US airfares down from last summer

After months of generally steady increases in airfares, travelers looking to jet out of Boston for a summer vacation may find some happy surprises: Flights that are cheaper than they were last summer, at least to North American destinations.

Over the last week the best available fares out of Logan International Airport for July trips have been running 3 percent below the same period last year for Seattle, 6 percent to Phoenix, and 21 percent to Los Angeles, according to FareCompare.com, an airfare tracking website that tracks historical fare data. Best July fares have plunged 35 percent from a year earlier to Bermuda, the site found, reflecting discount carrier JetBlue Airways Corp. launching $258 round-trip service from Logan to the Atlantic island this month and putting competitive pressure on Delta Air Lines Inc. and US Airways Group Inc.

Across the board, domestic summer fares out of the top 50 US air markets for purchase now are down about 15 percent from the same time last year, FareCompare chief executive Rick Seaney said. The reductions, according to Seaney, reflect several factors, including a slight drop in jet fuel prices and carriers such as Delta and Northwest Airlines emerging from bankruptcy reorganization with stronger financial footing to compete aggressively on price in some markets.

"Overall, I sense there's been a general softness out there, particularly in demand for leisure travel and people just deciding they weren't going to fly at these fares," Seaney said. That's led airlines to trim fares to get passengers to buy, and over the last month, several airlines that tried to raise fares retreated after competitors declined to follow suit.

Some Boston-area travelers said they've been happy to see better fares than expected. "Good deals are still out there, but you need to grab them fast" because it appears only a small number of the lowest-priced fares are available on each flight, said Alan Gold, chief marketing officer of Avotus Inc., a Burlington telecommunications firm, who is planning trips to San Diego and San Francisco this summer.

Bargains are harder to find for travel to Europe . The lowest fares -- which are a good barometer for average prices -- are up about 4.4 percent to London and nearly 10 percent to Paris and Rome, according to a FareCompare analysis conducted for the Globe.

The lowest-priced ticket available last week from Boston to London was about $710, but American has sometimes been selling round trips as low as $625 in mid-July, its website showed. Travelers willing to take slightly circuitous routes can sometimes save, too. Flying on Iberia Airlines's new Boston-Madrid service would cost $972 to $1,183 round trip on several dates in August, its website showed. But a traveler willing to fly from Philadelphia could find round trips to Madrid on US Airways as low as $659, enough to more than offset the cost of a Boston-Philadelphia-Boston ticket.

Industry leaders expect overall travel will rise this summer. For June, July, and August, the Air Transport Association forecasts that its members -- who collectively serve 90 percent of all US passengers -- will fly 209 million people, up 3 percent from the same time last year.

While travelers may be finding better fares, redeeming frequent-flyer miles for seats remains difficult, bordering on impossible. Pamela Derringer , a technology writer from Marblehead, said even looking for flights this summer as far back as last September, she has still come up empty-handed trying to get frequent-flyer seats.

"I consider frequent flier miles pretty much of a consumer scam," Derringer said.

Scott Rosenthal, marketing director for Ocean Hospitalities Inc. , a Portsmouth, N.H., hotel management firm, said he got a frequent-flyer ticket from Logan to Venice last month -- but only by calling "the day the seats were released about 10 months ago." He's had no luck finding other frequent-flyer seats this summer.

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.