• Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Plane fares

Status
Not open for further replies.

soil

Established Member
Joined
28 May 2012
Messages
2,150
Anyone find these interesting? :lol:

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....
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

overthewater

Established Member
Joined
16 Apr 2012
Messages
8,495
A rather interesting, and explanation on how to fly and save alot of money, its just rather confusing in some aspects.

Is that what Megabus based its operations on? first passenger cheap then the cost goes up?
 

soil

Established Member
Joined
28 May 2012
Messages
2,150
This is not necessarily first passenger cheap.

July is an expensive month to fly to SE Asia from the UK.

BA have a 'low fare finder' here

http://www.britishairways.com/travel/low-price-finder/public/en_gb

and the lowest fares to Singapore are £853 each month, but £1218 in July.

If you select July, then for that £1218 the price is:

£827 fare
£390.15 'taxes' (again, most of this is 'fuel surcharge')


If you do a fares search on Expert Flyer, for LHR - SIN, on BA, in July the fares are:

£827 LHNCGB
£921 MHNCGB
£1022 KHNCGB

etc.

It shows

Effective Date: 1 July - 12th August.

In other words, the cheapest possible fare for an outbound flight in July is £827 + taxes.

If we search for fares for 13th August, the fares look like this:


£462 LLNCGB
£552 MLNCGB
£652 KLNCGB

And these fares are effective 13th August to 6th December - a long window.

If you look at 7th December, the fares are again:

£827 LHNCGB
£921 MHNCGB
£1022 KHNCGB

effective to 30th December

Then the fares go to

£462 LLNCGB
£552 MLNCGB
£652 KLNCGB

31st December 2013 to 30 June 2014.

This shows you that BA operate a relatively flat pricing structure. Their cheapest fare of £853 inclusive of taxes/fees is not especially cheap, and they basically sell it all year round with the exception of two peaks from the second week to the end of December, and all of July up to the middle of August.

These peak periods reflect demand.

What you will find is that BA and other airlines operate periodic sales. Here they will sell a cheaper fare (taxes/fees are never discounted). Base fares of under £100 to the US are common, which they withdraw after a couple of weeks.

In order to manage demand they may choose to use a lower booking class. As you can see above, the normal cheapest class for LHR - SIN is L. However there are other booking classes, for which no fares are quoted, but for which they could introduce fares in sale periods.

Sales will only be for quieter periods, and there is very little advantage to booking ahead if you want to travel LHR-SIN on BA in July, because essentially their fares are almost flat, largely because they are so expensive, a factor determined by high demand and the fact that they are non-stop to Singapore.

For Emirates, with eight daily flights London to Dubai (and also flights to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow), and feeder flights on to numerous destinations in Asia, they cannot afford to charge high prices, because they have far more capacity to fill.

Here, as my example shows, it does pay to book in the cheapest buckets, but as with BA, they will also operate sales, and it might be that next week my T2ALPGB1 £210 fare has been cut to £150 as part of a sale.

Given the proximity of my departure, it's unwise for me to wait to see if things get cheaper, in view of the 15 day advance purchase requirement on the cheapest fares, a requirement that wouldn't disappear in the event of a sale, and also because even if there was a sale, the cheapest buckets might be completely sold.

The last time we did a similar trip we went via India, with stopovers in both directions, and again because there are two flights, you could finesse the lowest fare into the cheapest buckets using the stopover.

With BA they have excess capacity to North America, and you will find that their prices vary a lot more, but, as mentioned, it is not a case of selling Advance style tickets first at £8, £10, then £12, etc. - inventory management is much more sophisticated than that with airlines. If you book early you can guarantee to book into the cheapest booking class, but you can't guarantee that that booking class won't be selling cheaper in six months time. If you wait for the sale you could find that your dates are not included, or that there is no longer inventory in the cheap buckets.
 

bb21

Emeritus Moderator
Joined
4 Feb 2010
Messages
24,168
Indeed a very interesting in-depth look at how air fares are structured.

I often throw around an example of how "taxes" and "extras" have grown to ridiculous proportions. A long-haul trip I undertook a couple of years back: £39 actual fare, £310 "taxes and add-ons".
 

Royston Vasey

Established Member
Joined
14 May 2008
Messages
2,529
Location
Cambridge
Indeed a very interesting in-depth look at how air fares are structured.

I often throw around an example of how "taxes" and "extras" have grown to ridiculous proportions. A long-haul trip I undertook a couple of years back: £39 actual fare, £310 "taxes and add-ons".

UK air passenger duty is reaching ridiculous proportions and its the reason air miles no longer give you "free" flights. Slowly it is damaging the competitiveness of UK plc for relatively little gain.
 

soil

Established Member
Joined
28 May 2012
Messages
2,150
UK air passenger duty is reaching ridiculous proportions and its the reason air miles no longer give you "free" flights. Slowly it is damaging the competitiveness of UK plc for relatively little gain.

Well not really.

The reason air miles no longer give you free flights is because they prefer to charge people for them! :lol:

It's the same all over the world.

APD is very very high, but if you took off the 'fuel surcharge', airmiles flights in Economy class would still be good value.

The exception to APD being high is on flights of less than 2000 miles, where it is a reasonable £13 (in economy - double for higher cabins).

It is definitely anti-competitive for people flying into London and spending their money in the UK.

Although if you look at our visa regulations you'd realise that the UK government don't really care.

If we stopover in DXB for more than 24 hours, the APD falls to £67 per person, rather than £94, because we are then deemed to be flying to DXB, a band B tax, rather than SIN, a band D one.
 

Paul Kelly

Verified Rep - BR Fares
Joined
16 Apr 2010
Messages
4,180
Location
Reading
It's really striking (to me anyway) how similar that process is to finding cheap advance rail fares. The airline fare classes are analogous to railway advance fare tiers (which are implemented in the fares database as separate ticket types). And you need to have quota available at the same tier for all segments of the journey in order to book a through fare at that price tier, otherwise only the most expensive fully-available tier will be offered, and it can be cheaper to split.

However trains tend to call at a lot more intermediate stops (which typically are all separate segments for fares quota purposes) than planes do, so there a lot more permutations to check.
 

Statto

Established Member
Joined
8 Feb 2011
Messages
3,582
Location
At home or at the pub
How do Airline carriers get away with charging fuel surcharge, like catching the bus to find out the say fare is £2:50, then you have to pay extra £5 for fuel surcharge.
 

soil

Established Member
Joined
28 May 2012
Messages
2,150
The fuel surcharge is included in the fare displayed to the passenger, so it doesn't make much difference to most people.

It only really affects frequent flyers, who are forced to pay £300+ in 'taxes' for their 'free' flight.
 

34D

Established Member
Joined
9 Feb 2011
Messages
6,042
Location
Yorkshire
Soil, would it be okay to PM you an airline-related request, to get a bit of advice from you?

Great thread - mostly over my head, but now I know how people are confused by our rail fares!
 

soil

Established Member
Joined
28 May 2012
Messages
2,150
So in the end I paid 5042.14 Brazilian Real (just under £1500) for my flights for 4. Quite a saving on the £3000 I was initially quoted in the UK!

Turns out if you book Qantas flights in Brazil (expedia.com.br), they don't charge a fuel surcharge, for legal reasons. It's possible for them to set a different fare for different ticketing countries..... But they haven't.

So I save the £220 p/p fuel surcharge.

I'm still flying Emirates, but on their Qantas codeshare. 'O' inventory, which is the cheapest on Qantas, the equivalent to 'T' on Emirates, but not all Emirates flights were available on the Qantas codeshare, and the cheapest fare buckets weren't always available on Qantas on the same flight as Emirates.

Outbound was no problem, I have a 4 hr 45 minute stopover in Dubai, returning we have 3 days.

You can PM me, 34D, but public posts are usually more illuminating for others?
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top