149113

Looking to book something in 2013. Prices pretty much at $1600 per all spring and summer. Typical or high right now? Thoughts on waiting for flights to drop in price?

perseus11

Actually, DL's PHL-CDG prices are almost identical to US's in Spring/Summer 2013 - and they use a 757 versus US's 333. Prices will probably stay that way until the seasonal "test the waters" period ends sometime between March and early May. I'd wait until early May before making a reservation. However, both the DL and US flights are frequently nearly full all summer.

Now what you might consider is UA/CO PHL-EWR-CDG and save a whopping $600 !!! Seems well worth tolerating the PHL-EWR commuter flight.

149113

Gotta do it before the end of 2012 to take advantage of an Envoy upgrade cert. I'll get another in 2013 but I have that put aside for a trip to Rome in the fall.

Cloudwanderer

Does the envoy cert. have to me used by the end of 2012? I thought that one had until the end of Feb to use it?

$1600 is really high for economy to CDG especially in Spring. I hope that you are able to hang on a couple of extra months before having to book...

Biggie Fries

• You have until 28 February 2013 to apply the CP certs
• This said, the chance of using them ahead of time for PHL-CDG and/or return in Spring/Summer is fairly low. Which I suppose means that if by some chance US will flog you a ticket now for May 2013 at $1600 with CP cert usage guaranteed, this would be worth doing for the Envoy experience (and not to lose the value of the certs), even though the price of a Y class ticket as Y class alone is too high.
• I do this trip a lot and the prices do come down. You can monitor the seats to get some sense of what the market is doing. This past year, even in the "worst" situation where I was looking at a one week turn end of May that was consistently priced at $1550, some time in April it eventually fell to $1350. The rest of the times, including an earlier May trip, I got for $1,000 or less.

LM225

This. As a data point, I did this trip in May, booked in March and flew for $1,050.

la2clt

You should be able to get a voucher if the fare goes down without interfering with your upgrade. Less the change fee of course.

149113

Thanks for the info on the CP cert. I've always used the perks in the same calendar year so was not sure of the carry over policy and called CP support to confirm. That info was direct from the CP support desk so they may need to do some additional training on that perk.

We are looking to travel June, July or August so even if they carry over till 2/28 we will not be traveling immediately. What are typical prices at that time of year (summer)? I was assuming we could get something closer to $750-900. Is that unreasonable?

Biggie Fries

Unless the world economy really slows further so that oil prices re-collapse, I am thinking that $775-$950 is the bottom for the PHL-CDG market, and these are the kind of prices you will only see in the winter.

The problem, of course -- but also the solution -- is that advance CP cert usage availability tends to be correlated with low Y fares. Why is this the solution? Think Paris in winter. It's just not that cold -- yesterday was mid-50s and full of sun; the streets were as crammed with folks as in Spring. See here for data; unless you happened to catch that one bad week in the beginning of February, you are looking at a darned good chance of not needing a real winter coat.

The converse is also true: I've paid good $$ for a romantic late May trip and seen gray skies and cold winds. And on 21 June one year -- the longest day of the year, right ? -- I needed a sweater and a raincoat and was still pelted with hail. July and August are also not the best months to visit.

YMMV.

149113

That's good info and appreciated. With work it's gonna be really tough to do trip any earlier than summer but it's good to know that spring is nice over there and not as risky as one might expect.

kimharp

I watched the PHL/CDG route all of last year, because I was the leader of a group of 12 booking a trip in May 2012 over Memorial Day weekend. The actual booking was out of my hands and we ended up flying group travel on UA, EWR/CDG, for $1400, booked in early March. I saw fares on US out of Philly fluctuate from $700 to $1600 during the period of Oct 11--March 12. As late as the end of March, we saw fares in the $900 range on US out of Philly for our dates. In the Jan/Feb timeframe they fluctuated from about $900 to $1300, if memory serves. At one point they hit $1600 but I can't remember exactly when.

Based on my experience last year, I would watch this like a hawk into the beginning of next year, and jump on it if it goes under $1000. Even though the booking ended up being out of my hands, I was obsessed with checking these fares almost daily for about 6 mos., and they did fluctuate quite a bit!

149113

Ended up booking late April through early May and got them for $1000 each which I though was good considering the $1600 tag back in November.

No Envoy upgrades now for either flight... US said to check back every week by calling support to see if they became available. If nothing is available by 2/28/2013 the Envoy certs will expire and my certs for 2013 will be used instead (assuming there are seats that open up). Hopefully that does not happen because I had plans for a fall Rome trip and those upgrade certs were slotted for that trip.

There has gotta be an easier way to manage something like this.

pbuntrock

This has always been the biggest issue with the CP program. For all of the years people have complained about this, you'd think US IT would fix this. Just a simple queue to allow applying the certs to a reservation, then clearing when the seats become available. Having people calling in daily to check on this just can't be cost effective, plus poor customer satisfaction.

149113

Yeah, it's completely backwards for a person at the CP level. Most of us that travel this much have little to no time to do the level of follow up required.