Eugh...

[JamieLei]

Why do airline websites display prices for flights that are sold out? Grrrrr! All gone for the dates that I wanted... ah well!
I found a lovely fare to go to Finland tomorrow and return back on the 2nd (to visit friends over New Year) but when I rang to book the flight, then it was all fully booked.

[orudge]

Such web sites can sometimes be stupid. That said, were you trying to book with the airline directly or with a third party travel agent site? The latter perhaps has things cached that shouldn't be. That said, the same can happen with the airline's own sites!

EDIT: Oh, you posted this in December. Was dug up by a spambot, I removed the spam post and replied without looking at the date!

[andel]

I'm locking this thread and giving orudge a warning for digging up old topics.

[orudge]

Pfft, it was the spambot that dug it up, not me. And besides, it's not actually that old. If the topic were from 2004, it'd be a different matter.

Does anybody actually want to have a discussion on the logic (or lack thereof) of airline pricing?

[SwissFan91]

As with the football topic, I'd like to mention that we already have a topic about air travel so we should keep all discussion about it in there.

[JamieLei]

As with the football topic, I'd like to mention that we already have a topic about air travel so we should keep all discussion about it in there.

We do?

I wouldn't mind. I've recently been trying to book a LON - JFK - SFO - LON trip and ask what the stopover rules are. I just can't get my head around it. Apparently free stopovers are disallowed on the cheap fares.

[orudge]

As with the football topic, I'd like to mention that we already have a topic about air travel so we should keep all discussion about it in there.

This is the General Transport Discussion forum, anyway, and if we had one topic per mode of transport, we'd have a grand total of maybe 4 or 5 topics in here! Please leave the moderation to the moderators in cases like this.

I wouldn't mind. I've recently been trying to book a LON - JFK - SFO - LON trip and ask what the stopover rules are. I just can't get my head around it. Apparently free stopovers are disallowed on the cheap fares.

Unfortunately, yes, that can sometimes be the case. It does depend on the airline, though. You could quite possibly book LON - JFK, SFO - LON on one fare, and then try to get a cheapish JFK - SFO separately. (Although JFK and SFO are rather far away from each other, so airlines may not offer a cheap multicity fare for a journey like that.) Frequent flyer miles can be very useful here - you can typically get a stopover or two included for the same number of miles as a direct flight.

That said, looking at some random dates in October/November, I do see an LHR-EWR-SFO-LHR option that seems competitive with the alternatives:

£660 for LHR-EWR-SFO-LHR with United

The alternative is LHR-JFK, SFO-LHR plus a separate flight:

£567 for LHR-JFK, SFO-LHR with Virgin Atlantic
£167 for JFK-SFO with Delta Airlines (Alaskan codeshare)

= £734

And, to compare that United fare with return flights to/from JFK and SFO:

£487 for LHR-JFK-LHR with Delta (£480 available via AMS with KLM)
£556 for LGW-CLT-SFO-CLT-LGW with US Airways
£641 for LHR-SFO-LHR non-stop with Virgin, and with United

So, that LHR-EWR-SFO-LHR flight is more or less the same price as an LHR-SFO-LHR non-stop. At least in October!

[supermop]

Jamie, EWR isn't so bad - for train connection it might be as good as JFK (New Jersey Transit from Penn to Newark is about 15 minutes , taking the A from Penn to JFK is over an hour at best). If you plan to be in Brooklyn or Queens anyway JFK might make more sense...

[JamieLei]

I think in the end we decided to skip NYC and just do the West Coast. But I would still have to be in NYC to do my Undergraduate Dissertation Research. So this would definitely come in useful. Thanks A LOT

[SwissFan91]

As with the football topic, I'd like to mention that we already have a topic about air travel so we should keep all discussion about it in there.

This is the General Transport Discussion forum, anyway, and if we had one topic per mode of transport, we'd have a grand total of maybe 4 or 5 topics in here! Please leave the moderation to the moderators in cases like this.

Sounds like I may have missed my tongue-in-cheek smiley out!

[Dave]

Less of the crap remarks, more responding on the Guess the British Station thread man!

[61653]

Less of the crap remarks, more responding on the Guess the British Station thread man!

This.

Also, this will no doubt come across as more backseat moderation, but maybe a more relevant title for the topic would be an idea...

[audigex]

The only thing I want is for them to put up the total price at the start.

Advertising flights for £14 each way and then ending up paying £80 for a return is beyond "admin fees" and into "taking the p***" territory.

[orudge]

Thankfully, most "proper" airlines do show the full price, including fees and taxes, from the beginning. It's just the "low-cost" airlines that tend to say "hey, yeah, fly to France for £5 [plus £95 fees if you actually want to take luggage or pay or check in]".

Funnily enough, I looked up the price, out of interest, for a flight from Edinburgh to Rome, I think it was, for me, Jen and Olivia, with Ryanair, compared with a flight from Aberdeen to Frankfurt to Rome with Lufthansa. It came to about £650 with bags (which we would definitely need) on Ryanair, plus we'd have to get to and from Edinburgh, adding over 2 hours each way. Also, we'd be, y'know, flying Ryanair. Ugh. With Lufthansa it was about £450, including a free meal of sorts, bags, etc, plus executive lounge access, priority boarding, priority check-in, etc, due to my *G status - and we fly out of our local airport, which more than makes up the difference with the extra connecting flight!