Hi, When do you think the flight costs will decrease again? Was looking today and the fare for an adult was approx £200 more than in Jan/Feb.
I was quite surprised how much I saved this Feb/ March by booking our flights for the first time on a 'phone only' deal. It was Crystal travel, I looked at all the usual differant routes / airlines /airports that I do for weeks before we book. I saw that Crystal travel were offering the exact same flights, with the exact same carrier as I had been looking at. Even better, they reduced the stoppover in Paris from 7 hours to 2 hours. Total with airline direct and other agents was £2,700 for thew whole family of four,...Crystal was £2,200 !! Got them to email the itinery to me before I sent credit card details, and it all checked out good. Not saying that they are the best,..but I'll certainly be using the phone next time and haggling with someone who is doing the looking for me. Jonny
I went straight to the airline (emirates) and got a resonable deal. £1800 for the 2 of us in june. I actually did better than going through work and them trying the seamens tickets which are very bargin basement affairs.
I keep looking as well for a flight around about June time, and I'm seeing prices getting cheaper on Airlines' own websites - KLM had Manc - Manila for £750, and Etihad £690 for same route, but I've observed the price changing every time I check. Flight pricing seems a strange science! I just booked Ryanair Brum to Alicante for late May, and got £75 each, but having checked it earlier, the price seemed to flucuate up and down.
Yeah, there seems to be no other way except to keep looking around. I used to love the bucket shops in London 25-30 years ago. They always had really cheap last minute deals Go in in the morning and fly the same day or the next.
I was told the airlines track the ip address of your computer so that if you come back for a second look say they know you're interested and so the price goes up slightly, look at third time and it goes up again. Probably complete tosh though.
Flight pricing is a very big business - it is called Revenue Management and the airlines have banks of big computers doing it - because it is their life blood. Now you know why there are no more last minute bucket shop tickets at really cheap prices...
Actually that is quite credible Stu and certainly technically possible, would also explain some of my personal observations, put it this way I could easily code a site to do that, i.e. put a visit weight onto an IP address. The only way to escape that would be to use a proxy and make sure it forced different addresses on each request, I wonder if TOR would work for researching KLM flight prices I know that you and I both like KLM
I think the best way to grab a bargain on flights is by looking at the prices regularly. Although I have to say that the cheapest flight I ever booked was a spontaneous travel office visit deal. But that was last year in October. And it was a local thing I guess. My favorite habit has become booking a limousine service with http://www.blacklane.com/en in order to have a nice journey to and from the airport, so I invest more into that than the flight itself, it's worth it. Maybe if you keep looking for those things in your area, you might find something too.
And maybe not,...I have seen good prices many times on flights,..logged off the site till the wife comes out of the shower to ask her opinion,..and when I log back on its not available anymore. Well it is,..but at a slightly higher price. This has happened to me a few times now ( KLM ).
True. I use them for work but now that they don't fly direct to the phils anymore I'm not that fussed anymore. Infact when we move over there this years my company will be flying me Emirates. I should move up their cards pretty quick and be able to upgrade fairly regularly. Woohoo
That used to be true. Back in the happy days when I worked for Swire Pacific Offshore and could get ID 90 flights on Cathay Pacific, I regularly flew long distance on Boxing Day in First Class for very little money and got a great deal of attention from the invariably charming stewardesses. Since it was before 9/11 and all that giving my business card to the purser always resulted in an invitation to join the Captain on the flight deck... About as close to Heaven as one can get in a scheduled commercial aeroplane. However, these days the dreaded yield management algrithms crank in and Boxing Day is no longer significantly cheaper than other days..
Interesting stuff. By the way what did you do at Swires if you don't mind me asking. I had a job interview with them many moons ago for one of the 2 first dp boats they aquired. Didn't come off in the end though. Nice offices in london though.
Absolutely great bunch of people. I was contracts manager 1985-8 - first DP boat was the Pacific Constructor followed by the Pacific Atawhaai (I won't count the Pacific Installer aka the Pink Pig because her Honeywell DP never really worked! All three suffered from altogether too much crane for the hull - we could never resist a deal on a crane)! Then I moved across to the deepsea fleet - CNCo - as commercial director. My first wife didn't like Hong Kong... aargh - should have chucked the wife in, not the job. We live and learn... The model of the Atawhaai in the new (and excellent!) Hong Kong Maritime Museum (Pier 8 Hongkongside - adjacent to Star Ferry...)
I used to see the Atawhaai in Brunei back in the days of drinking beer in a teapot At least I think it was Brunei. Too many ports, too many countries..
