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Cheap Flights

12:27 / 03.05.05

I'm visiting a friend in New York at the end of the month and need to book flights.
Thing is, whenever I get airline tickets and mention the price to friends, I always get told I paid waaay over the odds, and how they [whoever I'm talking to] got the same for £5 and a bottletop, or travel Business for less, or *something* to make me feel like I'm a big fat sticker-price-paying mug.

So, Barbelith, please assuage my fears and tell me that - in this instance - £460 is a reasonable amount to pay for a economy return to NY, and/or tell me where/how bargains can be found, etc. I tend to veer towards the mainstream e-tailers (Expedia, Opodo, e-bookers etc), but I'm not confident that I'm best exploiting them. For example, the same tickets on Expedia were over £100 more expensive last night than they were on Saturday night. Do they fluctuate? Is it just advantageous to book early, wait until the last minute...? Should I be using these travel agents at all or booking directly with the airline...?
Advice, tips, scams, tricks and ruses for securing bargains, that kind of thing - all much appreciated.

unheimlich manoeuvre

13:40 / 03.05.05

smoothly - i've had luck with www.cheapflights.co.uk

14:00 / 03.05.05

When I did my world travel last year, I found both the above link and http://www.ajtair.co.uk/ to be extremely useful, especially the latter.

Just remember to take along some DEET before you go. True, the chance of encountering malaria in the US is slim, but if you spray DEET on your fingertips before giving your prints at the airport, the chemical composition will fuck their scanner up good and proper.

14:05 / 03.05.05

Do they fluctuate?

Indeed. By the passing of the stars sometimes.

Flights are cheaper the further away you book. Two of my friends are going to New York in August to watch sweaty men grapple it out and they've already booked ticks. For how much I am not quite shore.

14:17 / 03.05.05

I believe skyscanner is good.

14:25 / 03.05.05

Cheers Choccers - I've tried cheapflights, and then got lost among the thousands of agents the site directs you too. That still needs some further exploration.

Kicking myself for not realising what a difference a few days makes, but the promise of further fluctuations is slightly encouraging.
Thanks for the tip, Tez, although that site's deals all seem to be for 2004. And Buk - cheers to you too, and that looks like a good site for future reference; doesn't seem to stretch to the US though.

18:52 / 03.05.05

No offense, amigo, but in my opinion paying £465 is, while not unreasonable, more than you need to pay.

I'm kind of the queen of cheap travel deals. I love to travel, and don't make a lot of money (yet!) and I need to fly transatlantically reguarly (OK, i don't NEED to, but as my family and many of my friends live on another continetn I WANT to). Anyway here's some tips for cheap travel deals.

One thing I do when I'm looking for cheap tix is look through the papers regularly and see if any of the major airlines are doing any deals at the moment. This is a little random, and I'm impatient but I have certainly become aware of deals this way in the past.

I also visit my favorite cheap flights sites.
last minute is surprisingly good. I also like ebookers. A friend of mine turned me on to the travelocity site. I don't think travelocity is really that cheap, but you can use their advanced search function to compare prices and find out if the price you want is available when you want to travel.

I also go directly to the airline's web sites and see if they've got any good web-only fares. Some airlines also do really good net sales - they'll send out an e-mail once every week or every month with a list of their last-minute deals. I recently purchased a ticket to Chicago for almost £100 less than the cheapest going rate for a flight in mid-June using this method.

And yes, WHEN you fly makes a difference. August is ridiculously expensive, yet wait a couple weeks and you can bag some bargains. Flying on national holidays, if you don't mind, can also seriously bring the price down.

Anyway, I always make it a point never to pay a hugely expensive airfare, and you should do the same!

19:21 / 03.05.05

Merci, mon Cherie. That's solid advice, and other people have mentioned the great deals you can get through special offers in the papers (Guardian travel section, and so on). Thing is, in this particular case, I'm pretty inflexible about when I can go and when I have to be back, and didn't want to take any risks leaving it to the last minute. But you were spot on about going directly to the airline websites. I've just got tickets from American Airlines for £380 (inc. tax), flights Expedia are currently asking £490 for.

19:41 / 03.05.05

So, next, free upgrades. Another thing people make me feel hopelessly unsavvy about. I've managed to get them in hotels before (just by asking nicely, or by doing a bit of research and then saying something gushy about whatever the posh rooms offer a view of), but I'm about the only person I know never to have been upgraded on a flight.
People suggest dressing smartly, checking in early, telling some fib about a wedding anniversary or a planned engagement or similar. I've got too many scruples to try the latter, but I'd be keen to hear any other suggestions. It's become something of a rite of passage in my mind.

19:47 / 03.05.05

Also, if you depart on a Friday and return on a Monday, you'll likely pay more than if you leave on a Thursday and return on a Saturday.

Friday and Monday are heavier travel days, especially between well-traveled destinations (like NY and London).

19:53 / 03.05.05

I've never gotten a free upgrade. The only people I know who have, did so by getting bumped from a prior flight. There's an art to getting bumped which involves having a certain amount of time to burn, and flying on a day that's likely to be overbooked.

20:05 / 03.05.05

Thanks for the tip, Tez, although that site's deals all seem to be for 2004

Indeed. They don't seem to have updated their site at all, so I would suggest using the number thereon to call them for their 2005 deals covering the time at which you want to go. They should be able to help.

01:48 / 05.05.05

You might try Air Canada's website--we've been finding good deals there, if you don't mind laying over in Toronto.

I just got bumped on my last flight back to the US from London. It was a busy day--just before or after Easter? And I was traveling alone, dressed smartly, for me. And they just picked me out and pulled me up to first class. I think traveling alone was the key, though--they were waiting for me to check in.

I always check the websites of several airlines on the chance they are running a sale.

I also got a good deal recently flying to China--I actually went through an agent. I had to pay a small fee ($20, i think), but the deal was better than anything I could find online. I would never have done this but the visa situation means that an agent can get your visa for you. In the end, I got it myself, but still, I paid a good prices (less than $1200) for a flight from US-Shanghai; Shanghai-Hong Kong; Hong Kong-U.S. It was really worth it to pay $20 to have someone do this for me. If you're trying to do something complex, as I was, it really makes sense to have an agent book it for you.

I realize that goes against all logic of the free-wheelin' net, but there you have it.

Scrubb is on a downward spiral

03:23 / 05.05.05

To unhelpfully just throw in another website - I've booked a lot of my US-UK flights via www.travelselect.com, and they've generally worked out cheaper than those I've seen on Lastminute etc.