Are you only going to London or would another city or cities work as well? Just checking. Playing with your dates by a couple of days either way I saw SFO-LON for $690ish on Continental’s website (can’t remember exact dates), and $732 for 5/6-5/18.

Just in case:
SFO-Dublin $562 on US Air 5/7-5/18.

Augustin25,

Thanks for the $562 fare. Unfortunately, arriving and departing from LON is mandatory because that’s where my friend lives (who I’ll be staying with.)

London is no longer the cheapest flight destination from America like it used to be. Partly due to Gordon Brown doubling the already high passenger duty on flights arriving and departing the UK last year.

I think what augustin meant is to consider using Dublin as a connecting point. You can get onward flights to London very cheap: http://www.skyscanne…

Flexibility is often the key to getting cheapest airfares, so also consider landing at Bristol or Birmingham, too. I used ITA and searched from SFO;OAK;SJC;SMF to LON;BRS;BHX staying 10-11 nights spanning the month of May. It found SFO LHR 805 6th-18th nonstop BA or United. So, it looks like there aren’t any glaring specials on the next-nearest cities. I then added BRU and MAN, but it’s even higher… yikes. Adding Megabus or Eurostar to get you rest of the way to London is sometimes cheaper when you add it all up, but not currently.

Next I tried Orbitz which has a nice +/- 3 day search. It turned up American at $751 on 6th-18th, and notes this is the last day on this sale fare (it also shows 780 if coming back the 17th).

Taking 6th-18th to BookingBuddy turned up $680 with Continental. So, if this fare works for you, looks like augustin and I might save you $170 vs. the best you found. 680 for west coast to anywhere Europe and back in shoulder season is a good fare these days.

Thanks so much for your guidance, Don & Augustin25. I ended up booking a Continental fare SFO-LON 5/6-5/19 for $659.90 w/tax. It’s not a stellar fare, but after going through every possible search engine and waiting on TravelZoo to post something – anything! – indicating some SFO specials to LON, I just figured it was time to book it.

(Note: I got really excited about the Aer Lingus sale posted above, until I realized that they stopped service in March from SFO. I wish they were upfront about that when POSTING the sale fares.)

$659 isn’t bad. Aer Lingus still flies from SFO after March, but yeah their website is screwed up and says they don’t if you try to book to London. Dublin works. They might want to fix that

I bought my tickets last week for fear that the deal would only go up… I checked Orbitz today and there were US Air tickets on there for my exact dates for $550, all taxes included! I’ve learned my lesson about being trigger happy.