Caligirl4ever

Hi All,

Can someone tell me why in the heck the airline ticket prices are ALWAYS much higher from the UK outbound to the US?

It's pretty sad these days to have to pay over 600 quid to get my step kids to visit hubby and I here in Calif during the summer months.

The only other alternative I guess is to yank them out of school during the year. But that's not fair on them..I guess this is a no win situation. ;-(

Any suggestions?

Hugs,
Cali

USBound

bring them over during the winter?

oh.. re: taking them out during term, isn't that a fining offence in the UK?

Englishmum

I don't know why either, but it may be partly due to the fact that airlines have to pay for aviation fuel in US$ and are subjected to currency transaction fluctuations.....the dollar is still quite weak.

I guess you have looked at many online booking sites, eg:

http://www.ebookers.com

My mum is visiting right now and someone on this site kindly found a good price for me as I was paying for her flight...
As I was having to pay in US $ instead of booking via travelocity.co.uk, I went to the US site

http://www.travelocity.com

and was able to book her flight from Birmingham UK to Newark, NJ with no problems at all as I had a US billing address on my credit card - fortunately it was an e-ticket. You just have to be careful to write the name of the passenger correctly when booking the ticket online. The price seemed to be the same in US$ and in UK pounds....even for the reverse trip to the same destinations - I was curious so I checked.

I just forwarded the confirmation to my sister's e-mail address and my mum took a printed copy of it when she checked in.

I don't know the ages of your stepchildren but do note that if they're going to be travelling as unaccompanied minors, some (most?) of the US airlines are charging quite a high fee for each flight sector. You should be able to see which ones do on the airlines own websites...Continental charges a lot of money. I understand that airlines such as Virgin Atlantic and British Airways still do this free of charge.....and it's probably best for children to fly on non-stop flights too (yes they do sometimes get overlooked on connecting flights).

Ash UK/US

Try a flight consolidator instead of travelocity etc for flights leaving from the UK you can get a very good rate only draw back (usually) once its booked no refunds. I was hoping to go back to the UK to visit this June I haven't been able to find anything cheaper that $900 however if I was travelling in the reverse direction I would be able to get a flight for £385

Ash

g1ant

The weak dollar makes it cheaper for British airlines to buy aviation fuel, not dearer.

The airlines didn't drop airfares when the dollar fell from $1.60 to $1.90, but they hike them up when the price of avgas goes up.

As usual they are having their cake and eating it. Maybe they used to run fish & chip shops?

ScousePete

Thje answer to your question can be found
HERE

mcjimbo

That's a classic!

Taffyles

It's the reverse from Florida. It's always been cheaper to travel from UK to florida than for us to travel home (except for the occaisonal special deals).

Englishmum

here is a flight consolidator based in nyc which specialises in discount flights to the uk and ireland - perhaps they can offer tickets from the uk to the us;

www.ukair.com


or here's another source for finding flights departing from the uk to the us;

www.farebuster.co.uk

hope this helps.

Jan Alaska

my kids visit on school holidays too, and we've just been through the hunting for a cheaper fare thing. We ended up paying over 1,000 GBP each Glasgow - Detroit ex even asked how far we were from Toronto (10 hours btw) because a company called Zoom has cheap fares.
Grrrrr
Jan

Wiggle

I too thought of taking advantage of the £ strength and buy my ticket Man - LA via a US web site and pay for it in dollars ..but it doesn't seem to be worth it.

Having checked all the usual UK flight agencys etc, the cheapest flight from Manchester, UK to Los Angeles within the next 2 weeks is £465.

At $1.80 to the pound, that equates to $837. But checking the US based sites, the cheapest fare appears to be about $900 for the same flight.

And to double check, its about the same if the journey was LA - Man.

Damn .. thats expensive !

rincewind

Buy tickets months in advance if you can. I always get tickets 6 months before the date I am supposed to fly. The most expensive I've had to buy was GBP1400.00 But I did book that three days before I was going to fly.

The cheapest I've had was GBP292.00 from Gatwick to Atlanta. And that was Christmas time.

honeymommy

I would check in the newspapers for low cost flights, there are some great deals available.

I flew myself and my 4 children from manchester to Los angeles for GBP 575 total cost..

Once you have used that company you know where to go next time...

Hope this helps.