Excessive bonkers priced plane tickets

[heart-of-wessex]

Hello all,

Has anyone ever come across some excessive priced plane tickets before? I'm not on about an A380 trip from Heathrow to somewhere in Australia, I'm on about short routes where you could do the same route for much less with someone else.

I found one the other day, I fancied trying out Garuda Indonesia, as they appear to do tickets for thr Gatwick to Amsterdam leg. A short 1 hour hop on their 777 will set you back just over £540!!! HOW MUCH!?! Getting a through Gatwick - Jakarta though is £490, thats on the same day for the date I looked at, so its cheaper to get a ticket to Indonesia and bail at Amsterdam (or just do EasyJet Gatwick to Amsterdam for MUCH less!)

I was looking at trying to do a KLM Fokker 70, Bristol is an Embraer route (a Fokker does drop on but not often) and noticed the Norwich to Amsterdam is down for one of these. It's an airport I haven't done yet, and although would be a pain to get to from Trowbridge I was tempter until I saw the price of £201 one way hock:!

I'd like to sample some of these Aurigny routes but even they can be a bit pricey, not as much as that Garuda Indonesia one mind!

Has anyone else found any extortionate prices?

 

[Mojo]

GA have got some flights every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday from now until the end of March for £81. It's only from the start of April that their prices skyrocket.

With regards to Norwich to Amsterdam, it is cheaper to buy a return than a single. Just looked for a few random dates and a return is £119.69.

In order to find flight tickets I use http://matrix.itasoftware.com/. You can customise it with advanced routeing codes and other stuff. It doesn't display Ryanair or Easyjet though.

If you think railway ticketing has anomalies; think again with regards to airline ticketing. There are plenty of examples; returns being cheaper than singles (luckily most airlines allow you to book an open jaw ticket for half the price of a return on each leg so it's not quite as bad as it sounds); and of course "hidden city ticketing," which is where it's much cheaper to book a longer journey (for instance Dublin, to Heathrow, to San Fransisco is significantly cheaper than travelling on the same plane from Heathrow).

 

[168lover]

I wanted to sample the tiny augindy air planes that fly from southampton. Looked up the price for me and the rest of the family, searched it online £900 return. Needless to say I gave up on that idea.

 

[Bletchleyite]

With regards to Norwich to Amsterdam, it is cheaper to buy a return than a single. Just looked for a few random dates and a return is £119.69.

This is extremely common with legacy airlines.

If you think railway ticketing has anomalies; think again with regards to airline ticketing. There are plenty of examples; returns being cheaper than singles (luckily most airlines allow you to book an open jaw ticket for half the price of a return on each leg so it's not quite as bad as it sounds); and of course "hidden city ticketing," which is where it's much cheaper to book a longer journey (for instance Dublin, to Heathrow, to San Fransisco is significantly cheaper than travelling on the same plane from Heathrow).

The difference with planes is that (a) they know who you are, and (b) they know if you boarded or not. So it's not unknown for example that if they catch you doing something like "hidden city ticketing" they may seek amends. Not uncommon is zeroing peoples' Frequent Flyer miles/status for breach of T&C. Retrospectively charging cards with the higher fare is also I believe not unknown.

The reason for the anomaly has to do with the value of the "product" - a direct flight is more "valuable" than an indirect one.

 

[Wolfie]

Hello all,

Has anyone ever come across some excessive priced plane tickets before? I'm not on about an A380 trip from Heathrow to somewhere in Australia, I'm on about short routes where you could do the same route for much less with someone else.

I found one the other day, I fancied trying out Garuda Indonesia, as they appear to do tickets for thr Gatwick to Amsterdam leg. A short 1 hour hop on their 777 will set you back just over £540!!! HOW MUCH!?! Getting a through Gatwick - Jakarta though is £490, thats on the same day for the date I looked at, so its cheaper to get a ticket to Indonesia and bail at Amsterdam (or just do EasyJet Gatwick to Amsterdam for MUCH less!)

I was looking at trying to do a KLM Fokker 70, Bristol is an Embraer route (a Fokker does drop on but not often) and noticed the Norwich to Amsterdam is down for one of these. It's an airport I haven't done yet, and although would be a pain to get to from Trowbridge I was tempter until I saw the price of £201 one way hock:!

I'd like to sample some of these Aurigny routes but even they can be a bit pricey, not as much as that Garuda Indonesia one mind!

Has anyone else found any extortionate prices?

Many of these anomalies come down to codeshares. It is probable, for example, that Garuda do not operate Gatwick to Amsterdam themselves but buy space on another operator (most likely KLM) to provide connections to long-haul services. If the Garuda seat quota on a flight is virtulaly gone, or they wish to reserve the seats for long-haul clients making connections, they will price the remainder accordingly....

 

[flymo]

Many of these anomalies come down to codeshares. It is probable, for example, that Garuda do not operate Gatwick to Amsterdam themselves but buy space on another operator (most likely KLM) to provide connections to long-haul services. If the Garuda seat quota on a flight is virtulaly gone, or they wish to reserve the seats for long-haul clients making connections, they will price the remainder accordingly....

In the Garuda case they fly the route themselves as GA88/89.

 

[Phil.]

Hello all,

Has anyone ever come across some excessive priced plane tickets before? I'm not on about an A380 trip from Heathrow to somewhere in Australia, I'm on about short routes where you could do the same route for much less with someone else.

I found one the other day, I fancied trying out Garuda Indonesia, as they appear to do tickets for thr Gatwick to Amsterdam leg. A short 1 hour hop on their 777 will set you back just over £540!!! HOW MUCH!?! Getting a through Gatwick - Jakarta though is £490, thats on the same day for the date I looked at, so its cheaper to get a ticket to Indonesia and bail at Amsterdam (or just do EasyJet Gatwick to Amsterdam for MUCH less!)

I was looking at trying to do a KLM Fokker 70, Bristol is an Embraer route (a Fokker does drop on but not often) and noticed the Norwich to Amsterdam is down for one of these. It's an airport I haven't done yet, and although would be a pain to get to from Trowbridge I was tempter until I saw the price of £201 one way hock:!

I'd like to sample some of these Aurigny routes but even they can be a bit pricey, not as much as that Garuda Indonesia one mind!

Has anyone else found any extortionate prices?

Walk-on London - Manchester's not cheap.

 

[heart-of-wessex]

I wanted to sample the tiny augindy air planes that fly from southampton. Looked up the price for me and the rest of the family, searched it online £900 return. Needless to say I gave up on that idea.

hock: hock: Blooming heck!!

I actually wanted to do a BN trislander with Aurigny from Southampton before they go, but at something like £250 return for a 1 hour round trip I couldn't really justify the cost, I know it would be the only chance of doing it but even for a hobby you need draw the line with prices!

Yes Garuda do the route themselves with their B777, for example PK-GIC was doing the rounds recently, Gatwick to Amsterdam, 1 hour stop, then Amsterdam to Jakarta.

As mentioned these ticket anomalies aren't as simple as the railway, I can't imagine you can get off 'early' to save money.

Not sure if on a long haul from Heathrow to Japan if you can combine split ticketing !

 

[LUKAnorthwest]

It really does depend on a number of factors, time of booking in particular. Walk-up fares in the air industry are notoriously expensive so I am not surprised to see MAN-LHR being expensive. Could you compare this to a walk up rail fare? i think you will find that they both don't offer value for money.

Also on the subject of many regional flights to-from LHR, these are mostly operated by British Airways. This airline operates on a Hub and Spoke model and will charge you an end to end price for your whole journey, meaning a ticket from MAN-LHR will be charged at a premium unless you are connecting. Flights from other cities in the UK to LHR are therefore only viable if you have onward connections.

In terms of long haul flights which have stopovers, these will be charged at a premium also as these airlines (Garuda, also Singapore from MAN-MUC-SIN) essentially want to discourage short trips. why send two planes to two locations close to each other when your only going to fill each plane by around 30%? it makes more sense to provide an extension to an existing route. as LGW-AMS is a popular route, it makes sense to charge a premium as otherwise you could fill up your seats with AMS passengers and risk passengers for jakarta flying with another airline/changing elsewhere.

On the MAN-MUC i have found £80 return tickets with Singapore Airlines on their 777s which says to me that there isn't much demand for the route so it can be safe to accept these short haul passengers without losing long haul passenger seats.

The best time to book plane tickets is between 6-8 weeks in advance, much the same as the UK rail network.

 

[flymo]

Not sure if on a long haul from Heathrow to Japan if you can combine split ticketing !

I did split ticketing once on a return flight from Hong Kong to Newcastle splitting at Heathrow. Booked Qantas HKG - LHR (when they flew that route a few years ago) then couple of days later booked BA from LHR - NCL and return. The price was about £100 cheaper than a through ticket. The nice chap in HKG even checked my bags all the way through to NCL. Couldn't do that in NCL on the return, had to collect at LHR and then check in again...

A friend of mine fairly regularly flies Germany to Philippines on business (8 times a year) and every time splits in Hong Kong as there are so many cheap flights from HKG - Manila or Clark. Can sometimes be several hundred Euros cheaper - although not always. Shop around, there are some bargains out there sometimes.

 

[northwichcat]

This is extremely common with legacy airlines.

Indeed. When I was planning a trip to Paris I looked at the option of Eurostar outbound and Air France from Paris to Manchester but an Air France single was priced at £500, so I opted to Easyjet from Paris to Liverpool for a fraction of that.

 

[Mystic Force]

I was coming to Iowa, USA from London, a few years ago and was deciding where to fly in, as I could get picked up from different locations. Minneapolis and Chicago were similar distances to drive. The cheapest flight to Chicago was a connection in Minneapolis and the cheapest flight to Minneapolis was a connection in Chicago. Both with the same airline. Now thats crazy.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I was coming to Iowa, USA from London, a few years ago and was deciding where to fly in, as I could get picked up from different locations. Minneapolis and Chicago were similar distances to drive. The cheapest flight to Chicago was a connection in Minneapolis and the cheapest flight to Minneapolis was a connection in Chicago. Both with the same airline. Now thats crazy.

It's not when you think about it. A direct flight is quicker and more convenient, so has a higher value than a connectional one.

 

[feline1]

Don't ever try to fly to Northern Ireland at Christmas time, that's all I'll say!

 

[miami]

It's not when you think about it. A direct flight is quicker and more convenient, so has a higher value than a connectional one.

It's the same logic that allows off peak tickets to be used on a train from Lancaster to London, but not from Preston. Fares aren't made up of (cost of flight + desired profit margin), they're made up of (maximum amount of money that can be extracted by all passengers)

It's why it's better to sell 10 seats at £200 each and leave 90 seats empty, than sell 100 seats at £15 each. Ideally you sell 10 seats at £200 and 90 at £15, but if you do that you end up with the people who were willing to spend £200 instead spending £15.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's why it's better to sell 10 seats at £200 each and leave 90 seats empty, than sell 100 seats at £15 each. Ideally you sell 10 seats at £200 and 90 at £15, but if you do that you end up with the people who were willing to spend £200 instead spending £15.

Indeed so. Advance fares allow some level of differentiation there (the people willing to pay more are usually the ones who just pay on the day) but the problem with planes is that there are usually fewer of them and they get full and as such booking in advance is the norm for everyone.

I find that of longer distance rail journeys. I do not often use Advances as I prefer flexibility on shorter journeys (though the added option of seat selection is very likely to make me switch to booking walk-ups the day before with a reservation on a likely train), but on very long journeys (e.g. to Scotland) the choice of viable trains is so small that they are viable for me.

 

[theageofthetra]

A good example is the Caribbean. Some places popular with Brits like Cuba, St Lucia, Antigua etc are ludicrously overpriced from the UK £700-£800 & more even at rubbish times of the year like summer and during the Sept/Oct hurricane season. Wheras if you fancied visiting Guadeloupe where the BBC/French series Death in Paradise is filmed, I looked the other week and at a perfect time of year like late Nov/early Dec there were flights from Paris direct for under £350 return as the route is heavily subsidised being a French Department. Another Caribbean bargain is getting a cheap flight to NY (Ideally just after Thanksgiving when Americans rarely leave the US) then use the hundreds of cheap flights to the various parts of Puerto Rico including the stunning islands of Culebra or Viequez.

If you are after a real rip off route look for flights to either Shetland or the Faroes- can be more expensive than a flight to Australia!

China is very cheap at the moment and Visa changes this year means you automatically get a 2 year visa valid for unlimited entries up to 90 days. Am going into Beijing and out of Chengdu for £400 with BA in a few weeks. You struggle to get to the US for that.

 

[TheEdge]

The international superhub that is Norwich has some insane prices. Lets say me and my good lady wanted to fly to Aberdeen, tourist hot spot of course, £600, BMI Regional or Eastern Airways.

Hahahaha. No.

 

[me123]

Good old Eastern Airways... when I lived in Aberdeen, I was impressed by the range of destinations on offer from ABZ airport, but lots of the routes (like Norwich) were priced in a similar way. Look at the fares on the likes of Aberdeen to Humberside, Durham Tees Valley, Wick... all very high.

It's aimed almost exclusively at the oil industry. Small planes and high costs, therefore high fares. I can't expect many people would travel these routes out of their own pocket, it's more about the business travel that the oil and gas industry generates.