So here%26#39;s the deal. I was looking for airfares for a trip that I will be making in May. We%26#39;re primarily going for a wedding in southern France and wouldn%26#39;t necessarily have spent more than a night or two in Paris, but Paris would have been the most convenient airport. However I got a serious case of sticker shock when I started looking for fares. They were almost $300 higher than what we are paying in January. So I did a bit of looking around and discovered that I could save almost $250 by flying to either Geneva or Frankfurt, and between $150 and $200 flying to London or Dublin. Geneva was a workable option for us and only added a couple of hours to our train travel. So CDG loses. (I%26#39;m sure it cares...)
Yesterday a question from another forum member led me to check RT fares for July from NYC. The CDG fare was about $1300. Fares to Geneva, Frankfurt or Dublin on the same dates were $400 to $500 less. Aer Lingus will fly you from JFK to CDG with a connection in Dublin for $300 less than the least expensive non-stop.
Bottom line, if you are thinking of combining cities or even if you are just visiting Paris, look at fares to other airports besides CDG. You can do a RT fom Geneva by TGV (3 hours) for as little as €40, from Frankfurt (about 4 hours) for €78, and both Aer Lingus and Ryanair have low fares from Dublin.
It doesn%26#39;t always work. Between now and mid-March there is little difference among fares to CDG and the other cities I have mentioned, but after that fares to Paris rise dramatically in comparison to the others.
So OK, the topic heading is misleading, but it got your attention, right?
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I%26#39;m fare shopping myself right now and you are right.
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When I was fare shopping for a business trip to CDG last month the key factor was a Saturday night stay. Sunday to Thursday was $2200. Saturday to Thursday was $650.
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Being in the airline industry, I know that direct flights are generally the most expensive.
For example, check the fares from a major US city to Paris on Air France, and then check airlines such as Lufthansa, KLM, Swiss or whatever from there to Paris, meaning you have to transit through Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Zürich to get there -- and you%26#39;ll see that they slash the fares so that you will accept the inconvenience.
I have a colleague in Amsterdam who almost always flies Air France from Amsterdam to Bangkok via Paris because it is so much cheaper than a direct flight from Amsterdam on KLM or Thai. If I wanted to fly on the same AF flight that he uses, I would pay several hundred euros more, even though I%26#39;m flying from Paris.
Check around and you will see that this is true for most destinations in the world. And no, you can%26#39;t %26quot;throw away%26quot; the first portion of a ticket -- it invalidates the entire ticket, so I can%26#39;t buy AMS-PAR-BKK-PAR-AMS at the same price as my colleague and just get on the plane in Paris. I would discover that my ticket had been cancelled by not getting on in Amsterdam. The best thing that you can get away with in this sort of situation is to just not use the last segment, but you can do that only if you have no checked luggage.
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I agree, and if you were to price a direct US to Franfurt and a US-Paris-Frankfurt the second will most likely be cheaper.
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I would think it%26#39;s almost too early to book for May. This year, my friends booked for July in January and then fares dropped by a couple of hundred dollars. Depends on if you are willing to take a chance.
In my own case, I will almost always take the non-stop unless the fare is crazy different, as it was a few years ago when I was flying to Krakow and it was much cheaper to fly through Frankfurt.
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I recently flew with Air Canada for the first time because it was $400.00 cheaper than BA or AF. It was a huge inconvenience. However, $400.00 buys a lot of macarons. We flew into London and out of Paris.
I%26#39;m considering a flight I found from LAX to Zurich (non-stop on Swiss air) spend 2 nights in Zurich and get a nonstop to Paris. Then back to LA from Paris. It is actually a bit cheaper than LAX to CDG round trip and we%26#39;ve never been to Zurich so it might be interesting. LA to Amsterdam and back from CDG is another possibility I%26#39;m considering. I guess this calls for some creativity.
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I%26#39;m not really talking about the difference between non-stop flights and flights requiring a connection, though I agree with everything that has been said about that. I%26#39;m talking about the huge difference this year between non-stop flights to CDG and non-stops to other places such as GVA, FRA, LON and DUB. It has always been a bit more expensive to fly to CDG thsn the others, but the difference in previous years has usually been less than 10%, not sufficient to warrant the added inconvenience. This year, and for the first time, I am seeing differentials in late spring and early summer as high as 35% or even higher. That is just amazing to me.
WarriorJan - I did book the flight to Geneva. The fare is only about $50 higher than it would be in January so it has nowhere to go but up. Last year%26#39;s cuts in fares on the N. Atlantic route were unprecedented. I%26#39;d be surprised if we saw them this year though there is certainly room for fares to CDG to come down. But yes, in general terms I wouldn%26#39;t normally book a May trip for a couple of months and a summer trip probably early-ish next year. I%26#39;d be watching trends now though. If oil prices continue to rise fares could follow.
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IrishRovr, you%26#39;re a good person and I hope it won%26#39;t happen to you, but I think it is frankly silly to have booked already for a trip next May.
For one thing, Air France is just about to start its A-380 service on the Paris-New York route in November, and that is going to change lots of things about pricing on the route, although nobody is yet sure exactly how.
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kerouac -
I paid just $675 all-inclusive for a RT from CLE to GVA in late May. Currently the lowest available fare on the CDG routing is well over $900. I just checked (I wouldn%26#39;t normally...) and the $685 fare to GVA is no longer available for the dates I need.
I will bet you a large sum, let%26#39;s call it 100 units, to be paid if I lose in USD (or peanuts) and in €uros (or noix de cajou) if you lose, that you will not be able to find me a RT fare from CLE to CDG lower than $675 on any date after the middle of May any time between now and the end of February which is the latest I would normally have booked.
Deal?
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Your fare looks just fine to me. As I read your posts all the time, I have no doubt that you have lots of knowledge in hand.
I have to start checking things, as my extended family is loosely talking about going to Edinburgh to see my nephew in a high-school play at a festival there next summer.
I was astonished at how much the fares came down this past summer. I used miles, so didn%26#39;t care myself. I didn%26#39;t really realize that CDG was much more expensive than places other than London, where I can often find good fares to.
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