Anyone find these interesting? 
Trying to book flights from London to SE Asia at the moment.
My process is:
http://matrix.itasoftware.com
Find cheapest fares, in matrix view, look at different options, ok Emirates seems like a reasonable deal we will stop in Dubai, it gives the fare as follows:
Fare 1: Carrier EK T2ALPGB1 LON to SIN (rules)
Passenger type ADT, round trip fare, booking code T
Covers LHR-DXB (Economy), DXB-SIN (Economy)
£105.00
Fare 2: Carrier EK T2ALPGB1 SIN to LON (rules)
Passenger type ADT, round trip fare, booking code T
Covers SIN-DXB (Economy), DXB-LHR (Economy)
£105.00
United Kingdom Air Passengers Duty (GB) £94.00
United Kingdom Passenger Service Charge (UB) £40.19
EK YQ surcharge (YQ) £220.00
Singapore Passenger Service Charge (SG) £10.30
Singapore Aviation Levy (OP) £3.20
Singapore Passenger Security Service Charge (OO) £4.10
Total: £581.79
Of which £210 is the 'fare', and the rest is 'taxes' comprising:
£94 UK air passenger tax
£40.19 for the privilege of flying out of Heathrow (For Gatwick, only £14.29)
£17.60 for flying into/out of Singapore
£220 YQ - fuel surcharge, this was introduced a number of years ago due to rising oil prices, but has never been removed, and never will be.
All in all £371.79 in 'taxes', of which only £151.79 are actually disbursements, and £220 is just airline revenue
Ok, so £581.79 is a good fare for the time of year, but actually the return date is too late, so we can't book that one.
So seeing that Emirates have good fares, I go to expertflyer.com and sign up for a free trial, and do a fare information search for:
LON (don) - SIN (gapore) priced in pounds, flying on Emirates
It gives return fares as follows:
T1ALPGB1 £194 15days
T2ALPGB1 £210 15days
L1ALPGB1 £244 15days
L2ALPGB1 £260 15days
Q1ALPGB1 £294 15days
Q2ALPGB1 £310 15days
U1L1YGB1 £346
ULE1YGB1 £376
B1L1YGB1 £398
BLE1YGB1 £428
M1L1YGB1 £451
MLE1YGB1 £481
W1L1YGB1 £556
WLE1YGB1 £586
R1L1YGB1 £713
RLE1YGB1 £743
The first letter is the booking class, which we can see will sell in this order (cheapest first):
T,L,Q,U,B,M,W,R
All are in the same cabin Economy, or Y class, and get the same service, but are sold at different prices.
In addition, as you can see, there are different codes after the first letter:
either 1ALP/2ALP for the cheapest fares, which carry a 15-day advance purchase requirement, and 1L1Y, LE1Y for the more expensive fares.
What is the difference between 1ALP and 2ALP and indeed 1L1Y and LE1Y? Well you have to read the fare rules.
The fare rules are several pages, but for the 1ALP and 1L1Y fares:
OUTBOUND:
IF THE FARE COMPONENT INCLUDES TRAVEL BETWEEN UNITED
KINGDOM AND DXB
THEN THAT TRAVEL MUST BE ON
ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING
EK FLIGHT 12
EK FLIGHT 16
EK FLIGHT 10.
INBOUND:
IF THE FARE COMPONENT INCLUDES TRAVEL BETWEEN UNITED
KINGDOM AND DXB
THEN THAT TRAVEL MUST BE ON
ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING
EK FLIGHT 11
EK FLIGHT 15
EK FLIGHT 09.
And for the 2ALP fares:
Outbound:
IF THE FARE COMPONENT INCLUDES TRAVEL BETWEEN UNITED
KINGDOM AND DXB
THEN THAT TRAVEL MUST BE ON
ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING
EK FLIGHT 0004
EK FLIGHT 0008
EK FLIGHT 0030.
Inbound:
IF THE FARE COMPONENT INCLUDES TRAVEL BETWEEN UNITED
KINGDOM AND DXB
THEN THAT TRAVEL MUST BE ON
ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING
ANY EK FLIGHT OPERATED BY EK
ANY EK FLIGHT OPERATED BY QF.
And finally for the LE1Y fares:
In both directions:
IF THE FARE COMPONENT INCLUDES TRAVEL BETWEEN UNITED
KINGDOM AND DXB
THEN THAT TRAVEL MUST BE ON
ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING
ANY EK FLIGHT OPERATED BY EK
ANY EK FLIGHT OPERATED BY QF.
There are lots of other restrictions, minimum/maximum stay etc., but none that make any practical difference in my case
So the next thing to do is find flights, so we do a Flight Availability Search at Expert Flyer
It turns out that there eight daily Emirates flights in each direction between London and Dubai.
These are:
EK8 from LHR at 08:40
EK12 from LGW at 10:00
EK2 from LHR at 14:15
EK16 from LGW at 14:25
EK30 from LHR at 17:00
EK4 from LHR at 20:40
EK10 from LGW at 21:15
EK5102, a codeshare operated by Qantas, from LHR at 21:30
EK6, from LHR at 22:15
EK5110, a codeshare operated by Qantas, from LHR at 22:30
Fares are priced on a half-return basis, so if you take a T1ALPGB1 outbound and Q1ALPGB1 inbound, you'd pay half of each return fare, so £244 total.
Looking at the fare rules we can see that there aren't any major inbound restrictions, as the 2ALP fares allow us to take all Emirates and Qantas flights, and they are only £8 more expensive (one-way) than the cheapest 1ALP fares.
Outbound is a different story however. 3 of the 8 daily Emirates flights are permitted on the 1ALP fares, 3 on the 2ALP (at +£8 o/w), but for the remaining two Emirates flights, and the 2 Qantas flights we need a LE1Y fare, and the cheapest fare for these is £188 o/w, significantly more than the £97 cheapest o/w fare on the 1ALP codes, and especially so when you have to pay for 4 tickets (children, btw, get 25% off the adult fare, but the 'taxes' in full).
Since the flights are two legs, London - Dubai, then Dubai - Singapore, you need to check availability for both flights.
We do this using the Expert Flyer availability search, choosing +-3 days to see over a whole week
Specifying direct flights only, LON - DXB, on Emirates, we ask for availability in booking codes TLQUB.
It turns out the Qantas flights don't sell in T,L, or U class, effectively meaning that the cheapest fares on Qantas outbound would be BLE1YGB1, at £214 one-way.
Looking at availability for LON - DXB on 7th July, we see that EK4, from LHR at 20:40 has:
B9 U9 Q9 L9 T9
This is the number of seats available in each booking class. 9 means 'at least 9', so this flight is unlikely to sell out soon.
This arrives in DXB at 06:30 the next day (the 8th of July).
Because it's EK4, according to the fare rules it will book as T2ALPGB1, at £105 (half of £210) one-way (plus taxes)
Next thing we need to do is find our connection from DXB to SIN, on 8th of July.
Again, an availability search. There are 4 daily flights. The first is at 03:25, before our flight arrives. The next is at 07:45 and shows again B9 U9 Q9 L9 T9
Unfortunately this flight is not direct, making a stop in Colombo, which makes the duration of the flight an additional 2.5 hours. Not much fun.
There is a direct flight at 09:35, but this is showing B9 U9 Q0 L0 T0
For us to catch this flight, the lowest booking class is U.
Since the ticket is LON - SIN, booking U class from DXB to SIN will bump the whole journey up to U class, even though there was availability from London in T class. So rather than T2ALPGB1, at £105 o/w, taking the 09:35 flight from DXB to SIN will bump us up to ULE1YGB1, at £188 o/w, an additional £290.50 for the 4 passengers.
Considering that the direct flight arrives only 40 minutes earlier than the previous flight (thanks to its later departure time), it's not worth the extra £290.50
So a stop in Colombo it is.
So outbound sorted, we now look at inbound. As noted above, from the fare rules, we can basically take any flight, just make sure there is availability in a cheap booking class.
The flight times from Singapore to Dubai are a bit ridiculous:
01:40, arriving 04:50
00:50, arriving 06:00, with that Colombo stop
06:50, arriving 10:00
21:25, arriving 00:55
None great, so maybe try Kuala Lumpur instead, which is equally convenient for us and covered by the same fares?
02:00 arriving 04:50
10:10 arriving 13:00
10:30 arriving 13:30
19:30 arriving 22:20
Ah, that's a bit better
19:30 seems sensible, to allow us to fly into KL from Indonesia without potentially having to spend the night.
But the flights are heavily booked, and for our dates for KUL-DXB, the cheapest class is M. So maybe Singapore it should be after all
So back from SIN it is, and we find 9+ T availability on EK433 on 31st August, arriving Dubai at 10:00.
We're going to stop over in Dubai, so we don't need a connection as such, just a matching T flight back to London a couple of days later.
And we find it on the 2nd, either EK3 from Dubai at 14:15 arriving LHR at 18:40, or EK5 at 15:45 arriving LHR at 20:15 , both showing 9+ in T class.
From the fare rules above, we know that this will price at T2ALPGB1, the same as our outbound (we need to take EK11, EK15 or EK9 to get the slightly cheaper 1ALP fare).
So we have an itinerary:
7Jul LHR-DXB EK4
8Jul DXB-SIN EK348
31Aug SIN-DXB EK433
2nd Sep EK3 or EK5
as well as a fare basis T2ALPGB1, both ways, and this should price at £581.79 for each adult. This compares with the straight return price (without the return stopover) of £777.59 being quoted at Lastminute.com, a saving of £700 for the four of us.
So I take this itinerary to a travel agent (I use Flightcentre) and have them book it for me. The saving is worth the trouble....

Trying to book flights from London to SE Asia at the moment.
My process is:
http://matrix.itasoftware.com
Find cheapest fares, in matrix view, look at different options, ok Emirates seems like a reasonable deal we will stop in Dubai, it gives the fare as follows:
Fare 1: Carrier EK T2ALPGB1 LON to SIN (rules)
Passenger type ADT, round trip fare, booking code T
Covers LHR-DXB (Economy), DXB-SIN (Economy)
£105.00
Fare 2: Carrier EK T2ALPGB1 SIN to LON (rules)
Passenger type ADT, round trip fare, booking code T
Covers SIN-DXB (Economy), DXB-LHR (Economy)
£105.00
United Kingdom Air Passengers Duty (GB) £94.00
United Kingdom Passenger Service Charge (UB) £40.19
EK YQ surcharge (YQ) £220.00
Singapore Passenger Service Charge (SG) £10.30
Singapore Aviation Levy (OP) £3.20
Singapore Passenger Security Service Charge (OO) £4.10
Total: £581.79
Of which £210 is the 'fare', and the rest is 'taxes' comprising:
£94 UK air passenger tax
£40.19 for the privilege of flying out of Heathrow (For Gatwick, only £14.29)
£17.60 for flying into/out of Singapore
£220 YQ - fuel surcharge, this was introduced a number of years ago due to rising oil prices, but has never been removed, and never will be.
All in all £371.79 in 'taxes', of which only £151.79 are actually disbursements, and £220 is just airline revenue
Ok, so £581.79 is a good fare for the time of year, but actually the return date is too late, so we can't book that one.
So seeing that Emirates have good fares, I go to expertflyer.com and sign up for a free trial, and do a fare information search for:
LON (don) - SIN (gapore) priced in pounds, flying on Emirates
It gives return fares as follows:
T1ALPGB1 £194 15days
T2ALPGB1 £210 15days
L1ALPGB1 £244 15days
L2ALPGB1 £260 15days
Q1ALPGB1 £294 15days
Q2ALPGB1 £310 15days
U1L1YGB1 £346
ULE1YGB1 £376
B1L1YGB1 £398
BLE1YGB1 £428
M1L1YGB1 £451
MLE1YGB1 £481
W1L1YGB1 £556
WLE1YGB1 £586
R1L1YGB1 £713
RLE1YGB1 £743
The first letter is the booking class, which we can see will sell in this order (cheapest first):
T,L,Q,U,B,M,W,R
All are in the same cabin Economy, or Y class, and get the same service, but are sold at different prices.
In addition, as you can see, there are different codes after the first letter:
either 1ALP/2ALP for the cheapest fares, which carry a 15-day advance purchase requirement, and 1L1Y, LE1Y for the more expensive fares.
What is the difference between 1ALP and 2ALP and indeed 1L1Y and LE1Y? Well you have to read the fare rules.
The fare rules are several pages, but for the 1ALP and 1L1Y fares:
OUTBOUND:
IF THE FARE COMPONENT INCLUDES TRAVEL BETWEEN UNITED
KINGDOM AND DXB
THEN THAT TRAVEL MUST BE ON
ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING
EK FLIGHT 12
EK FLIGHT 16
EK FLIGHT 10.
INBOUND:
IF THE FARE COMPONENT INCLUDES TRAVEL BETWEEN UNITED
KINGDOM AND DXB
THEN THAT TRAVEL MUST BE ON
ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING
EK FLIGHT 11
EK FLIGHT 15
EK FLIGHT 09.
And for the 2ALP fares:
Outbound:
IF THE FARE COMPONENT INCLUDES TRAVEL BETWEEN UNITED
KINGDOM AND DXB
THEN THAT TRAVEL MUST BE ON
ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING
EK FLIGHT 0004
EK FLIGHT 0008
EK FLIGHT 0030.
Inbound:
IF THE FARE COMPONENT INCLUDES TRAVEL BETWEEN UNITED
KINGDOM AND DXB
THEN THAT TRAVEL MUST BE ON
ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING
ANY EK FLIGHT OPERATED BY EK
ANY EK FLIGHT OPERATED BY QF.
And finally for the LE1Y fares:
In both directions:
IF THE FARE COMPONENT INCLUDES TRAVEL BETWEEN UNITED
KINGDOM AND DXB
THEN THAT TRAVEL MUST BE ON
ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING
ANY EK FLIGHT OPERATED BY EK
ANY EK FLIGHT OPERATED BY QF.
There are lots of other restrictions, minimum/maximum stay etc., but none that make any practical difference in my case
So the next thing to do is find flights, so we do a Flight Availability Search at Expert Flyer
It turns out that there eight daily Emirates flights in each direction between London and Dubai.
These are:
EK8 from LHR at 08:40
EK12 from LGW at 10:00
EK2 from LHR at 14:15
EK16 from LGW at 14:25
EK30 from LHR at 17:00
EK4 from LHR at 20:40
EK10 from LGW at 21:15
EK5102, a codeshare operated by Qantas, from LHR at 21:30
EK6, from LHR at 22:15
EK5110, a codeshare operated by Qantas, from LHR at 22:30
Fares are priced on a half-return basis, so if you take a T1ALPGB1 outbound and Q1ALPGB1 inbound, you'd pay half of each return fare, so £244 total.
Looking at the fare rules we can see that there aren't any major inbound restrictions, as the 2ALP fares allow us to take all Emirates and Qantas flights, and they are only £8 more expensive (one-way) than the cheapest 1ALP fares.
Outbound is a different story however. 3 of the 8 daily Emirates flights are permitted on the 1ALP fares, 3 on the 2ALP (at +£8 o/w), but for the remaining two Emirates flights, and the 2 Qantas flights we need a LE1Y fare, and the cheapest fare for these is £188 o/w, significantly more than the £97 cheapest o/w fare on the 1ALP codes, and especially so when you have to pay for 4 tickets (children, btw, get 25% off the adult fare, but the 'taxes' in full).
Since the flights are two legs, London - Dubai, then Dubai - Singapore, you need to check availability for both flights.
We do this using the Expert Flyer availability search, choosing +-3 days to see over a whole week
Specifying direct flights only, LON - DXB, on Emirates, we ask for availability in booking codes TLQUB.
It turns out the Qantas flights don't sell in T,L, or U class, effectively meaning that the cheapest fares on Qantas outbound would be BLE1YGB1, at £214 one-way.
Looking at availability for LON - DXB on 7th July, we see that EK4, from LHR at 20:40 has:
B9 U9 Q9 L9 T9
This is the number of seats available in each booking class. 9 means 'at least 9', so this flight is unlikely to sell out soon.
This arrives in DXB at 06:30 the next day (the 8th of July).
Because it's EK4, according to the fare rules it will book as T2ALPGB1, at £105 (half of £210) one-way (plus taxes)
Next thing we need to do is find our connection from DXB to SIN, on 8th of July.
Again, an availability search. There are 4 daily flights. The first is at 03:25, before our flight arrives. The next is at 07:45 and shows again B9 U9 Q9 L9 T9
Unfortunately this flight is not direct, making a stop in Colombo, which makes the duration of the flight an additional 2.5 hours. Not much fun.
There is a direct flight at 09:35, but this is showing B9 U9 Q0 L0 T0
For us to catch this flight, the lowest booking class is U.
Since the ticket is LON - SIN, booking U class from DXB to SIN will bump the whole journey up to U class, even though there was availability from London in T class. So rather than T2ALPGB1, at £105 o/w, taking the 09:35 flight from DXB to SIN will bump us up to ULE1YGB1, at £188 o/w, an additional £290.50 for the 4 passengers.
Considering that the direct flight arrives only 40 minutes earlier than the previous flight (thanks to its later departure time), it's not worth the extra £290.50
So a stop in Colombo it is.
So outbound sorted, we now look at inbound. As noted above, from the fare rules, we can basically take any flight, just make sure there is availability in a cheap booking class.
The flight times from Singapore to Dubai are a bit ridiculous:
01:40, arriving 04:50
00:50, arriving 06:00, with that Colombo stop
06:50, arriving 10:00
21:25, arriving 00:55
None great, so maybe try Kuala Lumpur instead, which is equally convenient for us and covered by the same fares?
02:00 arriving 04:50
10:10 arriving 13:00
10:30 arriving 13:30
19:30 arriving 22:20
Ah, that's a bit better
19:30 seems sensible, to allow us to fly into KL from Indonesia without potentially having to spend the night.
But the flights are heavily booked, and for our dates for KUL-DXB, the cheapest class is M. So maybe Singapore it should be after all
So back from SIN it is, and we find 9+ T availability on EK433 on 31st August, arriving Dubai at 10:00.
We're going to stop over in Dubai, so we don't need a connection as such, just a matching T flight back to London a couple of days later.
And we find it on the 2nd, either EK3 from Dubai at 14:15 arriving LHR at 18:40, or EK5 at 15:45 arriving LHR at 20:15 , both showing 9+ in T class.
From the fare rules above, we know that this will price at T2ALPGB1, the same as our outbound (we need to take EK11, EK15 or EK9 to get the slightly cheaper 1ALP fare).
So we have an itinerary:
7Jul LHR-DXB EK4
8Jul DXB-SIN EK348
31Aug SIN-DXB EK433
2nd Sep EK3 or EK5
as well as a fare basis T2ALPGB1, both ways, and this should price at £581.79 for each adult. This compares with the straight return price (without the return stopover) of £777.59 being quoted at Lastminute.com, a saving of £700 for the four of us.
So I take this itinerary to a travel agent (I use Flightcentre) and have them book it for me. The saving is worth the trouble....