How To: Fly for Less (when your dates are fixed)

There are lots of circumstances where we look for a cheap flight. In this "how to" I am looking at the situation where you have a week off work, you want to get away, but you don't have a lot of cash. If this sounds familiar - read on.

This is a worked example, with screenshots to show how it can be done. I have a week's holiday in June, so I start by putting the dates into Skyscanner.net


My priority at this time is to find something cheap, so I am not going to specify either a departure airport or a destination, so as to give me the maximum no. of possibilities. Back come the results for a week from June 9th (top right of the screen) and they are looking encouraging:



Ireland is the cheapest option, but I want to go further afield with more promise of sunshine. I decide Spain looks my favourite on this list and click on it to see my choices. That gives me a screen like this:


Madrid is the cheapest option, but I was looking for a bit of sea and sun, so I scan down the list. I choose Murcia as an airport that is convenient for a beach holiday and not too expensive
The next screen takes me to the flight and airline options:

OK, Stansted is not the nmost convenient airport for me, but since it is over £50 cheaper than the next option I am willing to drive there. Clicking "next" will show me the flights:


The first thing to notice is the line near the top of the screen that these prices include taxes and charges. Bet you were expecting they would be additional.

So I can go off on my jollies in June, to a hot seaside in Spain, for a total cost of £52.33. Pretty good eh?

Now by the time you read this prices will have changed, of course. But if you go through the whole process you should be able to find something equally appealing.

Club Class for Free!

Yes, forget all those overpriced business class fares while we show you how to fly Club Class with British Airways for free. And yes, of course there's a catch!

First off your flight needs to depart from London Gatwick. Book any economy flight online and you will have the opportunity in the "manage my booking" section of the BA web site to upgrade to Club Class for a fixed fee of £59. What happened to free you ask - well it costs £60 to check in a second suitcase, which you can do for free in Club Class. So if you have lots of luggage the better seat, the free champagne, the business lounge etc. are all absolutely free. Even if you only have one bag this is a very decent offer.

Priority Boarding on Ryanair - You don't have to pay - part two

Remember it's a game, and Ryanair set the rules. But you can become a good player, with practice. Select no bags, and the screen looks like this. Note the charge highlighted in red, but also the "Remove" which has materialised in small type below. Click on that and your charge will disappear. While you are at it, you may want to remove the insurance charge too.


The net result is your screen ends up with no additional charges. Happy Travelling!

Priority Boarding on Ryanair - You don't have to pay!

Lots of discussion on this one but it's all part of the game. Ryanair offer tickets for as little as 1p (and yes they are real - I just picked a route and two dates at random and they were both 1p flights), and then try and take enough money to make a profit out of you by other means. The latest trick is to charge you for priorty boarding automatically if you choose not to pay to check a bag.

Your mission is to not pay for as many extras as possible. You can escape this charge, but it certainly isn't obvious how. Let's look at the booking screen:

Your only options are to choose one or more bags, and pay for them, or choose no bags and pay for priority boarding. Oh dear.

Speedy Boarding revisited

I added Speedy Boarding to an existing Easyjet booking. There is no option to add this one way only, although it is priced separately. Total cost £10.

On departure our privileged position only meant we were first onto a bus, so the speedy boarders hung around near the front door. Which was a shame because when we reached the plane only the back door was opened, so we ended up last off.

In Murcia, at check-in in I asked the girl if my boarding card was marked for Speedy Boarding, after it hadn't been on a previous flight in Toulouse. She took it back and marked a big SB on it. The flight was called while we were eating so I was late to the gate, again. The attendant saw my boarding and said they had called Speedy boarding earlier. I agreed, but pointed out that it is unusual to call a flight 45 minutes before departure. She thought for a moment then invited me to follow her through another gate, marching me round to the very front of the boarding queue. Within minutes we were invited onto the plane, and I had a choice of every seat.

So with Easyjet's speedy boarding the moral of the story seems to be: It can be worthwhile, but there are no guarantees. Check your boarding card is marked, and keep your confirmation email to prove you have paid for it. And smile broadly if it all works out and you get four inches of extra legroom!

Three types of airline

Once it was easy. Scheduled airlines like Air France and British Airways had different classes, but even economy was better than charter, which had no legroom and no free drinks. then came the low-cost airlines, which didn't even have food service, but no-one cared because they offered the cheapest tickets.

But this year I have flown to Palma, Mallorca, with Iberia, the Spanish national airline, for less than any of the low-cost carriers were quoting. And to the caribbean with First Choice, a charter airline that offers a minimum of 33" seat pitch. That's two inches more than BA or Virgin, and four inches more than a typical charter. On a nine-hour flight, that's a lot of inches.

The moral of the story is to look at what you're getting rather than the packaging it comes in.

Cut Price Airport Parking

As I pre-booked my parking for my next flight it struck me that I probably save at least £200 a year by parking off-airport. The price is typically around half the price of the long-stay car park. there have been scare stories in the papers about cars being dumped in unsuitable locations, but the reputable operators have more to lose than we do from stuff like that. No matter how nice your car, it has to be worth less than a business like Purple Parking, which has won several awards.

If you haven't done it before it works like this. You book online after you have booked your flights. The confirmation gives you the location and detailed directions, typically to somewhere within ten minutes' drive of your airport. You show your confirmation to someone, and get a ticket to put in your car. Drop your bags in the transit area, and within minutes a minibus will take you to the terminal. It's slightly more complicated than long-stay, but not much. When you get back, you call the number supplied from the terminal and wait for the pickup bus.

The crazy world of air fare pricing, and how to get to Madeira cheaply

"Why can't I get a cheap fare to Madeira?" was this morning's question.

To answer this I have to explain that there are three types of airline - scheduled e.g. BA, low-cost e.g. Ryanair, and charter e.g. Monarch. Getting cheap fares depends on knowing what kind of airline you are dealing with. Low-cost is the easiest, as usually the earlier you book the better prices are available. Scheduled airlines are all connected to GDS's, which means you can check them out via sites like Expedia. (I'll do a note on how to get the best prices out of Expedia some other time). Charter airlines typically run weekly turn-rounds, and start with the price they hope to get. The time to get discounts on charters is close to departure, when they realise it's not going to fill, and they start cutting the price.

So coming back to Madeira, low cost airlines don't go there. It's too far and they make their money by turning planes round very quickly. Most scheduled carriers don't go there, only TAP (Air Portugal) which means no price competition. And the charters which fly holiday traffic to the island try not to discount until very close to departure.

All of which is interesting, but my questioner wants to go to Madeira for as little money as possible. To which the answer is "reader offers". Charter airlines fly the same no. of seats each week, and they know there are times when they struggle to fill them. rather than reduce the price to the public, they wholesale them cheaply to reader offer companies who take big ads in newspapers saying things like "Madeira from only £199, including 7 nights in a 3* hotel. " If you are reading this because you want to go to Madeira then to save you looking at lots of newspapers, you can call the company that puts the offers together and ask them what they currently have. Atlantic Holidays, 01452 381888. Happy Holidays!

Low cost airline scams

OK scams is a bit harsh. Let's call it "ways they take more money off you without increasing the so-called price". Easyjet are now doing Speedy Boarding, while Ryanair have Priority Boarding. What they are doing is selling the front of the queue to get on the plane.

I tested Speedy Boarding this week on an Easyjet flight with mixed results. At Bristol they called Speedy Boarders to the gate while the departure board was showing 20 minutes top boarding (and me on the other side of the terminal). Within seconds they had called normal boarding and there was no way through the queue. £5 wasted. At Toulouse I was by the gate when they called Speedy boarding, but my boarding pass didn't show I was entitled to it. I had the booking email ready and got a Gallic shrug and permission to board. Which in turn meant I got an exit seat and some extra legroom. So £2.50 well spent (why the difference in price - I don't know).

On balance then Speedy Boarding is one to use with care. If there is a bus to the plane all it will get you is early boarding onto the bus, which is no help at all. But on balance I can't begrudge them another way of making money. The total cost for two of us was £113. Some friends flew to Toulouse 13 years ago and got a 2-for-1 deal of £180. And that was before airport tax.

Welcome to anyone planning some travel!

Welcome to anyone planning some travel!

Once upon a time a travel agent was an expert who knew everything you didn't, and used their expertise to help you have a good trip. These days they are more likely to be young, inexperienced, and incentivised to only sell the holidays of their parent company. And they have no interest in the many travel products that pay no commission.

Of course skilled people are expensive, but blogging is free. So this is a place for travel information that is useful and helpful. Not "Oh I stayed in this place and it was great" type information. There's a place for that, and sites like tripadvisor.com and holidaysuncovered.com can be really useful (more about them later).

This site starts with the notion that there are a lot of traps for the unwary and inexperienced in booking travel, and once you find them it's usually too late. Best case scenario is you're kicking yourself for paying too much; worst case is you're stuck somewhere with a missed connection and you have to buy another ticket home.

And finally . . . if you have a question on trip planning, feel free to post it. Now to some useful stuff.