Book 2017 Fly Drive now - or wait for Flights to be Released

weby72

I'm in a bit of a quandary and would appreciate some guidance from others who've been in this position before.


We're looking to go to Orlando next May/June (taking in one week of the Whit school holidays). Don't mind travelling mid-week.


We've missed the boat in terms of reasonably-priced Thomas Cook or Thomson flights (gone up over £400 since I first looked in March). We've had a price from Virgin for a fly-drive to include the car hire but it's pricey (car hire bit with full insurance works out at over £650 for the fortnight).


I've heard that, once the schedule flights are released by the main airlines 11 months in advance, the price of flights normally falls for a bit, but I'm worried in case I don't book now and the flights all turn out to be expensive.


I'm hoping for flights in the £500 each region (2 adults/2kids). I know this isn't beyond the realms of possibility for other times but with the Whit hols being thrown into the mix, am I being too optimistic?


I know I can get the car for under £400 for the fortnight.


Incidentally, Virgin have bumped the price up by £100, just a day after giving me a formal quote in-store. I don't know if this is to try to pressurise me, but they won't budge on this and won't even begin to entertain haggling.

weby72

No helpers?


I guess what I'm after is some guidance on whether the flights to be released by schedule carriers will be around the £500 mark for that time of year.


And whether it's possible that Virgin Holidays reduce the price of their flydrives & holidays once the schedule flights go onsale (to reflect a possible reduction in flight costs to Florida).

leylandsunaddict

There's no way to predict what full service carriers prices will be on release, other than likely to be high. Your need to book is greater than theirs to sell at that point. Better to wait a while.

Flight prices are constantly changing, and I wouldn't expect them to be the same the following day. Flight prices aren't the sort of thing you haggle about. The only way an agent can discount costs is to do so out of their commission, and stores have higher overheads than booking online. It really depends on how much is in the booking to start with.

Virgin Holidays prices are ridiculous, but that's down to them having zero competition from third party agents, so no one to undercut them anymore. Until people start to vote with their feet they will have no reason to change.

Alan_Bowen

Flights to Orlando at Half Term are never cheap, I doubt they will be as low as £500 return, I would expect £700 to be more likely but as others have said, we cannot foretell the future. If it is any consolation I checked flights to Faro, three hours instead of 8 and a half departing on July 23rd from Gatwick on a very orange coloured plane and they were selling at £701!

steve1500

Until you book the flights what else can you book, as you don't know the dates

SW17

For economy flights on carriers like BA and Virgin, you have to watch for which fare classes they release at first. Note that fare classes are different from class of travel, there are multiple fare classes per class of travel, especially so in economy.

Over some dates (and school holidays usually fall into this category), they often only release the flexible (more expensive) fares at first, and then open up cheaper fares as time goes by and they judge demand. How long this takes depends on destination, period etc.

The fares for your travel dates are probably not fully on sale yet (certainly not the return), but you can see this by searching for dates in April 2017. Over Easter holidays, BA are still selling only flexible fares, whereas a week or two later they are selling the cheapest categories. BA releases seats for sale 355 days before travel, Virgin appears to be a bit later.

On BA, you can see the fare class by clicking on the flight number from the search result. It's the letter listed under Selling Class in the pop-up. For BA World Traveller, the cheapest fares are G,O,Q, the most expensive Y,B,H (several more classes between these).

On Virgin it's a bit different, you have to select fares and click on the View Fare Breakdown link. I'm not so familiar with all Virgin's fare classes, but Y will always be flexible and expensive. You can also look at Virgin's search result, since they display prices for both "lowest" and "flexible" in each cabin. If those prices are the same or close together, you could reasonably assume that the cheapest fare classes are not available. At this early stage it doesn't necessarily mean they are sold out, they may not have been opened at all.