Star Airlines

I am trying to line up airfare for my family of 5 to visit France in July 2010. Most of the non-stop flights from NYC are $1,300+ (incl. fees), except for an outfit called %26quot;Star Airlines,%26quot; which has a nonstop JFK-CDG fare for around $800 R/T (again, incl. fees). I found this on airfare.com

I can find very little info on this airline, and so am a bit skeptical. Does anyone have any background? Thanks.

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XL Airways France, based at CDG, operates as Star Airlines.

XL Airways was part of XL Leisure, now in bankruptcy, which had acquired the airline Transat.

A good portion of the $800 R/T fare will be consumed by various taxes which does not leave a great deal of money with which to operate the flight let alone an airline, particularly as this is for peak summertime travel. As attractive as this price is, its allure might be dimmed by associated risk.

If something happens to this Airline between the time you purchase these tickets and your final flight home from vacation in July, it will most likely cost you a great deal more the $1300 per ticket on an established carrier.

It%26#39;s just a matter of how lucky you feel.

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Thanks for the perspective. I don%26#39;t think I feel that lucky.

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I agree with Sarastro%26#39;s general suggestion that Star Airlines may be better avoided.

Have you considered flying to somewhere other than Paris? You do not say where in France you are going but I just ran a quick check for random dates in July on mobissimo.com and came up with a $790 RT to Geneva on Swiss (through cheapair.com), an $850 RT to Frankfurt (about 2 hours from Strasbourg by train) on Air India and $940 RT on Lufthansa, and an $885 RT to Dublin, from which low cost flights to Paris and other places in France are available on Aer Lingus (and Ryanair...). Any of thes would leave you with quite a bit of change out of $1300 even when you add on train travel or whatever. (Incidentally if you were thinking of renting a car I have found that rentals in both Germany and Switzerland can be less expensive than in France.

If you really want to fly non-stop to CDG, I think I%26#39;d spend a few weeks tracking fares on mobissimo, Kayak, Bing and any other fare trackers you like. I think the $1300 figure is a bit on the high side. If you do wait a bit, just check once a day to see if you can see any trend. I would probably be thinking of booking shortly after the holidays, but you may not be comfortable waiting that long. It%26#39;s all a bit of a crap-shoot anyway...

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Thanks IrshRovr. Our trip will center on Paris and SW France, so flying via Switzerland and Germany is probably out, but via Dublin looks promising. I saw a R/T DUB-CDG in July 2010 for EUR 161.50, for example (Aer Lingus).

As you suggest I%26#39;ll probably wait just a bit to book anything, but probably not as long as the holidays. Thanks again for the advice.

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Geneva is only about 3 hours from Paris by TGV and one way PREMs (advance purchase non-refundable) fares are as low as €20. The Dublin fare I found was on Continental out of EWR incidentally. If the fares to the two cities were about the same and even if GVA was a bit highyer I%26#39;d pick GVA over Dublin — and I love Dublin and grew up in Ireland.

If you do decide to go for any of the low fares I found I probably wouldn%26#39;t wait. These fares are unlikely to go down much if at all. The Geneva fare is really quite remarkable, but it could turn out to be one of those %26quot;mirage%26quot; fares, the kind that are great until you are just about to confirm your booking and then suddenly disappear. Aer Lingus might have flights from SW France (possibly Toulouse or Bordeaux?) in addition to Paris. I haven%26#39;t checked lately. Finally if you do book NYC -DUB be sure to allow LOTS of time at both ends of your trip to make the connections. One thing about the TGV is that it has an amazing on-time record, somewhere close to 98% I think. No airline comes even close to that.

Good luck!

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Last comment...

I just checked and Aer Lingus do indeed fly into both Bordeaux and Toulouse. As long as I was there I looked at RT fares from JFK to CDG via DUB in July and the web site is showing me $1053. That would remove any anxiety about missed connections. If it would make more sense for you to fly back from one of the southwest airports rather than CDG you might be able to arrange that by phone with Aer Lingus, possibly even a stop-over in Dublin if that would appeal (and why would it not?)...