Wedding Flight Information

Flight Resources

Everyone wants to know whether they should buy their ticket now or wait… sadly, I don't know. But I will offer my opinion which is based on a 3 year trans-atlantic relationship and a couple of trips to Greece.

An $800 fare is a fair price, $1100-$1500 is entirely possible but expensive. The only time I paid so much, was when I bought a multi-leg trip that got me around to england, france and greece on the same flight plan.

Right now, the cheapest fare is $1075 on Iberia airlines. But most fares are around $1200-$1400. All the fares are expensive, even going to London (which is historically the cheapest city to fly to in europe).

Fares are typically high until the airlines gauge demand and put them on sale. There is almost always a sale somewhere, whether it be Munich or Rome, or London. So the longer you wait, the more chance you have of finding a sale somewhere. However, if the demand is high, then prices could go up of course.

The only thing you don't want to do, is wait to buy your ticket less than 3 weeks in advance.

Lastly, I check the flight prices every few days and am signed up for every blasted fare price notification thing possible. As soon as I see some good prices, I will send out a blast email.

Tips

  • Nice is the closest airport, the code is NCE
  • flying out of San Francisco is always cheaper than flying out of Sacramento (or other smaller airports)
  • flying midweek is cheaper
  • the only direct flight to Nice from the U.S. is on Delta from New York (JFK). you can book this flight and use airline miles to get you to JFK. just be sure not to mix up the New York airports.
  • London is typically the cheapest place to fly to in Europe.
  • you can fly on Easyjet from several european airports to Nice. so find another european city to fly to (use Fare Compare) and take Easyjet from there. cities with Easyjet flights directly to Nice: Basel, Belfast, Berlin, Bristol, Dortmund, Geneva, Liverpool, London, Newcastle, Paris. Make sure if you book this way, that you arrive and leave from the same airport. it takes 2 hours and costs 40 pds to cross London from Heathrow to Luton airport.
  • you can also use Kelkoo to find flights from any european city to Nice, but you'll need to buy the ticket from the airline's site.
  • you can take a train from Milan or Paris (possibly Munich) but it takes 5 hours and can be more expensive than a flight.

Links to airlines

  • Orbitz - I read somewhere that Orbitz is the most thorough of all travel aggregators, meaning it has all the flights!
  • Kayak - aggregator, searches tons of flights, shows fare trends
  • SideStep - aggregator, searches tons of flights
  • Fare Compare - historical pricing data, trends, side by side month to month prices, email alerts when prices change for a particular departure/destination pair.
  • Kelkoo.fr - french discount site, must have european credit card to purchase.
  • Easyjet - european 'Southwest'
  • Air France - compare prices side by side on different days.

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