Long Haul Flights Australia

Murphy_The_Cat

callum9999 wrote: »

I guess the pricing logic is different for business and economy then (and perhaps Christmas).

In the past, its worked well for long haul economy as well for me.
For me, I work a long way ahead for my holidays and spend quite a bit of time working out the optimum route and itinerary.
As a relatedish aside, this week I've booked a european destination trip for next March with a full service airline, on the day that the tickets became available. It was a decent fare and much better than any LCC. Since then, the fare has gone up by over 10%.

zagfles

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

In the past, its worked well for long haul economy as well for me.
For me, I work a long way ahead for my holidays and spend quite a bit of time working out the optimum route and itinerary.
As a relatedish aside, this week I've booked a european destination trip for next March with a full service airline, on the day that the tickets became available. It was a decent fare and much better than any LCC. Since then, the fare has gone up by over 10%.

Interesting people say all the time on here but the research from Momondo of millions of flights seems to suggest around 60 days before is the optimum time to book. Do you check the flights regularly after you've booked?

Murphy_The_Cat

zagfles wrote: »

Interesting people say all the time on here but the research from Momondo of millions of flights seems to suggest around 60 days before is the optimum time to book. Do you check the flights regularly after you've booked?

Yes, I'm anoraky enough to go back and see how the pricing varies.


In the past I've found that google flights is a really powerful, user friendly flight search engine, but it only lets you search (about) 10 and a half months into the future, which isn't very helpful if you want to research an airline that releases fares 11+ months in advance. Once google flights kick in, the most discounted ticket classes may have sold out.


Kayak also has an "our advice" function, but it seems to take quite a while to gather data before offering its "advice".

zagfles

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

Yes, I'm anoraky enough to go back and see how the pricing varies.


In the past I've found that google flights is a really powerful, user friendly flight search engine, but it only lets you search (about) 10 and a half months into the future, which isn't very helpful if you want to research an airline that releases fares 11+ months in advance.


Kayak also has an "our advice" function, but it seems to take quite a while to gather data before offering its "advice".

How have you found flights compare booking very early to 60 days in advance? I've done the same, eg a recent booking was 4 months in advance (which is a long time for me!) and it went down 2 months in advance but then shot up nearer the time.

Murphy_The_Cat

zagfles wrote: »

How have you found flights compare booking very early to 60 days in advance? I've done the same, eg a recent booking was 4 months in advance (which is a long time for me!) and it went down 2 months in advance but then shot up nearer the time.

for 3 of the last 4 big trips that I've done, booking ASAP was the best price, all the way to departure day.
For the other flight, there was a "sweet spot" about 8 months out when prices dropped by about £25 per person for a week, but then carried on their slow and steady rise.


Things may work differently for a flight which is popular, sells quickly and doesn't need discounting and a flight that sells slower and needs incentives to put bums on seats ! (supply and demand etc, etc)

callum9999

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

In the past, its worked well for long haul economy as well for me.
For me, I work a long way ahead for my holidays and spend quite a bit of time working out the optimum route and itinerary.
As a relatedish aside, this week I've booked a european destination trip for next March with a full service airline, on the day that the tickets became available. It was a decent fare and much better than any LCC. Since then, the fare has gone up by over 10%.

Interesting, as I've never found a single example of economy flights being cheapest on the day they're released. I'll have to start keeping an eye out for them!

Murphy_The_Cat

callum9999 wrote: »

Interesting, as I've never found a single example of economy flights being cheapest on the day they're released. I'll have to start keeping an eye out for them!

if you've got the time/inclination to do it, follow the price trends for the tickets before they become available. For my trip to NZ over Christmas, I could see that the cheapest booking class was much better value than the next class along, so once the "cheapo" class of tickets had gone, the next step up was going to cost.
The one caveat that does apply is that these are the tickets that the airlines supply to Joe Public, of course at any time they could offer deeply discounted tickets to OTA's. Some OTA's are reputable, whereas some are as shonky as shonky.


If you are looking at OTA's, look VERY closely at what they are charging for seat selection and luggage. For an upcoming european trip with a connecting flight each way, the airline wanted an extra £220 for luggage,some of the OTA's wanted an additional £335 for luggage.
(if you are fly SAS, the difference is even more startling - SAS would charge £78 for the luggage for the 4 of us, for the multiple legs, Shonky OTA £312.06, SAS would charge £132 for seat selection for 4, shonky OTA would charge £360.
Naturally, the OTA's come up as being "cheaper" when the flight search engines put up their results:beer:





For our long haul trip, the seat selection with the airline was free, with the OTA's it was an additional charge - £330 was typical

pimento

We weren't able to select our seats on Cathay until check-in (48 hours before the flight) but as the configuration on all the flights was 3-3-3 and 3-4-3 it didn't really matter.

We were window and middle for all the flights except coming home and we managed to get row 42 which was a two seat configuration by the loos.
I was worried we'd be seated separate but even at -48hrs we got two adjacent seats.

Our luggage (30kg each) was included but we travel extra light. My bag weighed 12kg on the way home and my husband's 10kg. The check-in agent commented on it.