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semicolonsrock posted:So, I'd like to find a flight from either JAI (Jaipur India) or BKK (Bangkok) to either Chicago (ORD, etc) or Boston (BOS). The date of the flight would be sometime around January 10th, flexible to within a few days. Bonus points if it is on United or one of the airlines (notably US airways etc) which shares their frequent flier program. I know it's one way, but unfortunately Visa issues don't give me any other choice. Help please! You can do it for roughly $812USD on Finnair, but you'll get no miles that way. If you want to fly UA or US, you're closer to $1300.
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Nov 8, 2013 09:52
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Mackieman posted:As far as advice, I'd say the first thing is to start watching fares. You know where you want to go, and have a window of when, so start checking once a day and see where fares are. They may not change for a long time, but then again, they might change wildly from one day to the next. Secondly, check nearby cities. DAY, CMH, IND, LEX, and SDF can be alternates if the savings is worth the time for you to get there from CVG. It's been a common tactic to try and get flights out of Dayton since flights tend to be cheaper through that airport. Appreciate the advice! 
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Nov 8, 2013 18:24
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I'm currently looking at flights currently from Quito to Bogota, either flying out 11/20 or the 21st and returning 12/16. The last possible day I could leave is the 22nd as my tourist visa expires on the 24th and I have to return to Quito for my flight back on the 17th of December. Flights for some reason often have ridiculous layovers and a 1 hour 40 minute flight can stretch to a 20 hour ordeal due to a 18 hour layover. I'm looking to try and find something for under $300 preferably direct or with a 3 - 5 hour layover. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Of course if all else fails I can always take the bus, however it'd be nice to have the extra time to see things and not sit around on long bus rides.
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Nov 11, 2013 16:17
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ShaggiusPrime posted:I'm currently looking at flights currently from Quito to Bogota, either flying out 11/20 or the 21st and returning 12/16. The last possible day I could leave is the 22nd as my tourist visa expires on the 24th and I have to return to Quito for my flight back on the 17th of December. Flights for some reason often have ridiculous layovers and a 1 hour 40 minute flight can stretch to a 20 hour ordeal due to a 18 hour layover. I'm looking to try and find something for under $300 preferably direct or with a 3 - 5 hour layover. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. UIO-BOG on the 20th is running about $300 with a plane change in MDE. Total trip time is about four hours, not really a big deal. This is on a mix of LAN Peru and LAN Columbia.
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Nov 11, 2013 18:22
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Looking to go from Chicago O'Hare to Bangkok, Dec 19 - Jan 7, dates flexible by ~2 days on either side. Looks like it's just going to be about $2400, but figured I'd ask for tips here before booking.
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Nov 11, 2013 21:45
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ThetaOmnikron posted:Looking to go from Chicago O'Hare to Bangkok, Dec 19 - Jan 7, dates flexible by ~2 days on either side. Looks like it's just going to be about $2400, but figured I'd ask for tips here before booking. $2049 on a mix of UA and NH, stop in NRT. Best option I see at the moment.
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Nov 12, 2013 05:00
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Mackieman posted:$2049 on a mix of UA and NH, stop in NRT. Best option I see at the moment. That's about $400 cheaper than anything I could find. Which dates got you that price?
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Nov 12, 2013 05:44
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ThetaOmnikron posted:That's about $400 cheaper than anything I could find. Which dates got you that price? Leave 12/17, return 1/9. 
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Nov 12, 2013 16:34
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Is the 'buy tickets when they are cheaper on Tuesday' rule actually a thing? Like, make the purchase on a Tuesday not fly.
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Nov 13, 2013 17:15
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DontAskKant posted:Is the 'buy tickets when they are cheaper on Tuesday' rule actually a thing? Like, make the purchase on a Tuesday not fly. It is a thing, but not a hard rule to be sure. Statistically speaking, discounted fares are loaded on Tuesdays and higher fares are loaded over and during weekends. But that pertains to the fares themselves, and not necessarily the days on which travel would occur.
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Nov 13, 2013 18:40
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Was playing around with fares on Hipmunk and followed the booking link to the airline's (Qatar) website– but once there, the Hipmunk-quoted price is gone. Any ideas?
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Nov 14, 2013 00:53
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ThetaOmnikron posted:Was playing around with fares on Hipmunk and followed the booking link to the airline's (Qatar) website– but once there, the Hipmunk-quoted price is gone. Any ideas? Hipmunk utilizes fare data as posted to one of the GDS (Global Distribution System) platforms out there. Airlines update the GDS of their choice (sometimes more than one) a couple of times per day. Thus it is entirely plausible that a fare with a limited number of seats sells out before the next GDS update, resulting in a tool that utilizes GDS data showing a fare that the ticketing carrier won't actually sell. Verification of fare availability is what is happening when you click on a link to go to a booking engine and they show you a splash page that says, "Hold on just a sec..." or whatever.
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Nov 14, 2013 01:39
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Mackieman posted:Hipmunk utilizes fare data as posted to one of the GDS (Global Distribution System) platforms out there. Airlines update the GDS of their choice (sometimes more than one) a couple of times per day. Thus it is entirely plausible that a fare with a limited number of seats sells out before the next GDS update, resulting in a tool that utilizes GDS data showing a fare that the ticketing carrier won't actually sell. Verification of fare availability is what is happening when you click on a link to go to a booking engine and they show you a splash page that says, "Hold on just a sec..." or whatever. Got it! If you don't mind, one more question: the Chicago-Bangkok trip is something I'd still like to book, but now have a hard return date, so Dec 18(ish) to Jan 5. Prices have spiked pretty seriously since just earlier in the week– what's the best way to go from here? Book now or wait for a few days/longer?
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Nov 14, 2013 19:30
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ThetaOmnikron posted:Got it! If you don't mind, one more question: the Chicago-Bangkok trip is something I'd still like to book, but now have a hard return date, so Dec 18(ish) to Jan 5. Prices have spiked pretty seriously since just earlier in the week– what's the best way to go from here? Book now or wait for a few days/longer? I checked all the major gateways and there are no savings to be had. If that's a price you're willing to pay, I wouldn't wait more than another week or so. Price can do anything, but I don't know why stuff would start getting cheaper suddenly, especially with the overall industry shift to raise fares.
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Nov 14, 2013 21:09
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So I'm looking at booking a ticket for late June/early July that goes BWI>DEN>MSP>BWI. I'm not sure on dates yet, but would there be any trick to booking a multi-city trip?
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Nov 15, 2013 22:30
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FISHMANPET posted:So I'm looking at booking a ticket for late June/early July that goes BWI>DEN>MSP>BWI. I'm not sure on dates yet, but would there be any trick to booking a multi-city trip? Not really; plug in cities into the search engine of your choice and see what comes out. Using Matrix or Hipmunk is a good idea as you can put together itineraries on multiple carriers that way as you're dealing with the hubs of three different airlines: BWI (WN), DEN (UA, WN), and MSP (DL). While you may or may not want to fly on WN, many carriers still price match them fairly competitively.
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Nov 16, 2013 01:31
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It's for a very price conscious friend of mine, and she's got no problem with Southwest (it's what she used bwi>msp last time she visited) so I'll give that a try. I'll poke at some more travel sites and see what comes out. I did some googling and it looks like southwest fares are the same if you book round trip or two one ways, so I priced out each leg and got to around 600 total, not sure if anybody could beat any particular leg of that. E: Southwest doesn't even have schedules that far out, currently they only go to June 4, so this is probably way to soon to start searching. ITA Matrix gives me $591 currently, United BWI to DEN, American DEN to MSP, US Airways MSP to BWI. Nice that ITA gives me price per flight, so even if they won't search Southwest, I can compare the per flight price to find a deal on Southwest. FISHMANPET fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Nov 16, 2013 |
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Nov 16, 2013 03:40
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Trying to plan a vacation from DC (or NY) to Ireland (either DUB or SNN, doesn't matter) leaving 05/08 and coming back 05/15. I have some flexibility on the dates but I have to leave after the 7th. The best I've found was DCA to DUB at $768pp. Do you see anything better out there?
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Nov 16, 2013 06:31
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FISHMANPET posted:It's for a very price conscious friend of mine, and she's got no problem with Southwest (it's what she used bwi>msp last time she visited) so I'll give that a try. I'll poke at some more travel sites and see what comes out. Yeah, I'd wait a bit and see what happens when WN publishes their schedule for that time period.
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Nov 16, 2013 13:06
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Whip Slagcheek posted:Trying to plan a vacation from DC (or NY) to Ireland (either DUB or SNN, doesn't matter) leaving 05/08 and coming back 05/15. I have some flexibility on the dates but I have to leave after the 7th. The best I've found was DCA to DUB at $768pp. Do you see anything better out there? $724 out of JFK, coming back to IAD to hit the late departure to DUB. That's a decent price for DUB, as I rarely see it go below $700 these days. $744 for the non-stop out of EWR.
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Nov 16, 2013 13:09
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Mackieman posted:UIO-BOG on the 20th is running about $300 with a plane change in MDE. Total trip time is about four hours, not really a big deal. This is on a mix of LAN Peru and LAN Columbia. Thank you for the help Mackieman, I think I saw a flight on kayak for about $279 with not an unreasonable layover. I didn't jump on it and someone else took it, now it's back to 15 - 20 layovers. Considering my current income of $0 I think it'll be the bus for me.
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Nov 16, 2013 15:08
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Mackieman posted:$724 out of JFK, coming back to IAD to hit the late departure to DUB. That's a decent price for DUB, as I rarely see it go below $700 these days. $744 for the non-stop out of EWR. Where are you seeing this? You're a drat travel ninja.
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Nov 16, 2013 21:02
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Is there a good site that can tell you deals based on your origin? I have 2 weeks off next month, am flexible on the dates and location. I just want to go somewhere exciting!
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Nov 17, 2013 02:59
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Google travel just finds your location and estimates prices for everywhere, only really works for US departures though https://www.google.com/flights/
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Nov 17, 2013 10:02
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Whip Slagcheek posted:Where are you seeing this? You're a drat travel ninja. ITA's Matrix search. No big deal.
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Nov 18, 2013 01:56
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Emasculatrix posted:Is there a good site that can tell you deals based on your origin? I have 2 weeks off next month, am flexible on the dates and location. I just want to go somewhere exciting! Google and Kayak both have map options that will show you results of other's searches for those particular markets. So if you find one you like, don't be surprised to see a different fare when you search because there is no telling how old the data they're using is. It's not a bad tool, but you have to know what you're really getting when you use them. Cached results can get stale, especially for non-peak markets.
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Nov 18, 2013 01:57
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Has Skyscanner been mentioned? Ived used the ita thing and found I personally like ss better. Just plug in departure cities and zero in on the dates. The lack of open jaw searches does suck though.
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Nov 18, 2013 02:11
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MasterControl posted:Has Skyscanner been mentioned? Ived used the ita thing and found I personally like ss better. Just plug in departure cities and zero in on the dates. The lack of open jaw searches does suck though. Skyscanner isn't a bad tool, but I do lots of open-jaw and multi-city searches so it's not so useful for that. Skyscanner's true value lies in the number of Asian LCCs that it will return fares for.
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Nov 18, 2013 03:48
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Looking for round trip tickets HEL to BOS Dec 27 to Jan 10 So far the range is 920-980 euros but the landing time at Bos is 10pm which sucks. Any inkling that the price will go down or will this be expensive due to the holidays? Using Kayak to find flights - (all the BOS arrivals are at 9:40 pm, are there any other flights coming in from Europe that day  ?)
xjohnson fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 15:42
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xjohnson posted:Looking for round trip tickets HEL to BOS Dec 27 to Jan 10 How flexible are you? I can get you down to 834EUR but it requires getting yourself over to ARN (Stockholm) and a tag-on flight from EWR to BOS. If you can't get to ARN easily/cheaply, then it doesn't make much sense. The 9:40PM arrival you're looking at is on BA; I imagine the reason they're showing this is because your departure from HEL is too late in the day to connect to the normal US departure bank. Normally you have to leave pretty early from a secondary European city to hit the US departure bank from one of the big gateways.
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Nov 18, 2013 17:18
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Found a flight that manages to get on the normal US flights to BOS in the early afternoon, which is ideal. They ended up being in the 950 range which fits into the budget. To answer your question, not that flexible. Thanks for your insight!
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Nov 18, 2013 20:47
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Arriving late in the day on an international flight is the best thing, you get to go right to sleep and have basically no jet lag.
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Nov 18, 2013 23:38
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HookShot posted:Arriving late in the day on an international flight is the best thing, you get to go right to sleep and have basically no jet lag. See, that was my plan when I went to PVG a couple of weeks ago. I stayed awake for the last eight hours of the flight, had dinner, and crashed out with a full eight hours of sleep. The next afternoon was miserable as I couldn't hardly keep my eyes open.
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Nov 19, 2013 17:00
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Mackieman posted:See, that was my plan when I went to PVG a couple of weeks ago. I stayed awake for the last eight hours of the flight, had dinner, and crashed out with a full eight hours of sleep. The next afternoon was miserable as I couldn't hardly keep my eyes open.
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Nov 19, 2013 17:52
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ThetaOmnikron posted:Was playing around with fares on Hipmunk and followed the booking link to the airline's (Qatar) website– but once there, the Hipmunk-quoted price is gone. Any ideas? Mackieman posted:Hipmunk utilizes fare data as posted to one of the GDS (Global Distribution System) platforms out there. Airlines update the GDS of their choice (sometimes more than one) a couple of times per day. Thus it is entirely plausible that a fare with a limited number of seats sells out before the next GDS update, resulting in a tool that utilizes GDS data showing a fare that the ticketing carrier won't actually sell. Verification of fare availability is what is happening when you click on a link to go to a booking engine and they show you a splash page that says, "Hold on just a sec..." or whatever. To bring this up again since I'm getting this same problem (find fares on ITA for the route I want for about 700 euros but can't book anything cheaper than 1100, might as well spend c. 2000+ to fly business in that case)... It's not necessarily slow updating, it's likely to be fare classes with low prices but no availability being shown. I've had the same QR fares pop up for a few days now on ITA. Mackieman, do you have any experience with fuel dumping or something similar? I've tried to read the thread on Flyertalk but they're too cryptic for me. I'm looking for HEL-SIN-HEL 30/12 - 5/1 with flexibility on the return. Cheapest I can get is about 1100e total with two separate bookings, HEL-CPH-HEL and CPH-SIN-CPH (not direct flights). One thing I did in the summer was fly from CAI to SIN using QR since fares from there are really really cheap but I can't get from HEL-CAI in an easy and cheap manner e: I know that's not a fuel dump but just saying they have some cool fares from there incase anyone reading this needs to get to Asia and can fly cheaply to Cairo Geriatric Pirate fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Nov 19, 2013 |
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Nov 19, 2013 18:57
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HookShot posted:Oh, really? I have no problem with that usually, if I've fallen asleep at night and gotten 8 hours I have no problem the next day, but I find landing at like 10am in Europe (or good God 6am in Australia) and then having to stay awake the entire day after being awake the whole flight is just the worst hell on the planet, and I always have to write off the entire first day of a trip because of that. Yeah, I was hoping it was going to be better because I was headed west (TPAC) instead of east (TATL) but it didn't seem to matter. I made it through but goddamn it sucked. I had less issues last time I went to Europe for a short trip.
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Nov 19, 2013 19:16
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Mackieman, do you have any experience with fuel dumping or something similar? I've tried to read the thread on Flyertalk but they're too cryptic for me. I'm looking for HEL-SIN-HEL 30/12 - 5/1 with flexibility on the return. Cheapest I can get is about 1100e total with two separate bookings, HEL-CPH-HEL and CPH-SIN-CPH (not direct flights). I've used FDs in the past, but not for quite some time as I do most of my travel on UA and I know some of the guys that work there and know that they watch for this sort of thing. A temporary savings now is not worth getting my account closed or an add/collect notice issued (though the latter seems more unlikely than the former). Something like that old adage about not making GBS threads where you sleep. That said, I haven't done one in ages because they're simply not that easy to do anymore. The guys posting in those threads at FT and MP are pretty hardcore about it, thus the cryptic language. There is a subset of the population that is in the game to get as much as they possibly can for as little expenditure as possible and they're willing to do almost anything to achieve that goal. I'm decidedly not a part of that mindset and while I hate YQ as much as the next guy, doing a bunch of ethically questionable stuff to get around it, especially given the potential downsides, I choose not to engage in the activity. Thus, I don't know any of the current 1X or 3X dumps nor do I have the desire to decipher them. On the topic, there is a lawsuit in New York District Court where a group of travelers are suing BA over their YQ charges on award tickets, noting that they aren't, in fact, tied to the price of fuel as BA's CoC says they are. The outcome of that will be interesting to watch as it may cause airlines to remove YQ as we know it and either build it into the base fare or simply call it some other kind of service fee that doesn't have anything to do with fuel. More info on that topic can be found here. Edit: Just realized you were asking for fare help too, heh. 30/12 - 5/1 HEL-CDG-SIN//SIN-AMS-HEL, AF on the outbound, KL on the return. 780EUR. Edit Again: Holy poo poo I'm a moron. Something about transposing the date/month format from the month/date format used here in 'Merica. The price above was for November 30.  Looking at your actual dates, I see 898EUR on QR, but it's in and out of ARN. So if you can get to ARN for less than 200 Euros, then that may be an option.
Beef Of Ages fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Nov 19, 2013 |
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Nov 19, 2013 19:23
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Mackieman posted:I've used FDs in the past, but not for quite some time as I do most of my travel on UA and I know some of the guys that work there and know that they watch for this sort of thing. A temporary savings now is not worth getting my account closed or an add/collect notice issued (though the latter seems more unlikely than the former). Something like that old adage about not making GBS threads where you sleep. Thanks for the help though, I get a similar fare on ITA as well (same for QR CPH-SIN-CPH) but am not able to recreate it on any booking engine except Hipmunk but from there I can't book it. Any tips? edit: refers to your second edit
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Nov 19, 2013 19:39
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Yeah, I know fuel dumping is risky and requires a bit too much flexibility for my liking (and it was funny to read about those travellers who got stranded in RGN after taking advantage of super cheap ex-RGN flights). Yeah, looks like QR is publishing poo poo data, not sure. If you know of a good travel agent you might call them and feed them the info from ITA and see if they can ticket it, but I bet they can't. QR's site doesn't even show service on January 5. Edit: OneTravel seems to want to book it. May give it a shot. Beef Of Ages fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Nov 19, 2013 |
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Nov 19, 2013 19:50
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Mackieman posted:Yeah, looks like QR is publishing poo poo data, not sure. If you know of a good travel agent you might call them and feed them the info from ITA and see if they can ticket it, but I bet they can't. QR's site doesn't even show service on January 5. Can't seem to find it on OneTravel. Frustration mounting: I also found a great €1750 Z/J fare on AF/KL on my desired travel dates but can't find it anywhere online either. About €1700 return in J if I extend my stay in Singapore until the 8th, decisions, decisions... Thanks though! edit: in the depths of my desperation, I figure it out (anyone else who can't find a fare they found on ITA matrix on any booking engine should check this out too) http://milepoint.com/forums/threads/ita-displays-a-fare-i-cannot-find-it-on-the-airline-website-where-to-go.11421/ That thread is great, but the key point for me was to use Orbitz Multicity but instead of typing out something like "Copenhagen - Singapore - Copenhagen", I look up the cheapest fare on ITA which in this case was CPH - DOH - SIN - DOH - CPH, and type that entire thing into multi-city (so looking for flights from Copenhagen to Doha, from Doha to Singapore, Singapore to Doha, Doha to Copenhagen). And that gets me a €700 flight with a B787 segment instead of €1300 flight with a 13 hour layover in Guangzhou and makes me very happy. Though I'm still a bit annoyed that there was a TK promotion on the route for €550 according to a local website that's similar to Flyertalk's "Mileage run deals" forum. edit2: actually that doesn't work orbitz shows me the flights but when I try to book, it tells me they are no longer available. And then shows them to me again when I search again.
Geriatric Pirate fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Nov 19, 2013 |
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Nov 19, 2013 20:33
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