Where are you flying from? Do you require non-stop flights?

From Vancouver the prices are around $1500 per person return from Rome...with a change usually in either Toronto or Montreal...so those prices seem about right if you are flying from the west coast of North America.

I recently returned home to the US from Rome after a long trip booked with a consolidator. The company I used doesn't sell the kind of ticket you need but they do give one ideas about cheap tickets with the routing and airlines used. Mine was on Lufthansa and was routed through Munich. So, Rome-Munich-San Francisco. Try their website to see what they may offer.

Also, sign yourself up on airfarewatchdog.com for their airfare alerts. Some great deals come up including unadvertised ones.

And then there's Icelandair, likely what we used to know as Icelandic Airlines, who have always been known for cheap flights to Europe from North America.

Part of the issue is that's the high season. My husband and I booked our entire February trip (air, hotel, and train) for less than two airline tickets at the prices you mentioned.

You can keep playing around with the airfare (different days, different airports) and see what you can do. I usually also give a travel agent a call and see if they can come up with better numbers.

You could also try using one of the package places like go-today.com. I have often gotten some decent deals from them.

ooops sorry that was a super vague post...travelling from NYC, open to connections (within reason), and can fly anytime bewteen Jul 12 and August 15.

Check skyscanner.com
You can plug in the entire country as a destination. You can also look at full months of pricing at a time to see which days/dates are best.

Also, check flights going into Paris. We recently flew to Paris and then puddle jumped on EasyJet into Bologna and out of Pisa.
Good luck!

I use ITA to search flights. Enter your departure airport(s) and you can select a variety of arrival airports (or mileage range). For NYC, enter JFK, LGA, EWR (as I have typed it) if you are willing to depart from all of them. If you want to fly a certain airline, click advanced routing codes (DL for Delta, etc.) or if you want to search an alliance, enter the alliance. For example, if you want Skyteam flights enter it as:

/ alliance skyteam

You can search a range of days also.

When you find what you want, book it on the airline's website.
http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Unfortunately you're traveling in high season, so that pricing sounds about right. You might do slightly better if you are willing to make a stop or two along the way, or pair your airfare with a hotel package. In the meantime, sign up for price alerts on tripadvisor.com, and also check farecompare.com. Good luck!

Airline seating charts indicate that trans-Atlantic planes are filling up for the high season even now. Those charts are not completely reliable but suggest that the carriers won't need to put seats on sale. Prices (from the midwest in my case) appear to be running about $300 above last summer. Charters, if any are available to you, may be a little cheaper. You might catch a one-day sale and save a bit; or take a complicated route to save something and spend twice as long travelling. And you could spend plenty of stressful time worrying about it. For bargain-hunters, it is a glum situation.

Check http://www.airberlin.com I see price around $1000 (July 15-31) JFK-FCO with layover in Dusseldorf.

As others say this is high season for holidays in Europe (note that 4 to 6 week holidays is normal in Europe)I'd look to go somewhere else. Have you looked at Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Paris to see if prices are more reasonable. I'm sure a daughter would put up with Paris,

I used Expedia to find my flights for my trip over Thanksgiving. Baltimore> JFK direct flight to Nice and return direct flight from Stuttgart>Atlanta and back to Baltimore.

It took some fiddling to get those direct flights to come up along with allowing enought time between the connections. For example, the flight from BWI to JFK was delayed almost 2 hours, but I had allowed myself 4 hours (at the Delta lounge). For the return, I made sure there were two more departing flights from Atlanta to BWI. It all worked out for $958 - including taxes.

Like you, I am now finding the airfare for late spring to be relatively high.