Son graduating from HS planning Europe trip - are you ready parents?- at last minute (who would have thought a teenager could be so spontaneous??) and airfares are outrageous for June departure/July return.
Any ideas where to look for student fares? As always, THANKS!

That is "high season" and will be the most expensive time to make a trip, period. Airfare will be more expensive and so will lodging. Hopefully the dollar won't get much weaker either.

Try STA Travel and Student Universe.

Seeing as how June is still 5 months off, this seems pretty un-spontaneous if you ask me ... Student fares are normally not that great of a deal and most STA 'deals' at least in my experience seem to come in either purchasing student packages or going in a group, both of which are extremely unappealing to me (a fellow 'spontaneous' 19-year-old). But if he's okay with hostels and/or guided tours, then this may be a viable option.

Best bet is just to wait until an airline has a sale to the specific destination being considered, or to truly take a last-minute trip (i.e. 2-14 days in advance) and use site59.com or any one of their "Last-Minute Deals" partners.

Also, Aer Lingus has great deals into Dublin, and between easyJet, RyanAir, and Aer Lingus all of Europe is covered by LCCs from there.

Edited to add: As an example, ORD-DUB one way can be booked at aerlingus.com for just $144.10 including taxes, for departure tomorrow ^.

You're guaranteed to find some decent deal or another if you try various departure and arrival points. For example the cheapest JFK-AMS for 29/6-14/7 (Icelandair) currently costs half the price of the cheapest PDX-ATH (UA).

From things I've been reading on FT and elsewhere, I'm hearing that loads are way down for Europe over the summer. I'm expecting there to be sales coming up when they decide it's time to get some butts in those seats.

Also, it has been a while...(okay a good long while ) since I've used STA, but I remember them being very good, and never used them for groups or package deals. One trick is to ask them for advice.

for example: NYC-CDG may be $750, even for students, while BA will be offering a student price to LHR for $375.

Then you can look at the European LCCs.

also try student universe.com

Just found a fairly interesting one: JFK-LHR and back for 209.30 GBP all in on UA. I don't think it's going to get any lower, I often pay more than that for my European transcons. If one (understandably) wants to avoid LHR, there is CO's EWR-BHX service for an extra 15 or so GBP.

I've actually had a lot of luck wit both STA Travel and StudentUniverse in the last three years... I'd definitely check them out. After crossing the Atlantic, the LCCs (RyanAir, EasyJet, etc.) and the train (various student Eurail passes, also available via SAT Travel) worked well for me.

Alex

I've also had a lot of success with these two when I was a student. Just have some patience and try a variety of combinations. The benefit of student tickets is that they (often) have lower change fees and more easily allow things like open jaws.

Keep an eye out, though.... BA may have another $20 sale

This is absolutely true, and it's a very good point! I had to change the date of my LHR-SFO flight home when I studied in England in 2002, and it cost all of GBP 15 (at STA Travel). (The way it was done was a little unusual: I had a paper ticket (issued in the US), and the travel agent at STA Travel in the UK simply pasted a thin slip of paper with a hand-written (!) new date onto my paper ticket (and entered the new date into the computer); fortunately, everything went smoothly at the airport.)

The one disadvantage of student tickets is that they sometimes don't accrue FF miles; it depends on the carrier and the booking class.

Alex