Hi to all. I just recovered my password, so no longer lurking and am back to posting. We are going to the South of France/then Spain (Monaco, Aix, and then Barcelona) for a week and need to meet up with friends traveling from London on 9/8/12. We are flexible on dates (could leave as early as 9/6) and departures, either ATL ideally or JFK and are trying to get to NCE. The JFK to NCE flight looks 'OK', but we are looking for alternatives, which are probably more than likely to happen.

Ideally, we were going to meet our friends in London and fly to NCE together, but apparently the BA ZED agreement with DAL is suspended??? Huge bummer as BMI had direct flights, but these are now operated/controlled by BA, and it appears the only direct flights from London are on BA. I'm a little worried about getting on 2 flights, so worried about connecting via Paris on AF or Zurich (I have taken the Swissair flight from LCY which is great, but connects in Zurich or Geneva).

Should I avoid London as the landing spot in Europe if I ultimately want to get to Nice? We have an DAL hire date of 2000. We also have United priviledges through a retired parent but don't want to use those if I don't have to (too much to figure out!)

Can someone help me with the name of the best search engine for LCC in Europe? I'm using Kayak and feel that I'm missing stuff (I'm also using IDdeals and ASU).

Thank you!