NoFakie 45 Posted January 9, 2013 Share Posted January 9, 2013 A bit early for some of you I suppose, but the initial prices are out in case you want to search. The topic title omits "Summer" this time because I can't afford to fly then. First signs are that flights to the UK in August will cost a couple of beers and snacks at the airport short of 200,000 yen each. :veryshocked: I guess we'll be heading off on May 31st again.... Link to post Share on other sites
RobBright 35 Posted January 9, 2013 Share Posted January 9, 2013 Really?! Wow, we're thinking of going home for Xmas this year but dreading the flights/costs/journey/you name it. Link to post Share on other sites
big-will 7 Posted January 9, 2013 Share Posted January 9, 2013 daylight robbery, ripoff as tags Link to post Share on other sites
BagOfCrisps 24 Posted January 10, 2013 Share Posted January 10, 2013 How do prices change over the years out of interest? Link to post Share on other sites
Tubby Beaver 209 Posted January 10, 2013 Share Posted January 10, 2013 they change by going up Link to post Share on other sites
Alexander L 80 Posted January 10, 2013 Share Posted January 10, 2013 remember the good old days of $18 a barrel Link to post Share on other sites
NoFakie 45 Posted January 10, 2013 Author Share Posted January 10, 2013 This old thread gives a basic idea of when things started to get out of hand. Prices for flights from Japan seem to have gone up a lot in the last five years. http://www.snowjapanforums.com/index.php/topic/16068-flight-tickets-do-they-include-any-fuel-anymore/ With the timing of my kids being born, I've not been in midsummer for a long time, but we definitely flew on BA in August 2004 for 100,000 yen. It's double that now for August. Link to post Share on other sites
seemore 66 Posted January 10, 2013 Share Posted January 10, 2013 Thats alot why are they so expensive Link to post Share on other sites
Tubby Beaver 209 Posted January 20, 2013 Share Posted January 20, 2013 I just booked a flight to LA, end of July come back start of August for 80k. Was well surprised! Link to post Share on other sites
muikabochi 208 Posted January 21, 2013 Share Posted January 21, 2013 Going to film your latest blockbuster out there TB? Link to post Share on other sites
Alexander L 80 Posted January 21, 2013 Share Posted January 21, 2013 Thats alot why are they so expensive Japan to UK for business is perfectly affordable for coporate passengers as the company pays. They are just ripping off the privateer migrant workers who would like to visit home once in a while. Link to post Share on other sites
Tubby Beaver 209 Posted January 21, 2013 Share Posted January 21, 2013 Going to film your latest blockbuster out there TB? Haha, yeah But also for my brother's wedding Link to post Share on other sites
muikabochi 208 Posted January 21, 2013 Share Posted January 21, 2013 Sounds like fun! Link to post Share on other sites
rach 1 Posted January 29, 2013 Share Posted January 29, 2013 OK an age old question but the answer might be different these days. Is it cheaper to buy earlier, or nearer the time? Or is there no pattern and down to luck? Link to post Share on other sites
Tubby Beaver 209 Posted January 29, 2013 Share Posted January 29, 2013 I don't think there is a pattern.....when I checked flights before, they were almost double, then I got my flights....but now they are back at the original price. Sometimes I think they employ chimps to just batter at a keyboard and whatever comes up is the price Link to post Share on other sites
cal 6 Posted January 30, 2013 Share Posted January 30, 2013 Don't they go up and down depending on how sales are going. Algorithms or something. I watched the price of something I bought on Amazon go up by 25% the week after I bought it. It was quite expensive and not something that would be selling much. Found it very interesting. Link to post Share on other sites
Alexander L 80 Posted February 1, 2013 Share Posted February 1, 2013 The bottom line You have the best odds of finding the best deal on flights by making your purchase on Tuesdays in the afternoon, about three weeks in advance for domestic US tickets and a little more than a month in advance for international tickets. When’s the best time to book flights? By Sean O'Neill Planning your 2013 holidays? Often the timing of when you book matters more than which agency you use. Historically, January is the month when tour operators, both online and offline, run the greatest number of deeply discounted holiday packages, where flights are sold along with hotels. Many of these packages are for travel between now and September, though some are only for trips within the next few months. When it comes to purchasing flights separately, though, booking far in advance isn’t always the best idea. Many studies – mostly focusing on tickets sold by US online travel agencies – have been done on the best time to purchase flights, and sadly, the results aren’t as clear and definitive as one might hope. But the overall direction of the research does offer a few clues to help travellers take advantage of the periodic rises and falls in airfares, both for travel in the US and beyond. Kayak.com, the metasearch website, studied more than a billion US domestic airfares[/url] available for purchase throughout 2011. The site found that the average price when tickets were booked six months before departure ($406) tended to be 9% higher than the average airfare available during that six-month period ($370), and 19% more than the average price available a mere 21 days before departure ($342). But don’t wait too long. As any savvy traveller knows, prices tend to skyrocket for truly last-minute purchases. The study revealed that airfares sold one week before departure tended to be 30% more expensive ($445) than they were two weeks prior. For international trips departing from the US, timing didn’t matter as much. Tickets were the cheapest 34 days before departure, but the fares averaged $977, which is merely 4% lower than the average of fare prices at any point in the six months before departure, $1,016. The old rule of thumb – booking tickets three months ahead for the lowest prices – seems now to be out of synch with the latest research. The time of day you book tickets may make a difference, too. An on-going study, whose preliminary results were reported in the Economic Journal in 2010 by Marc Möller at the University of Bern and Makoto Watanabe at VU University in Amsterdam, suggests that airline tickets purchased around the world tend to be less expensive when booked in the afternoon, rather than in the morning. The authors considered the savings statistically significant, but didn’t reveal the exact amounts because research has yet to conclude. (Nighttime purchases, however, appear to offer no additional savings.) One possible explanation is that airlines assume that people who book tickets in the morning tend to be business travellers who are willing to spend more money. But no one knows the reason for sure. The day of the week you book tickets may also make a difference. FareCompare, a website that has analysed a few billion fare searches since 2007 reports that Tuesday is typically the day when the most discounted fares are available for domestic US routes. No one is certain why airlines tend to post the bulk of their fare sales at the start of the week. But some have speculated that it’s a habit held over from 15 years ago, when travel agents typically worked Monday-to-Friday schedules and airline-pricing analysts spent Mondays preparing to launch sales that appeared on Tuesdays — early enough for customers to visit the agents during the rest of the week. The pricing analysts may eventually lose this habit, though, as they adjust to the pace of always-open online travel agencies. What’s true about timing in general may not be true for you specifically, so before booking a specific ticket, try the fare prediction tools at Bing Travel, a Microsoft-owned website that analyses millions of round-trip flight itineraries daily to determine pricing patterns. After you run a search for a US domestic or international trip (with at least one airport on the itinerary being in the US), Bing Travel makes a prediction about whether you should buy, because prices are predicted to go up later, or wait, because lower prices are expected. An independent audit of its predictions by Navigant, a consulting firm, found that the forecasts were correct approximately three out of four times. As a downside, Bing’s price predictor only works on routes within the US or that include one US stop and are travelling to or from Canada, Europe or the Caribbean, all within a few months after purchase. The bottom line You have the best odds of finding the best deal on flights by making your purchase on Tuesdays in the afternoon, about three weeks in advance for domestic US tickets and a little more than a month in advance for international tickets. Link to post Share on other sites
pie-eater 207 Posted February 2, 2013 Share Posted February 2, 2013 That's interesting. Link to post Share on other sites
Alexander L 80 Posted March 9, 2013 Share Posted March 9, 2013 BA are launching their A380 HKG<->LHR for a very reasonable price. As much as I'd like to experience the A380, BA can just go **** themselves. Link to post Share on other sites
Slippery Jim 65 Posted March 9, 2013 Share Posted March 9, 2013 Interesting...I checked and indeed 3 weeks out looks to be the cat's nuts. Now, if only I could wait until 3 weeks out to book across the Pacific. Link to post Share on other sites
grungy-gonads 54 Posted March 10, 2013 Share Posted March 10, 2013 People pay that bit more for the "economy+" ticket, or bear with economy? The thought of me being in the middle of the back lot, I just shudder. Obviously this is when our companies are not paying for business or first class, goes without saying. Link to post Share on other sites
Tubby Beaver 209 Posted March 11, 2013 Share Posted March 11, 2013 in the rear with the gear, for me Link to post Share on other sites
Alexander L 80 Posted March 11, 2013 Share Posted March 11, 2013 yeah, Premium Economy is just a rip-off. When ever poss, I use my mileage points, if all booked up, I buy economy and upgrade using the points. Link to post Share on other sites
rach 1 Posted July 28, 2013 Share Posted July 28, 2013 Off on a flight tomorrow! See you in late August. Link to post Share on other sites
NoFakie 45 Posted July 28, 2013 Author Share Posted July 28, 2013 We got bumped into Premium Economy on KLM on the way back, to the front row because we've got a baby. The seats are just 3-3-3 instead of 3-4-3 so the seats themselves are hardly bigger in most of the section. The front row has a massive space in front of it, but that brings its own problem if you're in the middle. It's just before the galley and there's only a toilet on the left side, so if you don't put bags down you get people using that space in front of the center seats as access from the right side of the plane. Some folk don't realize that they're supposed to go through the galley. Link to post Share on other sites
Recommended Posts