kancell

hey,

trying to book flights for our summer reccie. what does everybody else think of canadian affair 'sale'?

i have various brochures they have sent me in the last year, and having looked over them, all they appear to have done is knock £20 off the outward flight, but then put £20 on the price of the return flight. personally i think this is a bit sneaky!

does anybody know if the easter sale is any better? i remember zoom bombarding me with £50 off vouchers last march/april time, but hadnt given much consideration to flying with Canadian affair at that time, as zooms routes suited us better

Canuck2b

Yes....its something like that! I work for Thomas Cook (should i disclose that??!!) and know that the Thomas Cook aircrafts are on a short term lease - TC then have to get an allocated amount of seats back from Canadian Affair to sell - at a higher rate than CA are selling themselves as TC have to cover a certain cost from CA......rip off! Just makes TC look really expensive compared to CA.....win win situation for CA!! Apparantly they arent very nice to TC regarding price adjustments and favours either! There is a calculated way of getting your flights cheap from CA.....just gotta go for an extreme amount of nights or possibly in and out of different airports.

Good Luck!! ps - the TC aircraft are sooooo nice for the Canada routes - the 757s anyway!!! DO NOT get on an Air Transit flight...yuck!

Brownstar

deleted.......ignore me as I misread your post

Waltzing Matilda

My friend has just been over for a visit......she said the opposite!! She HATED the TC flight, and said Air Transit were so much better. Different people, different experiences I guess!

Canuck2b

Apologies, i quoted the wrong aircraft type (amended it now!!) Its the 757s that have the 35inch seat pitch - so nice. The Airbus isnt as nice. Sorry i am sounding like a plainspotting geek.....i am not honestly!! Just gotta know a certain amount of info (even when i give it out wrong - sorry!)

Simon Legree

I think that you will find that the seat pitch has nothing to do with the type of aircraft. The operators can adjust the pitch to cram in more rows of seats, subject to the legal minimum pitch.

Canuck2b

In this case it does.....the operator - being Thomas Cook has only removed the seats from one type of aircraft - not the other. The seat pitch has not changed...trust me!

Canuck2b

Anyway after all that, i have just realised you are going in the summer so it doesnt matter which one you pick....both TC (both types of a/craft) and Air Transat will have extra legroom so if thats your thing and you find cheap enough fares then go for it.

SimoneT

We have just booked our flights and although we are going in two weeks and not the summer I found that CA were too expensive and ended up booking with BA, who were £200 cheaper for the three of us than CA! I couldn't believe it. Have a look on places like moneysavingexpert.com, they have a whole article on getting cheap flights and list quite a few flight scanners. That's how I got our flights. Good luck!

David P

I booked with Canadian Affair on Wednesday for flights at end of July, they were cheaper than anyone else.
I was going to wait until the last minute of the January sale but I noticed that the return flights had started to creep up in price.

kate holt

ive being flying out to canada every summer for about 10 years, right from when Canada 3000 use to fly out of Stanstead to Toronto!
ive used Zoom (ex) and Canadian Affair many times, with Zoom the earlier you booked the cheaper, CA was cheaper if you could hang on as their flights got cheaper the longer you left it. when zoom went bust CA flights went up about £100 (return) within a week - so now theres no competition it doesnt look so cheap this year.
so i dont really know what to do BA is looking quite competative and have every day flights so you can go for say 10days or whatever.
still havent booked - anyone found any other cheap deals?

Iain Mc

We always use CA for cost, or one of the CA charter companies direct, Transat especially seem to be cheaper to book with directly.

I've noticed however the frequency of postings about CA flight schedule changes has increased; we have friends coming over in Feb who've just had that happen to them.

It happens so far in advance that it's clearly not related to tech faults or anything, and the cynic in me is wondering if they are just advertising flights with 'good' hours, direct, which never actually exist and notifying people of the 'actual' scheduling once they're full.

The original direct flights our bunch had to Vancouver were at fantastic time, perfect for jetlag etc., now they've got a late evening and a very early morning to contend with (plus a two and half hour stop on the tarmac in Calgary in both directions).

Still oodles cheaper than the scheduled options were for these dates, mind.

kate holt

i have flown with CA many times and havent had any major changes to flight times - only the odd hour. sounds horrid for your friends, but they have the monopoly on cheap flights now so they probably dont have to worry!

airtransat are just part of ca as is thomas cook?...

nikki dreaming

We have booked CA- Air Transat for June, best price at the moment by far, also looking at them for relatives for the summer and they are coming out the cheapest in July. London=Halifax

Re their flight schedule, the time currently advertised for our flight is the same that we travelled on last May, I haven't seen anything re major changes , fingers x we will be ok, had no complaints last time

Iain Mc

Canadian Affair are just glorified booking agents, they don't own any aircraft.

You can often book the same flights offered by Canadian Affair direct with the airlines involved (at least you can with Transat), often for less money.

Not very much less, mind, I think we saved about $20 last time - this covered the seat booking fee (also less through the Transat agent) - but we prefer dealing with them rather than Canadian Affair as they have high street offices in Canada (Marlin Travel) where you actually get to talk to a person!