Getting to France in the '90s

I found myself dreading the thought of copying what I wrote about our trip to France in the '90s so much that I thought about just dropping the topic altogether.  It's funny how little details that seemed so important at the time become useless trivia.  It's a good reminder that we should focus on making the most of our vacation time rather than chasing bargains that often don't fit what we really wanted to do.

 

For example, I wrote about comparing a chartered flight to Paris with the one we took on French AOM Airlines, and how we went with the more expensive AOM because the chartered flight only went once a week, making any potential complication more disastrous.  Chartered flights have generally become irrelevant as most if not all went out of business in price wars, and AOM also went bankrupt.  Anyway, here’s more:

 

Always value conscious, we tend to follow sale ads seeking bargains.  I noticed a Europa Tours Specialist ad for a trip to Paris in the newspaper.  For $599 per person, ETS promised air fare and five nights' hotel accommodations in Paris.  Julie and I figured the air fares alone had to be close to that amount, so we could make a series of day trips out of Paris using the included room as a base.  The included room was almost free, so we could even use it for the night of our arrival alone and visit bed and breakfasts for the rest of our trip.

 

We decided to go to France in the middle of April, but the package required travel before the end of March, so we asked for April rates.   The difference of $100 per person for the package was not substantial enough to detour us from April travel, which would assure more favorable weather.  Julie started researching bed and breakfast prices.  The reasonable prices in the countryside pleasantly surprised us.  We decided we wanted to visit the Alps and the French Riviera, so our jouirney would take us too far from Paris to use the included room other than on the first night.  The chartered airline could be booked for something less than $500 without the included room. 

 

ETS also obtainted a quote for the lowest commercial air fare, which was $559 per person, including all taxes and extras, through AOM French Airlines.  Although the charter was about $100 less, the commercial flight would virtually guarantee us that we would depart at least approximately on schedule.  Charter flights may ojnly be scheduled once or twice a week, and a problem with the airplane itself may delay departure several days.  If a commercial flight cannot leave on schedule, the airline can put the passengers on the next available flight, generally within a few hours,  With getting time off work and scheduling grandmothers to watch our kids, we opted for the AOM French Airlines flight.  By the time we actually left four months later, the lowest commercial airfare was around $900 per person, so it definitely pays to book airline travel early.