There aren’t any nonstops between the BOS area airports and southern France. Best you can do is BOS-CDG with Air France or American.

Should you book now?… really depends on what you found. If you found it in the $600s or less, then yes, you should book now. If you found $1300+ then wait. But… what did you find? Where else did you check in addition to ITA? Be sure to try BookingBuddy.com, too, and Orbitz which has a nice +/- 3 day flexible search.

According to ITA you can do Tuesdays in July for $875 r/t total BOS-CDG with Icelandair. This is one of the easiest connections in the world, because the Keflavik airport is so small. The cheapest nonstop currently shows up at $1251 with American. Is saving $376 per ticket worth an easy connection to you?

If so, I then took the ITA dates on that fare and tried them with Orbitz flexible search. It found $1700+ yikes!

Then I tried the PAR r/t with Airdeals.com, a consolidator that I’ve seen good summer fares on Icelandair in the past. It also shows the $875 fare.

Dates narrowed, I tried it with BookingBuddy. Hower, still can’t beat the $875.

However, another way to look at this is if you’ll have to connect anyway, would it just be worth connecting to the southern France airport via AMS, LHR, DUB, FRA, or ZRH for example? Since these are smaller airports in Europe, you’d need to use a European-based airline which can get you there with just 1 connection via their hub in Europe. US-based airlines would require at least 2 connections. Currently, you could connect to MRA just at MAD or MUC each way for $1433 with Iberia or Lufthansa; $1450 via AMS with KLM.

Adding NCE and LYS to the picture, ITA found $1152 with Swiss via ZRH. If those higher prices to the closer airports interest you, then also trying narrowing in on the cheapest dates with ITA, then Bookingbuddy and Airdeals like I explained near the beginning of this post. Tiss and EconomyTravel are also consolidators worth checking. Some more consolidators are included in BookingBuddy’s search.

I appreciate all the suggestions, especially the consolidators.

When I say I don’t want to change airports, I meant traveling to one European hub, and then switching airlines using a different itinerary (risking a missed connection w/ no airline assistance) or lugging my suitcase (and crying children w/ strollers) to another airport (i.e. CDG/ORY layover).

I will post the results of my continued searching. Thanks!

Also consider flying to Paris, staying overnight (just to avoid hassles with changed flight times, the sort of rush you describe, etc.), and then taking the train to Avignon. If you book about three months in advance on voyages-sncf.com, you can get very cheap rates like 19 Euros one-way. The train ride is about 3 to 3.5 hours.

Even with the cost of an overnight in Paris (there and back), it could easily work out to be cheaper than flying to southern France. Not to mention the schedule would likely be better too.