Seeking Low Airfares for a Vacation this Summer? Are You Out of Luck !
 

Summer Vacationers Seeking Low Airfares Are Out of Luck in todays Wall Street Journal.

What's good for the airlines and their load factors are NOT so good for pax looking for summer deals! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

The load factors are up due to several reasons:

1)Everyone who did not go to Europe last year due to Kosovo is going this year.
2)Europe (Italy is "sold out") has lots of special year 2000 events going on.
3)The strong dollar is tempting more people to go.
4)The airlines are putting more aircraft back onto their Asia runs, shrinking seat inventory across the Atlantic.

While deals are much harder to find, sometimes you can get still get lucky. Had a friend who wanted to go from Seattle to London for 3 months this summer and her local travel agent told her no dice (flights are full/and or cost would be $1800). I called Canada 3000 and they had a fare (for the dates she wanted) for $438 return!!!!

In a spot check of the lowest fares available to 10 US cities from Seattle yesterday, prices were up an average of 41 percent from a year ago.

That reflects a national trend as airlines increase fares, executives say, because of higher jet-fuel costs.

Travel agents, however, offer another explanation: Airlines have raised prices because they can.

"Prices are definitely up. Fuel is part of it, but I think it's mostly because demand is up."
http://www.seattlep-i.com/business/fare20.shtml

Southwest is offering a $238 roundtrip anywhere they fly. If you can find space, most of the other carriers have matched it selectively. As usual, try PVD or MHT instead of BOS, ISP instead of LGA or JFK, BWI instead of DCA or IAD or even PHL. And remember ALB - just got a $130 RT fare ALB/ORD on AA and $255 RT SFO/PVD on UA.

[This message has been edited by JerryFF (edited 06-20-2000).]

Unfortunately, those days seem to be over.
The lowerst fare being offered by AA on SJC2ISP is $548. I have travelled a lot on the discounted fares earlier this year but this summer season is killing any chance of the fare match..

SJC2ISP - you are correct about those city pairs, but there is still a $220 RT fare between OAK and ISP and $380 RT between SFO and ISP.

[This message has been edited by JerryFF (edited 06-20-2000).]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/422927.asp