How to Find a Cheap Flight Article Discussion Area

betty_george

Ok so flying to the other side of the world is never going to be cheap, but... after making plans a couple of weeks ago to go for a trip home (the first in 3 years!) when flights were around £650, now we're ready to book the best I can find is over £800 and rising! We're very flexible with dates, just about anytime in March or April but do need to stopover in Hong Kong for a few days. Please help! Is it likely flights will go on sale after Xmas or the new year? Can anyone recommend a good website/travel agent?

Thanks

lee_c_3

Hi,

Is there a screen scraper for international flights, The euro one is good, but we would like to go to the states next year to see family.
Thanks in advance
Lee

UKoap

https://www.ebookers.com Best deals/flights/timings of many
I have tried.

dadbif

my wife booked a flight from Stansted to Spain with Easyjet at the beginning of last December, the flight is for the beginning of March this year, yesterday I received an email from Easyjet saying that I needed to pay the chancellors new tax on this flight, they gave me a link so that I could pay them NOW!! The tax does not come into effect until the 1st February, just how much can Easyjet scoop up from unsuspecting travellers to earn interest before they have to pay the government, it must be millions....

I read somewhere that the new tax may yet be rescinded, especially so with all the bad press that the government is getting over it at that moment, so don't pay until you have to.

Russ

linbadd

BA have a flight sale on at the mo. I found return flight to Corfu in September for £125 inc. all taxes, etc. Thought I'd done really well - it was half the price offered elsewhere.

When I pressed the button to confirm the booking, it just went on "checking bank account details" for half an hour instead of the 30 seconds stated.

Helpline number on the 'checking bank details' just told me there was ' a high volume of calls' and cut me off. Then it took 15 mins or more in the queue to get through to the internet helpline number given on the BA website, only to find they were having problems with Mac safari and I couldn't complete.

Could have booked by phone for £15 PER PERSON EXTRA!!! (2 of us, so £30!)

Hubbie went to the 'bucket shop' (Flight Centre, Colmore Row, Birmingham) and got BA flights for £1 less per person, and return journey with an earlier arrival time, which means we avoid having to go from Gatwick to London and staying overnight, so saving the £65 for a cheap hotel plus coach or taxi fares into London.

Reckon we've saved best part of £100 because BA had a problem with Mac & Safari.

I'd spent hours looking for flights on the internet. In future I'll check out 'Flight Centre' first!

Trez

Hiya

trying to get a cheap flight from Glasgow or prestwick to Brussles, can u help

koru

Martin pointed out that the carbon offset companies he mentions are not charities. But there are plenty of offsetters that ARE charities. The best one I have found is https://www.puretrust.org.uk.

The advantages are:
1. As it is a charity, you can claim gift aid, so £100 net cost to you will give them up to £166 (if you are a higher rate tax payer).

2. As it is a charity, none of your money is taken out as the owner's profit.

3. This charity does the carbon offset by buying industrial carbon emission credits and cancelling them. These are credits that would otherwise have been bought by companies, to allow them to continue to emit carbon. Kyoto limits the number of credits, so by taking some of these out of circulation you are directly reducing the emission of carbon today. This seems to avoid the objections that are raised about tree-planting schemes.

4. This particular charity has a low expense ratio, as it uses a very efficient means of using your money.

Sid23

Two pieces of advice:

1. If you find a flight through Expedia or a similar online site, put the flight details into the airline's website - booking directly through the airline will quite often save you 10-15 pounds or so.

2. Expedia-type sites, for whatever reason, rarely give you completely comprehensive results because they only include major airlines. For example, searching for a summer return flight from Manchester to Toronto on ebookers produced a best price of 595, while the airline Globespan, which did not come up in the results, had a flight on the same dates for 274. To get a complete list of all the airlines you can fly with to a particular destination, go to the destination airport's website or its Wikipedia page.

huggychair

Sid23 wrote: »

...To get a complete list of all the airlines you can fly with to a particular destination, go to the destination airport's website or its Wikipedia page.

Through experience I've found that airport websites are not up-to date especially with some budget airlines that offer seasonal timetables. Such sites are often just a 'springboard' to sell you their facilities/services etc.

To get a del-facto picture of what flights/connections depart ANY airport I would recommend using this site:
http://timetables.oag.com/
It gives all the flight codes departing for the destination on a given day/time, and is the same data which is incorporated into most of the travel agents/ web flight booking agency's systems without the prices... and includes all the budget flights

From THAT list you can then approach the airline websites looking to save a few quid and see exactly how much an 'agency/website' may be overcharging you.

NB. With full service airlines two (or more) flight codes may be shown for the same flight...where an airline partnership exists eg. BA/Quantas KLM/Air France. This is industry practice and helps when it comes to ticketing/flight connections (the first flight code is the carrier ie. BA in the UK Quantas in AUS)

With budget airlines only direct routes will be shown, since this is the way these airlines do business/ticketing (per flight; not connecting)

To start your search you need the IATA airport code for where you wish to start your journey eg. LHR (there is a list here or else google/Wikipedia):
http://www.photius.com/wfb2001/airport_codes_alpha.html

This appears to be a free/'trial' service offered by an independent data supplier/updater which is why it might not 'seem' user friendly at first but It sure as hell helped me out alot when I was booking internal/international flights whilst in China a couple of years ago! (yes easyjet clones exist there!!):cool:

hope this helps others find cheap flights and save some time!

:cool: :A

german_2

hello, can anyone tell me how you can book one year return flights, i am living in costa rica and will be coming back to england once a year with 2 children (7 & 3) most companies wont book further ahead than 6 months and then i have to pay to move the return date which is a waste of money!thanks