Booking Flights - Long Distance & Extra Legroom Advice?

PowerHandle

Thanks for the advice so far folks, it really is helpful. Will investigate doing a short hop into Europe to try and reduce the cost of an upgrade.

Murphy_The_Cat

PowerHandle said:

Thanks for the advice so far folks, it really is helpful. Will investigate doing a short hop into Europe to try and reduce the cost of an upgrade.

Do a google on "positioning flights" and you will soon learn about the benefits (& pitfalls) of flying ex-eu. 

Westin

I wonder how many fell into those ‘pit-falls’ when travelling to Amsterdam or Paris in past couple of weeks to start trips. Always a gamble.

zagfles

daveyjp said:

Convenience costs money, so if you are prepared to be inconvenienced by taking longer sgnificant savings can be made.

Two leg haul direct from UK is expensive.  Three leg via a European airport may not be so, especially if you book with airlines in the same Alliance.

https://www.flightsfrom.com/a/airline-alliances

As an example I priced Manchester Sydney with Singapore in November and it was close to £9k return in business, compared to about £1800 in economy.

Manchester Sydney with Finnair to Helsinki and Singapore to Sydney £3,500 in business.  Finnair is in an alliance with Cathay Pacific so via Hong Kong may be cheaper.

Also consider premium economy if leg room is key.

Long haul from Manchester always seems to be ridiculously expensive, I looked at it when we went to Aus and NZ and it was around the same as above, whereas going from London they were both well under £1k return.

zagfles

PowerHandle said:

Thanks for the advice so far folks, it really is helpful. Will investigate doing a short hop into Europe to try and reduce the cost of an upgrade.

If you're not in a hurry to get there the other thing to look at is a long layover in Singapore and a stop in the transit hotel - IMO a much better option than trying to sleep on the plane whatever the class. See https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/79157263#Comment_79157263

comeandgo

Have recently booked london to Sydney returns with Singapore airlines.  Was able to check seating availability prior to final payment and was able to get return flights and pay for choosing seats and have change from £1,900 for the two of us.  This is with one stop for an hour, I can’t be bothered with jiggling flights and times and have long lay overs just to save a few pounds.  These flights are for later this year.

Murphy_The_Cat

Westin said:

I wonder how many fell into those ‘pit-falls’ when travelling to Amsterdam or Paris in past couple of weeks to start trips. Always a gamble.

There will be some !

It's not an exact science and you need to be aware of the elements of risk that you are taking. 

I'd suggest that you also need to assess your attitude to the savings/risk ratio - some would be happy to do it to save £100pp, whereas some people wouldn't ever consider doing it, regardless of the level of savings.

Would I fly to my ex-eu airport with an airline that only flew there once or twice a week - hell no.

Would I fly to my ex-eu airport on the same day as my departure - not a snowball in hells chance.

zagfles

comeandgo said:

Have recently booked london to Sydney returns with Singapore airlines.  Was able to check seating availability prior to final payment and was able to get return flights and pay for choosing seats and have change from £1,900 for the two of us.  This is with one stop for an hour, I can’t be bothered with jiggling flights and times and have long lay overs just to save a few pounds.  These flights are for later this year.

The point of the long layover isn't to save money, it's to get a good "night's" kip rather than trying to sleep on the plane. If you search for flights on SIA (and probably other airlines' sites) it'll give you options with long and short layovers, it's all on the same booking and luggage is checked through so it's no hassle. The price isn't usually any different whether short or long layover.

Then if you choose one with say a 7-10 hour layover you can book the transit hotel and have a good kip in a private dark room with your own shower/toilet etc, beats trying to sleep on the plane. It's airside so you don't go through immigration/customs etc. The transit hotel is relatively cheap, IIRC about £50-100 depending how long, you book by the hour.

PowerHandle

I'm trying to balance time taken with practicality - as there will be two children with us I'd like to crack on with the journey.

I spent a bit of time playing around yesterday evening on sky scanner and individual airline websites, trying 2+ stop bookings, completely separate short hop + long haul flights etc, different EU airports (Amsterdam, Helsinki, Frankfurt), different UK airports (MAN/BHX/LHR) and at the moment it doesn't seem to make much of a difference price-wise for April/May/June next year. It would appear that in Economy it'll be circa £4,000 for the flights, Premium Economy is at least £8,700 - both with Singapore Airlines on a one-stop travel plan taking around 23-25hrs. 

Murphy_The_Cat

You haven't said what age your children are, so this may not be relevant to you/them - when I was planning a trip to NZ, I asked them if they would a) prefer to get there as quickly as possible, to maximize their time in NZ, but possibly suffer from jetlag for a day or 2, or b) take longer to get there with a longish stopover on the way, which would mean that they would have less time in NZ, but the jet lag would be minimized.   They went for option b), which worked out very well for us. We got off the plane in Auckland, picked up the car and started our holiday.

Have you used google flights as a search tool ?  It is very, very good.  It will let you serach up to 5 departure points an 5 arrival points at the same time an with a single click, change your search from economy, to prem econonmy,or business or first (I wish !)  (another handy function is "date grid" where it will drill down to the best priced flight that matches the time criteria that you put in.  Plus, you can click through directly to the airline (or OTA if you are prepared to take the risk).

I find it much more useful than skyscanner, kayak or momendo.  One of the few downsides of google flights is that it only searches 330 days ahread and some airlines release their seats 355 days ahead - so that when 330 days roll in Airline X may have already sold out their cheapest price bucket of seats.

When doing your flight searches, also look at Copenhagen, Stockholm, Brussels, Rome and Paris

A of reasons that flying business ex-eu can workout so much easier on the pocket are that other countries don't apply £185 passenger tax on Business class seats and that in some eu countries businesses may take an egalatarian view that their staff travel in economy, because that is "the right thing to do" - which leaves a lot of empty seats at the front of the plane that somehow need to be filled.

p.s. my son is 6ft6" tall as well and can no longer fit into/on a standard economy seat - especially if I'm sat next to him !