For many years I've not been in a position to buy a Christmas flight because I didn't have the money early enough in the year, then by the time I had enough cash the price had gone well beyond what I was willing to pay. Right now booking for December is very early and the schedules for many airlines don't even exist yet, for example Emirates is not publishing flight details for any departure in December with a return in Jan 2020. My upper limit is really about £900 max beyond that and it is getting too expensive for me, I would obviously prefer to pay about £600 like my next upcoming flight which I managed to secure for about £520 + £50 or so for preferred seats on the out bound leg but the reality is that Christmas flights will be more expensive. I've found a flight with one of my preferred airlines for £718 with dates that would suit me and give me nearly a month over there next Christmas but I don't know whether to wait to see what Emirates might come up with in the next month. I suspect that Emirates won't have schedules for the dates I want until mid February, they don't currently have return dates later than 16th December and I am only really hoping that they might have a good deal available as sometimes they don't reduce scheduled prices for Christmas till April, May or June. So I suppose I am really asking would you go with the deal that exists right now and that is within your budget or would you wait a month or two for the deal that might be. I am leaning towards the deal that exists right now.
Book it now if it's in your budget, in my experience Christmas flights get more expensive nearer the time comes to fly. If they do come down in the next month or so it won't be much, and with the dreaded Brexit looming they might go up significantly.
If I see a price that I like on dates and times that fit my needs I tend to think about it for a couple of days then book it. For reference, my last KLM reservations were booked 121, 172, 103, 109, 124, and 242 days in advance.
I was thinking about the Brexit thing as I guess transiting through Schiphol or other parts of Europe might be a fraction more difficult after April in terms of time to make a connection, hope not but you never know. With Emirates it wouldn't matter, but Singapore and KLM pass through Europe, but then again I suppose transiting in Europe should not be any harder after Brexit than it is to transit in Dubai.
Thanks, this'll be about 330 days in advance and it is KLM, I think I will go for it bird in the hand and all that, I suppose that this far out there could be problems with schedule change but they would have to refund me if they completely changed my flights.
Well more fool me, I've missed it the return date I wanted in January is now a £283 surcharge over the £718 base charge, I should have gone with my gut and booked it last night.
Wait again till evening. You may find the price goes back again. I have found several times booking flights it’s cheaper to do it in the later evening or overnight. I really can’t explain why the changes but hopefully might help for you.
Will do, KLM only show you one flight usually the one with the shortest overall time for the route in this case it happened to be the cheapest as well, usually the first five days of January are massively surcharged for return flights to Europe and I was just outside that and found a flight with £0 surcharge. Interestingly when I looked at the other alternative KLM flights available for the MAN-AMS leg, of the three flights from MAN that day two of them were surcharged, it almost looks like the one I wanted was an error, wish I had just gone for it as I like KLM and the next cheapest single carrier both ways is Singapore at £940 which is really more than I want to consider. But you're right it might change again, I will just keep watching.
I didn’t head my own advice. I subscribe to all the regular airlines and wait for them to contact me with their deals. This time I just booked with Emirates. Hindsight is great and had I heeded my own advice I’d of been £240 better off on a better route. Cathay always has the better deals going to Cebu... or that’s how it seems.
I think the airlines shape their pricing according to the overall level of interest that they can see in particular routes and dates through the various channels they monitor their customers, when I am searching I try not to be signed into the accounts I have with the various airlines just in case they are providing me with customised prices based on what they know about me, although I expect they are using tracking cookies even when I'm not signed in and still know it's me. I have a gut feeling that prices might be lower in February although the lowest I saw last year didn't appear until late May, I would really like a £500-£700 deal but I'll have to stay on top of it or sign up to Expert Flyer again for a month, they have detailed pricing and seat details on the vast majority of airlines, really detailed at a technical level. If those KLM flights reappear at the price I want I will just go for it, I could have taken an option on it yesterday for £15 to hold the price for a few days and didn't but I guess that is one of the reasons that they increase the pricing again to justify their option feature.
The 242 day in advance reservation I mentioned earlier is Leeds to Manila with KLM, out at the end of August, return at the end of September for £430.41. I was casually browsing fares on the KLM website when I noticed a low fare at the end of August, and one month later a return leg with a negative fare of £120 or £170, I forget which. Added £70 for my favourites seat on row 10, front row economy comfort (at half price for my KLM gold card), and I have a £500 return to Manila from my local airport with the best economy seat on the plane.
Yeah that's the thing I would want to add economy comfort or equivalent as well and that needs to be factored into the price. Interesting about the negative charge on a return flight never seen that before! I'll keep tracking it regularly.
Oss I seem to recall reading that if the company knows its your second visit that they deliberatly increase costs on the basis you have made a descision, on line tracking etc
Yeah that's a router reboot to get a new IP address and running a browser from a VM to be completely sure there are no cookies. Might try that tonight.
An example of an 84 quid negative charge on the KLM website when selecting the return flight from MNL to LBA on the 13th October
I'm probably a bit too limited in my routing, although now that you show me the picture I have a vague memory of seeing something like this long time ago on the MAN-AMS route.
If only you had replied at 3:35am UK time Jim, then I may well have done it sadly I grabbed 3 hours sleep after that
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