Don't book early with bmibaby

p800aul

Hi all

A cautionary tale not to book early with bmibaby

As always on the day bmibaby released their winter flights, 7th June 2007, I booked my tickets to fly to Malaga in the winter school holidays. Easyjet released their winter flights 13 July 2007 and I checked the price of their flights for the same days to ensure we were still receiving good value. In the past while I have always found bmibaby slightly more expensive the difference has never been significant. The cost of our flights (2 adults and 2 children) with bmibaby was £740.03, to my horror the cost with Easyjet would have been £359.92. So I had paid more than double after taking the advice from bmibaby to book early with 'the airline with tiny fares'

Needless to say I complained to bmibaby to be told that this was the way it was, I was not offered any compensation and curiously reminded to book early for the best prices. I then checked bmibaby's web site again and alarmingly the price (same flights etc) had come down to £325.52 in line with easyjet.

I wrote again to Crawford Rix the MD of bmibaby to be told again sorry tough.

Clearly it is not prudent to "book early" with bmibaby better to wait for easyjet then check the price unless you can afford to pay double the going rate.

I'm happy to share the correspondence with anyone who would like to see it.

Regards

Paul