zeer0

SFO-LHR has been in the $500-600 range quite often recently. I've used it as a jumping off point for the rest of Europe.

expressboy

I am also seeing crazy fares to Europe. Specifically EWR-BCN in February and March. Everything prices around 2k+.

pushmyredbutton

As mentioned upthread, the issue appears to be the SNS requirements. Almost all dates in Feb and Mar appear around ~$500 when you add a SNS:

https://goo.gl/flights/A9JL
https://goo.gl/flights/ivZZ

Aussienarelle

What is SNS? Always learning new things on FT. :-)

pushmyredbutton

expressboy

Look at these dates. Include an SNS but crazy prices

https://goo.gl/flights/gYed

TominLazybrook

I'm seeing nutso prices as well. 8 grand to fly anywhere business class in Europe on United. Even with stops. Google flights will show a much more reasonable price, but when you look at the fare....it immediately goes up to 8 grand. And that's with a SNS. Looks like a bug. UA apparently has a pricing policy of hammering Houston customers, but this is beyond what any reasonable person would pay

TA

Maybe there's something going on those weekends in BCN that they know about. You remove the discount carriers / weird connections and only TAP has <$700 fares. Seems all the majors are high priced those weekends, NYC-BCN:

https://www.google.com/flights/#sear...D8;md=960;eo=e

Maybe take the train from Madrid:
https://www.google.com/flights/#sear...D8;md=960;eo=e

tods27

I was looking at DEN-FRA for early June and it is pricing fairly high. Even with a SNS (or 7 day stay), it's coming out over 2K for economy. Without the SNS/7day it's pricing at $3400. I think that this is just another data point that they are not releasing cheap fares for long-lead-time buying.

Artpen100

I've already purchased a month or so ago east coast RT to AMS and CDG for what would have been about $2.8K for business, but for applying a GPU on one leg making it $2.3K, so I suspect it is just pricing software fluctuations which might come down again, whether J or Y.

Fizzer

Just be careful if booking Air Canada that many of their European routes are now flown by AC Rouge. High density LCC service at mainline prices . Have avoided them like the plague due to their reputation but I see Paris, Barcelona, Athens, Glasgow and Edinburgh are Rouge. They have also been known to sell it as a mainline flight and then Rouge it later, with no notification to you.

Fizzer

Well the crocuses should be out by then.

zeer0

At least Rouge still offers all *A gold benefits. Most of the *A owned LCC's do not (ex. Eurowings, Thai Smile, Silkair)

Fizzer

Please don't give them ideas,

txirish

I'm seeing more reasonable prices now for 7 day trips in April, like $1250 RT AUS-BCN in Y and $5700 for J. My original searches were for one way/multi-city (we are returning to the US via ship), which were 2x that just for the AUS-BCN portion. (I was hoping to use some expiring GPUs.)

Maybe when I started searching RT fares I had weird dates or triggered some strange bug on united.com resulting in the crazy-high fares. Their search UX is awful - it remembers some stuff if you return to the advanced search page but other fields have to be re-entered every time. Changing only the date on the flight results page can change other search parameters without warning.

In retrospect, I probably should have checked RT fares with a distant return date, maybe the more normal Y fares would have shown up. I could have just abandoned the return leg or tried to repurpose it for another trip. But we booked J for a very reasonable rate via the cruise line. (I hate yielding control of flight details, but the price was right.) Thanks for the advice, everyone!