It is Getting Way Too Expensive to Fly to Sicily in August
I was in Sicily last Christmas and, finally, I gained enough miles for a round-trip plane ticket from New York to Catania, Sicily. As soon as I came back from my short Sicilian vacation this past January, I started calling Alitalia’s Frequent Flyer Program (Club Millemiglia at 800-223-05730). Eager to capitalize on my miles, I tried to book some dates for August. Having only two week vacation per year from work, I can only travel on specific dates during a short period of time. Sadly, I could not find anything that matched my requests for the month of August. The only flight available required an overnight stay in Amsterdam. I have been to Amsterdam several times and I love the city, but I do not want to stay an extra night there in August. At the end, I gave up on trying to use my miles to go to Italy.In the meantime, I postponed buying the ticket and now it is March. I have been looking online a bit to find a plane ticket at around $1,000 to fly to Catania (this is the price that was considered expensive for the same traveling dates last year!), but the average ticket price is around $1,300 nowadays. It is $1,012 if I just fly to Rome.
Lesson learned: March is not considered early enough to book a trip to Sicily and Italy in August. Next time, I will buy it in December as a Christmas gift to myself.
Here are the rates as of today’s date for a roundtrip plane ticket from New York (JFK) - Catania (Sicily) from July 31 through August 11:
| Web Site | Price | Airline |
| Expedia | $ 1,544 | Air France + Alitalia |
| Travelocity | $ 1,264 | Eurofly + Air One |
| Priceline | $ 1,432 | American Airlines + Alitalia |
| Orbitz | $ 1,265 | Eurofly + Air One |
| CheapTickets | $1,224 | United Airlines + Lufthansa |
| SideStep | $ 1,265 | Eurofly + Air One |
| Kayak | $ 1,309 | Eurofly + Air One |
Tired of finding similar results (SideStep and Orbitz are practically the same, so they show the same price) and eager to save some extra bucks, I checked out Eurofly’s web site since it seemed to be the least expensive flight. But I found a ticket for about $ 1,261: not that much less. Just to give you an idea, the plane ticket for the same traveling dates is about $ 895 to Barcelona in Spain (flight operated by Air France); $ 1,083 to Granada in Southern Spain (flight operated by British Airways and Iberia); $ 1,239 to Istanbul in Turkey (flight operated by Emirates and Turkish Airlines); $ 1,259 to Tokyo (about 12 hour flight operated by United Airlines from La Guardia Airport) and I could continue with the list.
Overall foreign arrivals have decreased in Italy in the past few years, now the 5th most visited destination in the world after France, USA, Spain, and China. Sicily, where foreign visitors are less numerous, suffers even more from this trend. Tour operators argue that foreign travelers are not going to Sicily because of the lack of infrastructures and this might be true in part, but I would add: “It’s the plane ticket, stupid!”.
Technorati Tags [ eurofly | alitalia | fly to sicily | august in sicily | plane ticket to sicily | expedia | travelocity | priceline | sidestep | new york - catania ]
