Monthly Archives: April 2013

Business Class Fares on Skyscanner

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For some time I’ve been emailing Skyscanner to say that they are missing out on a valuable service by not including business class prices.

Quietly and without fanfare, Skyscanner now includes Premium Economy, Business Class and First Class flight comparisons.

After doing the initial search on our Flight Search page, you have the option to search again using a drop-down box.

Why do we host Skyscanner? It’s because we believe that it’s absolutely essential to be provided with ALL flight options irrespective of whether they pay commission.

Skyscanner impartially provides fares from both airlines direct and online travel agents.

And rather than use unauthorized and intermittent “screen-scraping” as many other search engines do, Skyscanner has invested in direct links to airline databases.

Indeed, and for example, Skyscanner is one of the few that work with Ryanair as well as easyJet, Wizz and of course British Airways.

Does Premium Economy Class London to Melbourne exist?

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Airlines that offer a Premium Economy Class are:

British Airways
Virgin
Cathay Pacific

British Airways no longer fly direct from Singapore to Melbourne. Instead, they code-share using Qantas Aircraft and Qantas do not have a Premium Economy cabin.

Virgin do not operate the aircraft to Melbourne, instead they code-share with Singapore Airlines who do not have the Premium Economy cabin either.

The only option is Cathay Pacific with who call these seats Premium Economy Class!

Try our flight comparison tool to find the lowest fares. After selecting your flights you can choose between Economy, Premium Economy or Business class.

Free hotel stopover in Dubai flying with Emirates

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Emirates now have 5 daily A380 aircraft flying to Dubai and an onward worldwide network. To fill these planes, they offer very competitive fares worldwide. However, when looking for seats, sometimes there may not be a suitable connection in Dubai.

The minimum connection time in Dubai between Emirates flights is just 1 hour and 15 minutes .

If the best available connection requires 8 or more hours stay in Dubai (economy class) or 6 hours + (business class) Emirates will provide free stopover hotel in Dubai

There are other rules, you must be flying Emirates in and out of Dubai (and not a code-share flight),

and the “ticket fare” i.e. the net amount paid to Emirates (net of commission or travel agent markups) must be as follows:

Fare East: USD1,100 return
West Asia & Gulf, Middle East USD900 return
Australia & New Zealand: Any fare – no minimum price
East Africa USD800
Rest of Africa USD850

And all Skywards redemption tickets except Saver Economy are eligible, although I don’t rate Skywards very highly – see my article here.

Economy passengers only get to stay in the Copthorne Airport Hotel which, according to our hotel comparison site, is worth approximately £80 – £100 per night.

Business and First class passengers will be accommodated in Le Meridien Dubai which would normally cost between £200 and £300

The stopovers, called “Dubai Connect” must be booked in advance via Emirates and only after tickets are issued 

Don’t use Google Chrome to book Ryanair flights

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I’ve been told of difficulties when trying to complete a Ryanair booking and the reason appears to be the browser – namely Google Chrome.

It is annoying that you can select the flights, refuse all those extras and hard-sell options only to have the final payment stage rejected!

So you may want to search via our recommended search engine, Skyscanner, in Internet Explorer, if you think you may require Ryanair.

I recommend that you keep Booking Business Travel as a home page in both Internet Explorer and Google Chrome

Stansted Express Discount April 2013

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Again this month we have researched Discounted Stansted Express Train Fares.

A standard fare, London Liverpool Street to Stansted is now £23.40 single and £32.80 return
Tottenham Hale Station (good for the Victoria tube line) is slightly cheaper at £21.00 single and £30.50 return.

If you use the referral link from easyJet here, you’ll be quoted £18.70 single and £30.00 return but there is no reduction for Tottenham Hale station. There is no necessity to fly easyJet!

Cheaper still, is this referral link from Ryanair with a standard class single fare of £18.75 and a return price of £26.70

That’s a saving of £6.10 per return ticket.

Ryanair previously warned that the charge would be in Euros and that there could be a fluctuation in the sterling amount debited. But this warning no longer appears on their website, so we’re guessing that the charge is now a fixed sterling amount.

Again, Tottenham Hale is not offered but there is no reason why you cannot board or disembark there on these deals.

As with the easyJet deal, there is no necessity to fly Ryanair to take advantage of the discount!

If you appreciate this impartial advice, do try our Hotel Search engine, as recommended by Ryanair.

Heathrow Express Discount April 2013

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Each month we search for discounts on the Heathrow Express Trains. There have been many different sources for discounts over the years but they come and go. So we check every one and update you here – saving you the effort.

The normal fare direct from heathrowexpress.com is £20 single and £34 return. Make the mistake of buying your ticket onboard and you’ll be charged an additional £5!

A travel company by the name of CJL Travel offers 10% discount on their front page, bottom right corner.

You’ll still be booking on the Heathrow Express website but at a lower price of £16.20 single and £30.60 return.

Here is the link for CJL Travel

We earn no financial kick-back from our selection. Booking Business Travel believes in pointing you in the best direction for the best deal, impartially. If you appreciate this, you can save on flights and hotels too so do try our recommended flight search and hotel search tools.

Google flights launches – hidden extras and incomplete flight results

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Back in 2011 I blogged about Google’s purchase of ITA, a company that develops flight and price search technology. Since that time, Google made the search engine available in the US and it has only featured domestic US flights.

Google has been very slow to (at least publicly) do anything with the purchase, despite a price tag of $700M dollar in cash!

ITA has continued to provide a more comprehensive search engine on its ITA Matrix Website, listed in my ‘useful sites page’ which provides published fares. It is very detailed and can be useful, especially when searching for fares that originate from outside the UK.

However, it has its limitations. It doesn’t provide any “booking functions” but simply suggests you contact a travel agent or airline to book. And it doesn’t offer discounted fares. Neither does it feature many of the “no-frills” or web-only airlines, making most European flight search meaningless.

Very quietly, and without fanfare, Google Flights has now been released in the UK.

The Booking Business Travel ethos is to help you book travel independently at the lowest cost, and impartially, by recommending the best tools to do this.

To date I have recommended Skyscanner as the best “neutral” search engine because, although they earn referral commissions from travel agents, unlike travel agents themselves (Expedia etc) they have systematically included direct links to airlines to compare prices. E.g. Ryanair and easyJet.

So what do I think of Google Flights?

As with any search engine, I apply the “low-cost-airline test”.

Business travel is by its very nature very schedule driven, and it is essential that all timing options be made available, impartially to the business traveller. In this respect, Google go some way to assist – but with noteworthy failings.

I compared two routes on Google Flights and was very disappointed by the results:

London to Dublin Outbound 10th April back 11th April

Aer Lingus was featured but when selected, Google Flights directed me to Bravofly, an Irish travel agent, to fulfill the booking.

I am shocked by this! For two reasons:

Higher fares than directly from Aer Lingus

Bravofly quoted £145.84 compared to Aer Lingus direct at £142.98
Then came the hidden extras.  After adding the passenger name, the payment charges of £12.18 for AMEX or £7.10 for MasterCard or Visa Electron appeared!
And the charge is per passenger. Thus for two passengers the overall extra cost for having searched and accepted  Google Flights offer would be approximately £30

British Airways

As you’d expect, BA was offered directly and the fares provided came directly from ba.com
This is how it should be.
After selection, a ‘deep link’ takes you to the onward booking pages.

Ryanair

Schedules are offered but with no air fares.
After selecting flights, Google links you to the Ryanair home page and you have to repeat the search all over again!

London to Copenhagen: Outbound 10th April back 11th April

Scandinavian Airlines

Google flights offered correct fares directly from SAS, with a deep link to the airline booking page.
Again, this is how it should be.

easyJet

No prices, just schedules, and as with Ryanair, a link to the home page to repeat the search.
This really isn’t good enough.

Norwegian Airlines

Prices provided but as with Aer Lingus, only from Bravofly with similar price differences and extra credit card charges

Skyscanner offered lower fares on Aer Lingus of £142.98 return and no credit card charges, saving, for two passengers paying by AMEX £30.08!

And we had the comparison fares from Ryanair and BA all on one page

Google Map View

If you’re searching for an overview of fares, the Google Map View should be very helpful, but Google includes a disclaimer to say that some airlines are not available:

Ryanair, Lufthansa, easyJet, Thomas Cook, Aer Lingus.

I also noticed that Wizz airlines are excluded

Summary

Yes, Google Flights “look-and-feel” is slick. Very slick. But what is most important? It should be content and pricing, surely? And much of the “instant search” must rely on cached memory, which may not be accurate.

The other gaping hole in Google Flights is the inability to search for premium economy, business or first class flights.

And Google will not send you to whichever website has the cheapest fare, relying instead on a couple of agents with hidden fees.

When researching flight options, you should use a search engine that checks both the airlines direct – and travel agencies like Expedia. Expedia make no extra fees or credit card charges. So the price you see is the price you pay.

Skyscanner does this efficiently. It includes authorised availability data from Ryanair and easyJet in addition to  ba.com. It also offers Premium Economy, Business and First Class. Visit my Skyscanner page for your next search and don’t waste time on Google Flights.

Not yet, anyway….