August flight prices San Francisco/LAX

[Minniebella]

Hi
We are 2a & 2ch, planning to fly London-San Francisco mid August and return LAX-London at the very end of August.I was just wondering what would be considered a good price?
At the moment, prices are coming out at £575 each I am guessing for August, this is a good price?
The 11 month window opens up this week so will be looking to book soon

[Bozza]

I'd just hopped onto this sub-form to ask the same thing.

From discussions I recall seeing on here before, people often get direct flight prices for less than those flying to Florida.

When we went to California in 2017, we booked late on. Checking emails now, we booked on June 13th with fight dates of 10th - 29th August into and out of SFO. We paid £1768 for 2 adults + 2 children (so £442pp) indirect with KLM inclusive of bags.

I'm toying with a return to California next Summer so would be interested to know what people get and when they tend to book.

[Minniebella]

I would be very happy with those prices Bozza!

[Sew109]

We paid £990 for 2a1c to Denver and back from LAX, SFO and out LAX of SFO and out of SFO was the same

[smithlane]

We went to Cali this year. I tracked prices from the moment they were released to when we booked in January.
There was a flight sale with Virgin/Delta mid October when we could have got indirect flights into Oakland (for San Fran) and back out of San Diego for less than £300pp but we stupidly didn't book those. They of course rocketed to over £1000pp!
I couldn't get a return from LAX into my budget whereas other years when I've checked it's always been cheaper so we had to fly in and out of SFO. This wasn't particularly a problem as we just did a round robin trip ending in Yosemite before driving back to SFO on our last morning.
We paid £721pp including a Group D car for 3 weeks. I did then upgrade to a Group S a few months later. This was LHR-DUB-SFO on the 15th July then SFO-LHR on 5th August.
If you can go towards the end of the hols you can usually get the flights cheaper, we were unfortunately tied to going at the beginning as needed to be back for GCSE results.

[tocpe321]

In September 2016 I booked BA for 2 adults and 2 children. It included a SUV for 3 weeks. LHR to LAX for August 2017.

It was about £2200.

[Bozza]

Originally Posted by smithlane

We went to Cali this year. I tracked prices from the moment they were released to when we booked in January.
There was a flight sale with Virgin/Delta mid October when we could have got indirect flights into Oakland (for San Fran) and back out of San Diego for less than £300pp but we stupidly didn't book those. They of course rocketed to over £1000pp!
I couldn't get a return from LAX into my budget whereas other years when I've checked it's always been cheaper so we had to fly in and out of SFO. This wasn't particularly a problem as we just did a round robin trip ending in Yosemite before driving back to SFO on our last morning.
We paid £721pp including a Group D car for 3 weeks. I did then upgrade to a Group S a few months later. This was LHR-DUB-SFO on the 15th July then SFO-LHR on 5th August.
If you can go towards the end of the hols you can usually get the flights cheaper, we were unfortunately tied to going at the beginning as needed to be back for GCSE results.

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Curious how you found the multi-centre flights at good prices.

As good as I am with flight search engines, I've never found a good way to search for multii-centres in the same way as in and out of the one location which is a lot easier to pinpoint where there may be cheaper legs to take advantage of.

[smithlane]

Originally Posted by Bozza

Curious how you found the multi-centre flights at good prices.

As good as I am with flight search engines, I've never found a good way to search for multii-centres in the same way as in and out of the one location which is a lot easier to pinpoint where there may be cheaper legs to take advantage of.

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As much as I would like to take credit for finding those flights they were posted by another member on a thread I had started for Cheap/Glitch West Coast flights.
I do however check all flight combos including multi city. Google flights is a good one as you can add multiple airports into one search so brings up loads of results in price order.
We are hoping to do a Southern States road trip next year taking in the Smokies, Panhandle of Florida and Hilton Head so I could fly in and out of either Charlotte, Atlanta, Jacksonville or Nashville and I’ll somehow make it work. The cheapest I can find at the mo is £552 in and out of JAX but still a bit over budget when you have to add the price of luggage on and we don’t travel light 😂

[Bozza]

Originally Posted by smithlane

As much as I would like to take credit for finding those flights they were posted by another member on a thread I had started for Cheap/Glitch West Coast flights.
I do however check all flight combos including multi city. Google flights is a good one as you can add multiple airports into one search so brings up loads of results in price order.

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I use Google Flights a lot, but it doesn't really do multi-city like that - it only shows you return legs from the same airport you arrived at, eg I can put in SFO, LAX, OAK and SAN as my destinations. If I choose an outward flight to SFO, Google Flights will only give me return options from there.

I can't check all combos practically as, using the above example, there are 4 options to fly into which can be permed with the same 4 coming back, ie 16 options.

We can take any 3 week window within the school Summer holidays, which means c 20 fly-out days are possible. 20 * 16 = 320 combos to check!

[smithlane]

Originally Posted by Bozza

I use Google Flights a lot, but it doesn't really do multi-city like that - it only shows you return legs from the same airport you arrived at, eg I can put in SFO, LAX, OAK and SAN as my destinations. If I choose an outward flight to SFO, Google Flights will only give me return options from there.

I can't check all combos practically as, using the above example, there are 4 options to fly into which can be permed with the same 4 coming back, ie 16 options.

We can take any 3 week window within the school Summer holidays, which means c 20 fly-out days are possible. 20 * 16 = 320 combos to check!

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Ah I see what you mean, yes it does only show you in and out of the same airport. It’s like a full time job isn’t it! I do find that by subscribing to the Glitch/Cheap flights threads that at some point between September and December there will be at least one really cheap sale that normally corresponds to other airports not just to Florida. I’ll try and find the post from last year. From memory it was Dec 2015 for 2016 there were sub £300 indirects with Virgin/Delta, in Oct 2016 for 2017 sub £300 indirects with AA, Sept 2017 for 2018 cheap BA fly drives around £500 and in Oct 2018 for 2019 it was Virgin/Delta again sub £350 for loads of different airports not just Florida.
This year we too can go any 3 weeks in the school hols and can actually go as early as the 10th July but we prefer the last 3 weeks as find places noticeably quieter once the US kids have gone back to school. We don’t do WDW anymore though, that’s always busy 😂