Monthly Archives: March 2011

Additional Ryanair fees

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Ryanair is to charge an additional €2.00 fee from the 4th April, to cover the costs of disrupted travel due to incidents such as the ash cloud, Air Traffic strikes and snow.

We wait to see if this is per flight or just per booking.

It will be described as a “EU261 Compensation Levy” because
The airline says, “It is unfair and discriminatory that airlines are made liable for providing refunds, meals, hotels and phonecalls during ATC strikes, bad weather airport closures, or (volcanic) airspace closures when even travel insurance companies avoid liability during these “force majeure” events, and when competing transport providers (rail, ferries and coach operators) have no such “force majeure” liability under their equivalent EU261 regulations.

Best Airline Reward Schemes

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British Airways On-Business

Your company will accrue points in addition to your individual
travellers’ executive club points.

More details – and sign up here

Sign up takes just 3 minutes, but before you start, check:

*Your company registration number

* An estimate (or guess) of your annual air travel spend.

* Nominate a ‘company authoriser’ (able to book rewards) and programme administrator (can be one and the same)

* The IATA number of any travel agent(s) you may use

Your membership number needs to be quoted when you book at ba.com and you can nominate up to 5 travel agents.

Star Alliance Company Plus

Free promotion – 1,500 points when you join

Tailored to small and medium sized companies, Company Plus encompasses the following (mainly European) airlines:

Air Canada, ANA, Austrian, Blue1, BMI, Brussels Airlines, Continental, LOT, Lufthansa, Scandinavian, Swiss, TAP Portugal, United.

Our view: It is difficult to administer and accrue points on this programme. E.g. Booking at Lufthansa.com, there is no option to enter your membership number. Flights need to be manually entered or uploaded from a spreadsheet to their site.

More details and application HERE

Always search for just ONE seat!

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Airlines (and train companies, including Eurostar) allocate a certain number of seats to be sold at various prices.

They don’t want to fill an aircraft with £9.99 fare-paying passengers!

So they’ll allocate for example:

10 seats at   £9.99
30 seats at   £39.00
50 seats at   £150.00
50 seats at   £200.00

If 9 seats have been sold at £9.99 there will be just one seat left at that price and the next seat to be sold will be at £39.00

However, if you request two seats, the airline reservation systems will not offer you that “last seat” price, but will sell you two at the next higher price, even though that lower priced ticket remains available for sale.

By requesting and booking one seat at a time, you can achieve one fare at the lower price and one at the higher price.

Having spent 20 years selling air tickets in a travel agency, I know that this scenario occurs more frequently than you would imagine!

I recently saved £150 by booking separate tickets on a trip for two to Dubai by booking individual seats. One seat left was priced at £250 and the next one was £400

Make sure that enough seats are available on the aircraft though, by checking for the total party first!

OPODO show the actual number of seats available at the price quoted, click HERE

Ryanair Sale – Book by Midnight Monday

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Fares from £6 each way, for travel Monday to Thursday only, anytime throughout May.

I usually ignore these Ryanair “sales” but after checking, these prices really do exist and there appears to be reasonable availability.

The only extra that you have to pay is the credit card charge £6 each way unless you apply for a prepaid mastercard card, see my article here:

Go direct to Ryanair here

Is “Google Travel” the future of travel search?

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In July 2010, Google announced an agreement to acquire ITA Software, for $700 million.

ITA provides search technology and connectivity between airlines and client-facing web sites such as ORBITZ and KAYAK.

Acquiring ITA will empower Google to provide answers to consumers search queries itself, instead of leaving that function to the online travel companies.

Ask Google,”What is the local time in New York?”, and Google provides the answer. Similarly with travel queries, Google will be able to provide fares directly from airlines.

Thus the intention to purchase ITA is under scrutiny by regulatory authorities.

Here is a preview of ITA’s search engine capabilities. CLICK HERE

This site, with the the inclusion of multi-sector journeys, and the country of sale information, is a very powerful tool.

ITA do not sell tickets but they do arm the consumer with as much information as a travel agent.

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

ITA also provides a mobile app OnTheFly™ for iPhone and Android™ and bbmatrix.itasoftware.com for BlackBerry®.

Save £24 off your next Ryanair booking

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Ryanair charge a debit card or credit card fee of £6 per passenger per passenger. That’s £24 on a return booking for two people!

Apply for a “Prepaid Mastercard” NOW – so that you’re ready to save on your next booking!

We trawled through the cards on offer through moneysupermarket.com.
We were enticed by offers such as “no application fee” but by reading the small print we were alarmed to find clauses such as:

Card issue fees applied of typically £10.00
PLUS monthly management fee of up to £3.95
A charge of up to 2.75% on purchases
A turnover limit of £650 per annum….

The best card in our opinion is from KALIXA with a one-off fee of EUR4.95
• No purchase fees
• No monthly management fee
• Load via internet free
• No maximum daily spend

More details on their fees:
http://www.kalixa.com/en-gb/Guest-Areas/About-Kalixa/Fees_de/

Delivery takes 5+ working days so apply now!
http://www.kalixa.com/en-gb/Guest-Areas/About-Kalixa/Kalixa-for-Business-SME_de/Kalixa-in-detail/

Skyscanner chooses Lastminute.com to fulfil Wizz Air bookings

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UPDATE MAY 2011 … The search engine now sends you directly to Wizz Air. This is our recommended way of booking low-cost-airlines.

The price is the same – to the penny, if you choose to pay by SWITCH or VISA DEBIT card.

Lastminute accept AMEX, DINERS, cards which WIZZ do not but they make a charge.

Check-in baggage is £16 if you use Lastminute and £13 if you go direct to WIZZ
So, our advice is: Use Our cheap flight search to compare and check alternatives, but, unless you need to pay with a card that is not accepted by WIZZ, then we recommend that you
Book direct with wizzair.com HERE

Booking Eurostar for this summer

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The best fares are booked in advance, however;

London to Paris, Brussels or Lille is only bookable up to 4 months (120 days) in advance.
EXAMPLE: Today 30th March we can only book for an outbound date of 28th July
To onward destinations, for example, Bordeaux, you can only book 3 months (90 days) in advance.
EXAMPLE: Today 30th March we can only book for an outbound date of 28th June.
This limit applies to the outbound AND return date so if you are staying for a week, you risk losing the cheapest seats on the outbound whilst you wait for the return to become available.
A travel agent should be able to reserve seats the outward whilst waiting for the return so if you are travelling peak time it may be worth paying an agent’s booking fee to get the lowest prices.
Make a diary note and book here!

easyJet Holidays – new website launched

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I was excited at the prospect of lower prices by combining flights and hotels in the same booking, but disappointed after pricing the separate components.

easyJet holidays package price was £25 more expensive, and that was before the website mysteriously added another £17.55 during the booking process.

I rang easyJet to point out the problems. They said that they were using a different system. Strange, that their “support” agents don’t use the same website to be able to see what we see.

I did receive two calls back from easyJet but all they wanted to do was to sell me a holiday, rather than address the issues with their website.

The only advantage to using this site is that in the event of an Icelandic ash cloud situation, easyJet will presumably share responsibly for amendments to hotels as well as flights …. but is the extra cost worth it?

Comments appreciated!

Heathrow Express, Stansted Express Discounts

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HEATHROW EXPRESS DISCOUNTS

I recently made the mistake of buying a single Heathrow Express ticket at Paddington Station at a price of £18 and a single on the way back. Total, £36!

Had I booked online, and bought a return ticket, I would have paid £32 saving £4

UPDATE January 2012

I have researched all the fares available on the web and found that Iberia Airlines offers a return fare of £28.90 saving £5.10 per return ticket
Click on the Heathrow Express advert on the right hand side of the Iberia page here

We’d appreciate any comments below, especially if this information becomes outdated. I last checked on 1st February 2012

STANSTED EXPRESS 19% Discount

Normal return fare from London Liverpool Street £29.70

Online Price       £27.70
EasyJet Price    £26.50
Ryanair Price was £24.00, now £21.60 (updated 22 April)

Book via this link to RyanAir here.

NB There is no requirement to be a Ryanair passenger

Bahrain Travel Advice

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TRAVEL ADVICE
The UK Government Foreign Office advise against all travel to Bahrain until further notice.
For more details regarding the situation in Bahrain click HERE

TRAVEL INSURANCE
You may or may not decide to heed Foreign Office advisories, however it is important to be aware of the dangers and also that most travel insurance cover is invalid if you travel whilst the advice is in effect.
Interestingly, today, the ba.com website appears to accept reservations without giving a warning.

CANCELLATION OF PRE-BOOKED TICKETS
Some airlines are more flexible regarding cancellation charges or rebooking, when a travel advisory is in effect. Alternatively, travel insurance should cover you providing the original booking was made prior to the situation developing