Wife and I are trying to put a small group tgether to cum to Amsterdam in early spring , but it seems the airlines at this time have sky rocketed prices . Anybody know any cheap flights from
Houston , last May we paid 405.00 taxes included and now it is in the 605.00 to 700.00 range .
Help we wanna party !!!!

Airfares are out of control. I just paid $500 for Chicago ito AMS n January. That's about $150 up from last year. The advice that I was given that seems to hold true is that fares are at their best around 60 days prior to departure. That $500 fare was $610 last week. It dropped 62 days prior to departure. I've been using www.mobissimo.com to search for fares. It seems to often leave out fares from www.1800flyeurope.com so you might want to check them also.

Check out expedia.com for flights i often fly to america with them and seem the cheapest...pity ya'll dont live closer i only pay £35 ($60) return flight to the dam from scotland.

The prices are up because expenses including labor costs are up, the federal government of America is raising per ticket fees, and the oil companies and arabs are raising the fuel costs.

Typical human behavior really. Lazy evil people look to see where the money is and extort it. The government is killing the airlines, and causing all kinds of stupid damage to all related industries (car rentals, catering, etc).

If they would let airlines compete on a fair market system without taxing their tickets to death things would be much smoother.

I'm not saying the airlines are angels and innocent victims, they're dirtbags too. But the difference is that they're the low dirtbags on the totem pole, and deserve whatever ryan air and southwest do to them. It's just not reasonable that a ticket can quadruple in price for exactly the same seat depending on when you buy it. And it's even dumber that the price goes up at the last minute instead of down. They should really all be in jail for price fixing and collusion.

Nonetheless, $600 is a very fair price to fly a 10,000 mile round trip including government theft. And if you're a frequent flyer, they'll give you miles for that (if you're platinum, you get 2.25 times the mileage, so you're looking at 22.500 miles). 22.500 miles is almost a free US domestic round trip ticket. Some people get a $600 ticket and get a round trip to amsterdam and get a free round trip inside the US. That's a pretty good value.

You might keep an eye on Continental prices out of Houstan. I just returned from a San Francisco to Amsterdam flight via Houstan and paid $579 including all fees. This is up only slightly from my normal November costs. Both Houstan to Amsterdam legs were less than half full probably helping to keep the prices reasonable.

I found one for $568 from Houston to AMS.That was on "Sidestep".I agree,it seems as though the prices are a good bit higher for early spring travel.I bet that prices will take a dip sometime either right before Christmas or just after.If I run across a good deal from Houston I will let ya know.

Another thing that kills me about the airlines is their tendency to penalize you if you want to fly from one of their "hub" cities. I've noticed this countless times. In my own case, I might have to pay $650. +/- from Phoenix to San Jose Costa Rica to take the direct flight on America West (Phoenix is their hub city), but if I was flying from say, Sacramento or even Seattle through Phoenix and connecting to the same exact flight on the same exact day, the cost might be somewhere around $450. It's maddening.

So, Larry can fly from SFO on Continental to A'dam via Houston (a Continental hub) for $579. , but if you live in Houston and take the same exact flight to A'dam on the same exact day, you might often have to pay considerably more, even though its a shorter distance, and even though there's an entire flight segment eliminated.

The airlines should really put their operational policies through a shredder, and develop an entirely new business plan.

-- Mr. Plug

It's as easy as...ABC123. Use his first site mentioned above and you'll be sitting chilly: I just booked roundtrip to the US for next week and paid $500, not bad considering.