Tag Archives: flights

The Fare Food Chain

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Flying to Amsterdam? You find one person pays £47, another £120, another £420 – all in the same cabin. Is there any benefit? Yes, there is.

True, a lot of the pricing is based on supply and demand but different rules do apply to different fares. The cheapest may be “No Refund… No Changes” – so if you need to change a flight – buy a new ticket. Most fares will remain “No Refund” all through the economy cabin; but where you are in the “fare food chain” will matter when it comes to changes. Though you may have a changeable fare, if it is at the bottom of the fare chain, then chances are, you will have to pay the change fee AND a fare “uplift”. Towards the top of the food chain, you may well get away with just paying the change fee – and sometimes you can get to a reasonable fare, which will stand a good chance of missing the fare uplift if you do need to change.

Sure, if you are 120% certain nothing will change, then take the cheapest… That said, in the business world, is 120% certain enough?

2012 – The Olympic Dream?

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London 2012 may seem a while off, though it is time to make a mental note of the dates and start to plan around the event.

For those who do not know, this affects London from 27th July to the 12th August 2012 – and will also affect dates around this time.

So, what to do? London will be gridlocked from a car point of view. We are to have many “Zil” lanes – and normal Private Hire Vehicles (the ubiquitous E class Mercedes) will not be able to use these. I suggest:

1. Do not plan to travel in or out of London during this time. Make sure any meetings are held either well before or after this date – and certainly, don’t even think of holding (say) a sales conference at this time.

2. If you need to have representation abroad, think of positioning someone outside the UK for the duration.

3. If you must travel, budget accordingly. A hotel room, if one can be found, will be AT LEAST £300 a night – and that will be for a pretty basic affair and could well be some distance from the capital.

4. Be prepared to use public transport. Car travel will be hopeless, so cancel any car transfers and buy a ticket on the Heathrow Express and invest in an “Oyster” card for getting around London.

Bear in mind that this event will affect the periphery of London as well. You have been warned!

Single Or Return?

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So, on Thursday I have to be in Paris at 09:00 and will be finished by 17:00. Book a return ticket and off we go. Come Tuesday, I find out that we have an urgent meeting at the office in London and will not be able to leave for Paris until two hours later than originally planned.

This is where the simple return starts to be an issue. Of course, if you are travelling on a full economy or business class ticket, there is no issue. Otherwise, there is.

The way travel works, if you change the outward flight, you have to reprice the whole itinerary. This means that, though the return flight remains unchanged you may still have to pay an increased price for the return flight – and if the return flight is now full, save for a few full price seats that could cost.

The answer is to consider buying two one way tickets. Indeed, these can work out slightly cheaper than a return (or perhaps, slightly more). More importantly, if you change the outward flight, you will not have to re-price the return flight.

Best Value… Not Cheapest …

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Interesting little saga over a flight to Beijing. This had been booked a few weeks ago and all the usual stuff like visas had been gone through, sorted and organised. At the last moment, a call came through to say the trip was off.

The issue this engineer was travelling to resolve had escalated and was beyond his capability… someone else had to go.

Now, being a human travel agent rather than a machine – aka an online agent – I had already heard the amount of to-ing and fro-ing that had preceded this booking. It was quite clear to me that this travel event could go pear-shaped. Consequently, I did not book the cheapest – I told the client that I was going to spend and extra £100 (on his already over £1,200 fare) because I wanted to have the option to cancel the booking at a fee, rather than lose the lot if he did not go. Instead of losing the lot, the client’s cancellation fee was £70.

In this instance, I was correct – but even if it had all gone ahead as planned, that extra £100 was still, I believe, worth it.