Is it possible to haggle the price of a flight down?

monsta2005

Am looking to take a flight to greece in the next few days. Its not expernsive per say (£120 one way), but then again Tokyo was recently £265 return, plus Florida was under £200 return (I would have taken this up myself had i found out sooner) . Plus after almost having booked it can see the plane appears to be somewhat empty at the minute and the flight is within the next few days.
Anyway you think its possible to haggle the price down (lol if I got luggage thrown in that would be nice )? has anyone ever tried and succeeded?

alanrowell

Airlines take the view that if you want to travel at short notice then you are willing to pay through the nose for the privilege. Charter airlines sometimes take a different attitude.

And I'd be interested to know how you know the flight is nearly empty - most seat websites don't show anything like the number of seats sold.

agrinnall

Where did you see flights to Tokyo and Florida at those prices, they seem impossibly cheap given the level of taxes and other fees these days?

dickydonkin

alanrowell wrote: »

Airlines take the view that if you want to travel at short notice then you are willing to pay through the nose for the privilege. Charter airlines sometimes take a different attitude.

And I'd be interested to know how you know the flight is nearly empty - most seat websites don't show anything like the number of seats sold.

expertflyer.com does, but you have to pay for access to that part of the site, although you can have a free 5 day trial.

Gloomendoom

alanrowell wrote: »

And I'd be interested to know how you know the flight is nearly empty - most seat websites don't show anything like the number of seats sold.

I wondered that too. In my experience, they just show the seats that have been pre-booked/allocated.

jpsartre

Expertflyer doesn't show how many seats have been sold as such, just how many are left in each fare bucket up to a maximum of 9 seats.

Assuming the OP is from the UK there's no way he's seen return flights to Florida for £200 at least not for many years. I'd say the chance of getting a cheaper fare by haggling is right around 0%.

Incapuppy

jpsartre wrote: »

Assuming the OP is from the UK there's no way he's seen return flights to Florida for £200 at least not for many years.

HUKD last week

jpsartre

Do you have a link? Which airline was this with? The taxes alone amount to about £140 and that's without fuel surcharges which most airlines charge these days.

Edit: Ok, think I found it myself. I stand corrected, even if I don't think these sorts of offers really count

photome

jpsartre wrote: »

Expertflyer doesn't show how many seats have been sold as such, just how many are left in each fare bucket up to a maximum of 9 seats.

Assuming the OP is from the UK there's no way he's seen return flights to Florida for £200 at least not for many years. I'd say the chance of getting a cheaper fare by haggling is right around 0%.

There has been a few very cheap short notice flights on HUKD just lately, so he will have seen them just not many of them

Agreed though no chance of haggling IMO

dickydonkin

jpsartre wrote: »

Expertflyer doesn't show how many seats have been sold as such, just how many are left in each fare bucket up to a maximum of 9 seats.

It also shows seats that are purchased (selected at a charge) and blocked which will give some indication on the capacity sold and what may be available at OLCI.