Economy Air Fares madness

Poppa_Alcohol

What exactly has happened to air fares on the non-budget carriers? I'm trying to book flights to Boston and from New York in October and all the standard carriers (BA, AF, Virgin, Delta, AA etc) are showing economy prices of £2000 or more, more than ten times the prices offered by the budget lines. I can' believe they're actually selling any ticket at these prices so why are they doing this? When are the actual economy fares going to become available?

jpsartre

Not sure where you're seeing this. I checked a couple of random dates with BA in October and prices are in the £500 range. What exactly are you searching for? If you don't include a Saturday night stay-over it will push the price up.

Westin

Are you looking at one-way fares?

Try using the multi-centre function on airline websites so your routing might look like LON*-BOS-NYC*-LON*.

You may actually find it better to take the train between BOS NYC so use multicentre for LON-BOS // NYC-LON.

* Use LON to pick up LGW/LHR/STN flights and NYC for both JFK and EWR.

Caz3121

It sounds like you are looking at one way flights rather than multi city or openjaw

Poppa_Alcohol

Indeed people are right, this happened as a result of looking at single flights once I switched to using open jaw/multi city on both the aggregators (Kayak, Skyscanner) and the individual airline sites this stopped happening. This does not explain, however, why the budget airlines showed their standard price for a single flight search while the scheduled ones did not.

Poppa_Alcohol

Westin wrote: »

Are you looking at one-way fares?

You may actually find it better to take the train between BOS NYC so use multicentre for LON-BOS // NYC-LON.

That is what I intend to do. The possible complication is that I want to fly from/return to Paris not London.

jpsartre

Poppa_Alcohol wrote: »

This does not explain, however, why the budget airlines showed their standard price for a single flight search while the scheduled ones did not.

Both showed their "standard" price. However, one-way fares with traditional network airlines tend to book into the most flexible booking classes (at least for longhaul flights), hence the high price.

Poppa_Alcohol

jpsartre wrote: »

Both showed their "standard" price. However, one-way fares with traditional network airlines tend to book into the most flexible booking classes (at least for longhaul flights), hence the high price.

That's a new one on me, never seen it before. Remember what I said BA and AF were showing something like £2500 for a one-way to Boston and twice that for premium.

jpsartre

You must have never looked then because it's been like that for years. That said, it's been getting more and more phased out on shorthaul flights, probably due to the competition from LCC which typically do not have this booking policy. As the lowcost concept is starting to make its way to longahul flights it wouldn't surprise if the same happened there eventually.

Poppa_Alcohol

jpsartre wrote: »

You must have never looked then because it's been like that for years. That said, it's been getting more and more phased out on shorthaul flights, probably due to the competition from LCC which typically do not have this booking policy. As the lowcost concept is starting to make its way to longahul flights it wouldn't surprise if the same happened there eventually.

Thanks for telling me what I've been doing for years. It must be great being a person like you with such comprehensive knowledge of everything.


I have been using online flight bookings for nearly 20 years and aggregators like Kayak since they have been around. I can't remember how many single flight searches I've done over that time which did not show this. Vous vous foutez de ma gueule, Monsieur Sartre.

jpsartre

Sorry, I don't know what to tell you. The explanation is as I stated above, if you don't believe it that's fine. Oneway flight searches on Kayak does not give an accurate picture of prices since some 3rd party sites will offer return fares masquarading as a one-way flight. So if that's where you're getting your info it might explain why you've never seen this phenomenon before. I'm surprised someone with so much experience in booking flights wasn't aware of the option to book an open-jaw ticket but hey ho