best to depart of Paris to avoid having to spend your last day flying early in the morning to get to a connecting city to then spend the next 13+ hours at an airport or on a plane. If you're in Paris you can catch the later 15:35 flight to SFO nonstop and still get the morning in Paris.

Also remember to check flights to ORY.

erik123

If looking for hotels use european url's of booking engines - e.g. triavgo.co.uk

Can save you a lot of money.

netflyer

thanks Mwenenzi, C W, Yoshi212, and erik123 for your great suggestions. I will put your tips to use.

I joined this great website many years back and been a passive user partly because I did not get a chance to travel much. Thank you guys. !

C W

Hopefully there are more travels and more FlyerTalk in your future!

Feel free to ask any more questions. I can give more advice on the European open jaws if needed, I just booked some for friends for this summer

xooz

I often use Skyscanner.com to search for cheap one way fares between European cities. You can use the search "Everywhere" features to get a feel for cheap, one way flights between your departure city and other countries/cities. Good Luck!

netflyer

I think I need it. How do I go about booking these?

I am looking at SFO-CDG and including another country (AMS, LHR, or ZRH) for the trip. Also, need to check if airlines will allow a free stopover in Europe. For example, is the stopover in ZRH free if I fly SwissAir from CDG-ZRH-SFO, and so on. Multi-leg journey for SFO-CDG, CDG-ZRH-SFO gives a higher fare on airline's website indicating that stopover may not be free!

thanks again.

C W

What airline and dates are you looking at?

The more specific you are (flight numbers etc) then more I can help.

Edit: You probably shouldn't be trying to fly SFO-XXX-YYY-SFO, you should be trying to fly SFO-XXX then take a different plane ticket or a train XXX-YYY, then fly YYY-SFO. SFO-XXX-YYY-SFO is not an open jaw, it is a multi-leg trip and they are normally expensive.

netflyer

Looking to fly out from SFO/SJC/OAK on May 18th and return on May 28th (or 29th if it is much cheaper). Open to flying any airline but prefer shorter flying times and hops.

C W

I searched for you on ITA-Matrix. It is the software that powers Google Flights and is very powerful for finding complicated itineraries.

Here is how I entered your search parameters into the multi-city search function. Note the multiple departure airports and how I entered your return date flexibility with the "Or day after" option.



You should be able to easily replicate this search yourself. You can either search by Complete Trips or Individual Flights. This option is shown after you click search and your results appear (be patient, this takes a bit). You should use Individual Flights.

Delta codeshares with AF on a 9:05pm direct flight from SFO to CDG. This is fast and easy to sleep since it leaves in the evening.



Once you select that as your option you should see that for very similar prices you can depart from ZRH, LHR, and MUC and for about +$200 you can depart from FCO or VCE.



A hurdle with ITA Matrix is that you cannot book direclty from it. You can replicate the results in Google Flights or on the airline's website and try and book from there. Or you can use the ITA-Matrix PowerTools Userscript to book, this is slightly advanced however. If you find a flight you like, just tell me how many people and I will send you a bookable link. If you just want to decide which city you want to fly out of, I can pick the best flights as well.

Note that SkyTeam and Star Alliance seem to be basically matching fares on these cities. Both will serve the same destinations that I referred to above for basically the same fares. I prefer SkyTeam and I can generate booking links more easily for them so I have used them for the examples herein.

Finally, for getting between whichever cities you decide on, that is easy. Just go to Google Flights and book a one-way ticket between them. Nothing to do with your overseas flights whatsoever. Or take a train and enjoy the scenery

C W

I also repeated the search with +/- 2 days on both departure and return to make sure the price doesn't drop a lot on a particular combination of days. The only substantially cheaper itinerary is shown. Probably not worth it to deviate from your desired dates.

netflyer

thank you. This is very helpful.

C W

No problem

Let me know if you need booking links for any of the flights.

Also interesting to know what you end up choosing. Have a great trip!