Flights gone up by £100 pp within a week!!

PolishBigSpender

mogadon wrote: »

The whole world does not revolve around British school holidays. Canadian Thanksgiving is in October and American Thanksgiving is in November, so both months are considered peak travel periods in USA.

Shhhh! You might destroy the whole image that everyone is out to hurt the poor British consumer!

hairy_g

_Andy_ wrote: »

It's not that they "won't" due any, its just that fare class is full.

You are incorrect. I phoned Virgin and was told that they won't release any "miles plus money " flights because of the half term.
I have just booked at "normal" prices and have been able to choose where 5 of us can sit, still plenty of room on the plane.

Spendless

I've had this happen with flights to Canada and when we queried it, we were told that is was the flights became more expensive the nearer you got to your 'going away' date. Ours went up as it went over a month end. I'm guessing whatever company it is reviews its prices on a certain date in that month (or even weekly) and you've just gone over their 'put the price up' date.

Mr_Lahey

blue_monkey wrote: »

I am a tad ticked off.

I looked at flights earlier this week to go to Florida in October but we are waiting for the accomodation we want to be released so cannot book the flights yet.

So I've checked again last night *sigh, I want to go now* and they have gone up from £1600 to £2000!!!!! :eek:

And don't even get me started on the 'peak charges'. Flying on Weds/Thurs/Fri before H/T starts is £538 pp - on the 1st Saturday of half term it is nearly £1000!!!!! :eek: And they wonder why people take their kids out of school.

I thought it was because of the propsed BA strike and Virgin charging more but BA have also risen from £1580 to £1980. What is going on???? Are they price fixing??

Unlucky. :beer:

Polly_Esther

alanrowell wrote: »

Why would a theorectical BA strike affect flights in October?

What is more likely is that someone has bought some seats and hence the yield management so
software has bumped up the price on the rest.

This is the only realistic response so far.

eslick

keep looking and use https://www.kayak.co.uk to check for the best prices, prices do go up and down all of the time even day to day and definately at weekends. Seen prices go up £200 at a weekend.

We booked tickets July 4 of us for a total of 1100 over Easter to Atlanta, today each ticket 1000 each so you may have to book and not look at the price again. Try different airlines they may be cheaper than the one you are looking at.

Blue264

_Andy_ wrote: »

It's not that they "won't" due any, its just that fare class is full.

Best answer so far. Sorry!

You've got first, business, premium economy and economy on many flights, but within each of those, you have several 'classes' with different ticket restrictions. Just as a bench mark, first has 2, business has 4, premium economy has 3 and economy has 6-9 ticket classes.

Obviously, the cheapest seats have the most restrictions, e.g. non-refundable and not changable. These seats almost always sell out first so, whilst there may be seats left in economy class, it may be the case that only the fully flexible tickets are left available and these are more expensive.

Scheduled airlies such as BA and Virgin only drop their ticket prices if there is a sale or group cancellation. Charter airlines such as Thomson, will drop their prices to fill the flight.

I hope this helps a little.

blue_monkey_2

eslick wrote: »

keep looking and use www.kayak.co.uk to check for the best prices, prices do go up and down all of the time even day to day and definately at weekends. Seen prices go up £200 at a weekend.

We booked tickets July 4 of us for a total of 1100 over Easter to Atlanta, today each ticket 1000 each so you may have to book and not look at the price again. Try different airlines they may be cheaper than the one you are looking at.

Thanks I will have a look at that. The difficult thing is my son's condition, it is stressful enough as it is but he knows what to expect on a virgin flight so this is why we looked at them - it'll be much less stress on him.

I've had the brochure through so I am going to have a scout through when I get some time see if there are any deals, might be able to book dead chea bargain accomodation and do it that way as kids go much cheaper on a package holiday then they do paying for the flight (kids flight price £530, brochure price £269). Likewise, they have on offer for free tickets to universal on some holidays so will have a look to see what is being offered as it might make it cheaper to get free tickets to universal/package then to pay for flights/universal tickets - will just not stay in the hotel. Also more cashback on package holidays than on flights too.

malkie76

hairy_g wrote: »

You are incorrect. I phoned Virgin and was told that they won't release any "miles plus money " flights because of the half term.
I have just booked at "normal" prices and have been able to choose where 5 of us can sit, still plenty of room on the plane.

Doesn't mean anything. Plane could already be full, but the majority of passengers haven't allocated their seats yet (for example because they booked through a third party, and don't realise they can select seats in advance)

photome

hairy_g wrote: »

I'm a bit pi55ed off with Virgin at moment as well. We'll be flying out in october, and because it's around the half term, they won't do any "miles plus money" flights for the dates we want. We could save up to £200 per flight.

Thats wrong! I wanted flights to Vegas over the OCT half term and there were def miles plus money fares available about 3 to 4 weeks ago. I didnt book as going in Aug now but they were def there