Booking with longer stopovers
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From: Theo Markettos on 15 Feb 2010 09:20 Do any flight booking sites allow booking of through tickets with longer stopovers on medium/longhaul journeys? For example: Monday A-B, Wednesday B-C, with 36 hours at B? In most cases it seems to be a lot cheaper to book such things through, rather than individual legs (eg as part of a return A-B, B-C, C-B-A), but the booking engines like cramming things together. I know I can always ring a travel agent, but just wondered if there were any sites I could mess about with to try things. Thanks Theo
From: Graham Harrison on 15 Feb 2010 13:12 "Theo Markettos" <theom+news(a)chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message news:DAy*jyL3s(a)news.chiark.greenend.org.uk... > Do any flight booking sites allow booking of through tickets with longer > stopovers on medium/longhaul journeys? For example: Monday A-B, Wednesday > B-C, with 36 hours at B? In most cases it seems to be a lot cheaper to > book > such things through, rather than individual legs (eg as part of a return > A-B, B-C, C-B-A), but the booking engines like cramming things together. > > I know I can always ring a travel agent, but just wondered if there were > any > sites I could mess about with to try things. > > Thanks > Theo Most of the websites have a "Multiple Stops" option although it's not always obvious. That would allow you to specify A date 1 B date 2 C date 3 D. They usually return flights and once you've selected your flights they then give you a price. This has the great disadvantage that you have no idea what class buckets are available on each leg and that can seriously affect your price. They'll give you the best price for what you select but going back and selecting a different flight can result in a significantly different price. Trouble is that fare rules may mean you also need to change another flight as well because there is a through fare but only if you select the correct booking bucket for each leg and you can't see that on most websites. It may be worth knowing that a change between flights where the arrival of one flight and departure of the next is less than either 8 or 24 hours is not considered a stopover and that can help reduce your fare. It's not always consistent as to whether the rule is 8 or 24 hours. One booking engine may allow one and another the other - fare rules are not always clear and people programming the systems have to make a decision which to apply. Certainly anything to or through the US is likely to be 24 hour - I went to Denver a few years ago and got a night/day in Chicago that way on the way home. In the end a call to an agency is probably in order. Trailfinders and STA are my favourites - they take an intelligent view of fare rules rather than simply relying on the booking system all of the time.
From: Theo Markettos on 15 Feb 2010 15:30 Graham Harrison <edward.harrison1(a)remove.btinternet.com> wrote: > Most of the websites have a "Multiple Stops" option although it's not > always obvious. That would allow you to specify A date 1 B date 2 C date > 3 D. They usually return flights and once you've selected your flights > they then give you a price. This has the great disadvantage that you have > no idea what class buckets are available on each leg and that can > seriously affect your price. Yes, I was trying one multistops search. Surprisingly it gave me the same price with a week's stopover as there would have been for a change of planes, but as you say it's not obvious what the tradeoffs are (but if it tells you the leg is in Business, or on a flexible ticket, then that's an indication) > It may be worth knowing that a change between flights where the arrival of > one flight and departure of the next is less than either 8 or 24 hours is > not considered a stopover and that can help reduce your fare. Is that an industry-wide thing, or do individual airlines have different rules? > In the end a call to an agency is probably in order. Trailfinders and STA > are my favourites - they take an intelligent view of fare rules rather than > simply relying on the booking system all of the time. Those would have been my first port of call, only their websites weren't that helpful so I wondered if anyone else had a decent search. Sounds like this falls into the 'too difficult' category. Ah well... Thanks. Theo
From: Graham Harrison on 15 Feb 2010 16:20 "Theo Markettos" <theom+news(a)chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message news:EAy*YUM3s(a)news.chiark.greenend.org.uk... > Graham Harrison <edward.harrison1(a)remove.btinternet.com> wrote: >> Most of the websites have a "Multiple Stops" option although it's not >> always obvious. That would allow you to specify A date 1 B date 2 C date >> 3 D. They usually return flights and once you've selected your flights >> they then give you a price. This has the great disadvantage that you >> have >> no idea what class buckets are available on each leg and that can >> seriously affect your price. > > Yes, I was trying one multistops search. Surprisingly it gave me the same > price with a week's stopover as there would have been for a change of > planes, > but as you say it's not obvious what the tradeoffs are (but if it tells > you > the leg is in Business, or on a flexible ticket, then that's an > indication) > >> It may be worth knowing that a change between flights where the arrival >> of >> one flight and departure of the next is less than either 8 or 24 hours is >> not considered a stopover and that can help reduce your fare. > > Is that an industry-wide thing, or do individual airlines have different > rules? > >> In the end a call to an agency is probably in order. Trailfinders and >> STA >> are my favourites - they take an intelligent view of fare rules rather >> than >> simply relying on the booking system all of the time. > > Those would have been my first port of call, only their websites weren't > that helpful so I wondered if anyone else had a decent search. Sounds > like > this falls into the 'too difficult' category. Ah well... > > Thanks. > > Theo In theory the stopover rules are industry wide. A simplification (always dangerous) would be that in Europe 8 hours applies and the US 24 hours. Not sure about the rest of the world. However, US airlines and agencies are so used to the 24 hour rule they apply it willy nilly and given that the booking engines for Worldspan, Galileo, Apollo and Sabre are all US based with only Amadeus being in Europe 24 hours is a bit of a defacto standard BUT it is NOT guaranteed. Without knowing your specific routing it's difficult to comment on why the through fare and via fare are the same and why a week stop is no different to a direct connection. In any case I no longer have access to a fares system to validate so giving me your routing would not be helpful.
From: Roland Perry on 20 Feb 2010 04:34
In message <4sqdnUw4q60pE-TWnZ2dnUVZ8lOdnZ2d(a)bt.com>, at 18:12:51 on Mon, 15 Feb 2010, Graham Harrison <edward.harrison1(a)remove.btinternet.com> remarked: >Most of the websites have a "Multiple Stops" option although it's not >always obvious. Airline sites might have a more flexible approach. I'm pretty sure, for example, that Emirates allows you to put any dates into a multi-leg ticket. And they've also booked me through tickets with >8hrs stopover in Dubai; which sounds bad, but there are much worse airports to spend the day :) -- Roland Perry |