In addition to reduced overall capacity, there is greater demand from European travelers wishing to spend their strong Euros in the US. Summer flights are typically full, and often oversold. I don’t think airlines will discount much. Definitely keep watching. Sales have been small and sporadic so far, so definitely sign up for sale alerts on some of your desired routes with Bing travel, Farecompare, Airfarewatchdog, etc.

I just loaded some cities into ITASoftware.com’s month-long search for you and see BOS to :
SNN $707 outbound by June 14, Continental (I guessed your stay at 13-14 nights)
SNN $522 outbound by May 31, ditto
FRA 782 out by May 31, Lufthansa “
775 MIL out by May 31, Alitalia “

If you poke around on U.S. Air’s website, typing in itineraries and selecting flights you can look at seat maps to get an idea of how full their flights are on certain routes/dates. I recently helped my brother find seats and his CLT-CDG flight had about 80 open seats in coach as of last Wednesday, today there are about 60.

If you look at most of the sales posted on Travel Zoo that actually have discounted fares they are only good for travel through May. The question to me is if the summer sales are simply being brought out slowly, or if there just won’t be discounted seats on a large scale this year. I’m curious to see what happens in April because in 2008 & 2009 I bought my tickets during big April sales from U.S. Air.

I just got email that Continental is having a summer sale, but I didn’t look into the particulars.

Thanks for the tip. Here it is on Continental.com: http://www.continent…
Checking some random routes directly from the price links on their sale page, looks like most outbounds must occur by May 19 to get close to these prices.

The London fares I checked showed some of these cheap prices available even with a stay of 30, 60, 90, or 120 days. BWI-LHR May 18 – Sep. 15 for example, for $565+$172.50 in taxes and fees = $737.50 … that’s really good for late-Spring outbound with such a long stay.