Derrygal

That's a great price. Unfortunately that wouldn't work for me. I have difficulty getting time off work unless I give several months notice (6 months to be guaranteed the time off). I suppose if you could go at short notice you can get a better deal.

Giantaxe

Six weeks notice so not super short... my bet is that Iberia screwed up and entered a dollar amount for what should have been a euro or pound price. A couple of days later their fare was over $700 for the same trip. I've certainly got into the habit of pouncing on exceptional deals, which is why I think email alerts are so useful.

Bob

trick is to clear your browser cache in between checking out the sites, they tend to not give you the best rates if you've been searching lots as they presume you're looking to buy

Poppy girl

1uella

Kayak.com will search all of the aforementioned sites and will also give you alot of control over landing times, stopover airports, alerts, pricing patterns, etc. You can even choose which aircraft you'd like to fly on!

soap addict

How the heck can you find business for three for a grand?

Some welsh contacts no doubt!!!

1uella

Wow, that IS sneaky!

AmerLisa

Thanks for the tip, Bob. Wouldn't have thought about doing that. We're currently looking at prices to the UK/Greece for August, so every little tip helps.

tonrob

$996 in taxes and fees plus 110,000 BA miles plus 2-for-1 Chase voucher.

Sheepdip

Been traveling back to the UK a few times in the last couple of months, sometimes on short notice and have found that the best price is usually within 3 or 4 days of the flight. $600 return the other day to LGW which included a short internal flight to CLT.

Poppy girl

I looked at the last week in June 1st week in July from SFO to LHR $1,484

I do get friends and family with Delta through a friend but if it does not happen I needed to know my options.

naomi

Not that this was exactly a good deal, but I just discovered that Iberia Air buys a certain "portion" of seats on B.A.'s flights. Sometimes these tickets are cheaper than B.A., and you're on the exact same flight. I'm flying back with my daughter in July, and on B.A. the tickets were 1400 for an adult (slightly cheaper for my kid), and on Iberia they were 1100 (Seattle to London, return). So I "saved" about $600....they went up the next day, so I don't think those prices stick around. Of course, still way more than I wanted to pay...

Naomi.

mmhendrie

Just saw the Iberia reference. We got their email alerts just as we were about to book with BA (literally a couple of hours before), and checked them out.

We're flying LA to Manchester, so no airline has direct flights for that route. Our Iberia flights were with American Airlines (code share) - who I’m not a big fan of. BUT, the prices were so low vs. BA that we were able to buy 3 seats with Iberia for less then 2 seats with BA! We're travelling with out baby, so were going to go BA and ask for the bulkhead. But BA told me the bulkhead was not guaranteed and gets assigned 72hrs prior to the flight. They said it's pretty much always available, but I figured, there's a chance it wouldn't be, and we might have to hold the baby for the full trip. To pay less $ and get the baby his own seat, a guarantee of a spot to sit, was too good to pass up. I'd prefer the BA planes, but, I think juggling our 6 month old for 11hrs might take the shine off it!

We paid $550 (inc. all fees & taxes) for each of the 3 seats on Iberia: LA > Manchester return. And I was even able to do it through the AmEx travel site and knock a few hundred bucks off with my credit card points. BTW, the exact same flights with American Airlines (who's planes we'll be on) was almost $300 more per flight! Have to think Iberia screwed up, but hey, I'm sorted.

One thing I picked up from this booking experience, I found a site called www.seatguru.com - if you've not seen it, it's worth a look at. Its free, you punch in your flight #, it tells you your plane type, goes into detail about the amenities on the plane itself, and gives you a full seat map and rates each of the seats, telling you the the best/worst - as any experienced traveler knows, not all the seats in the same cabin are equal! I changed our seat assignments to those that had AC power in them for my laptop!

-Matt

Bob

It is a bit cheeky.

You check a site out and they hook you in with a fantastic rate, come back a day later or looking at other sites and you'll never find that rate again unless you've cleared your cache, their aim is hoping to freak you out into buying the next best deal.

It won't be massive uber savings, but if you're flying with a brood, even $50 a ticket racks up a chunk of change.

Jan Alaska

Check out Condor airlines, they have limited flights out of the US but are cheap cheap cheap. Flight from Anchorage to LHR usually around $1500 but half that through Condor.

Edit: just looked Condor ANC to Frankfurt (easy jet or ryan air hop to UK) $908 US
Continental / United $1244.