I have a feeling that title has some grammar issues, but no matter…
I am considering going to London for a week this coming December. I have built a small altar to William Shatner in my apartment, and am burning insence daily in the hopes of bringing ticket prices down.
(Ok, not really.)
Anyway: is it better to buy the ticket now, six months in advance, or should I wait and watch the prices? Is there an optimal number of weeks or months from the date where the fare is likely to be lowest?
(It’s sort of moot, since the lowest I’ve been able to find so far is about $800 and that’s still a little more than I can afford right now.)
I am in a somewhat similar circumstance. I have been wanting to visit Japan again this summer for a long time, but until last week I was not sure if I would be able to go or not, schedule-wise.
I know 100% that I can go now, but alas the prices for plane tickets from Orlando for July 15th to August 15th have gone up to 1600$+. I can afford 1300$ but not anything above. What’s strange is that the tickets from July 10ish to July 30ish are only 1200$
So, I think 6 months earlier is safest, but sometimes you get better prices for tickets 2 weeks ahead rather than tickets 4-8 weeks ahead. With Japan, it has something to do with the O-bon holiday I think, so I’m not sure about other places.
Great thread. This question has bugged me off and on for ages.
There’s a website called Farecast that attempts to predict exactly this sort of thing. Sadly, though, it told me that I missed the optimal time to purchase the ticket for the trip I’m taking next week.
Where are you leaving from? (Another good reason to fill in the ‘location’ part of your profile, wink, wink.) There’s a new airline flying out of NYC/JFK to London/Gatwick called Zoom , and they look pretty cheap.
Something many people forget is to try surrounding airports. For your case, how hard would it be to drive a couple hours to Vancouver, BC, or Portland, OR, and fly from there? Try flying into Gatwick, Heathrow (yuck), Stansted, or Paris-Charles de Gaulle? You could hire a car to drive to London. If you’re going to rent a car anyways, why not there? Unless something’s changed, there’s no limitation driving a French rental car into the UK. [Side note: it’s usually a problem driving a western European rental car into eastern Europe.]
If you want to keep it all in the air, try flying into the least expensive European hub (Paris, Madrid, Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, etc.), then catch a “low cost airline” (Ryanair, easyJet, Thomasfly, etc) to London. There are usually extra fees, including charges for checking luggage. Make sure you add them all up when comparing costs between carriers.
Oh, and if you’re going to stay at a hotel in London, you may be able to get a cheaper total travel cost if you combine the hotel and airfare on a search site (Travelocity, Expedia, etc.)
You’ll note I didn’t mentioned trains. England is not part of the Eurail system, so I’m not sure about pricing trips from Paris to London. It may be a viable option.
An example: My last trip to the States, I saved more than $300 in airfare by flying from Tokyo to Columbia, SC via Atlanta versus flying Tokyo to Atlanta alone. Usually it’s about $300 more to fly beyond Atlanta. Need I say that airfares in the US are illogical?
Autolycus, bummer on the airfares. I hope you get here somehow.
Ticket for July 11th to July 25th purchased for 1300$ Now I’m arranging plans, the most important being “whose couch can I sleep on?” I’m going to start a thread shortly, and I’ll let you know.
You can buy stuff in the future and then return to now? Cool. I believe you meant “in advance.” Anyway, thanks for the query which got a response for that farecast site. I’m checking it now for my summer vacation travel!
I believe all trans-atlantic flights arrive in either Gatwick or Heathrow. Stansted is for European flights.
The notion of flying into Paris to get to London more cheaply is not going to work. For one thing, it’s seldom cheaper to fly to Paris than it is to fly to London direct, and in any case whatever money you save by doing this will be less than the additional cost of then getting from Paris to London.
Same problem. If you save any money flying directly to Paris rather than to London, it will be less than the extra costs of trying to drive from Paris to London which, in any case, will take you at least one full day.
This is correct in the sense of ‘it’s perfectly legal to do this’. But it will involve a lot of extra expense, and it will also involve the skill of driving on both sides of the road (driving on the right in France, driving on the left here in England]. So if the car you hire in France has the driver’s seat on the left (as opposed to on the right here in the UK), when you drive off the ferry at the UK end you will be in a left-side driver car trying to drive on the left side of the road. Tricky, and difficult to do safely.
I don’t know about Thomasfly, but I do know a fair bit about Easyjet and Ryanair because I’ve used them both often. These are very low-cost airlines and well worth checking out. They both have very easy to use websites. You need to appreciate that with these airlines, it’s very much a case of ‘you get what you pay for’. They tend to fly out of smaller, less popular airports, which means airports that are usually less convenient to get to or from, which in turn adds to the overall cost of the journey. They also often fly at weird, less popular times. Ryanair often advertises stupidly low prices, but you may find the only available flight leaves at 7.00 in the morning or something. Given that you have to be at the airport at least an hour before, and that you have to get to the airport (and remember, it’s probably going to be one that’s harder to get to), you’re looking at getting up at maybe 3 or 4 in the morning to catch your flight, and there’s not much public transport around at that time.
You will find plenty of complaints and grumbles about both these airlines all over the internet. I’ve flown Easyjet many times, and by and large I think they provide a good service. The golden rule with them is: get there early. Very early. They process passengers very slowly and inefficiently, and you can not be late. Ryanair are the ultimate cheap airline, and you can get flights for almost nothing. But you get what you pay for. They are unreliable and prone to very severe delays - hours and hours. They are short-staffed, by design, and don’t even try to give the impression of treating passengers well. If there are problems with your flight, you won’t get much information. They will probably get you to your destination, but ‘when’ is something of a lottery. And no-one has ever managed to get a refund out of Ryanair, for anything, ever.
I don’t know about Ryanair, but on the Easyjet site all the fees and taxes and stuff are automatically calculated for you and displayed clearly, so you know exactly how much you are paying and for what.
I disagree. London hotels are among the most extortionate in the world. I’ve been lucky enough to travel around the world, and I am 100% positive that London hotels provide the worst value for money of any country in the world, offering an at times truly stunning mix of very low standards and very high prices. And booking your hotel online is not going to help - you’ll still get ripped off because the travel sites will only refer you to ‘tourist trap’ hotels in the middle of the city. The ‘discounts’ are usually pure fiction and lies, no more no less, and even if you get a cheap room it will be cheap for a reason, such as a filthy, noisy, no-service, unsafe room right next to the nightclub where the boom - boom - boom music doesn’t stop until 3 in the morning. And when it comes to the London hotel trade, don’t even think of complaining or getting a reduction or a refund: you won’t get anywhere, under any circumstances.
The way to stay in London cheaply is to first of all acquaint yourself with the six London travel ‘zones’, which you can learn about online (basically, the higher the number, the further you are from central London and the cheaper the prices should be). Next, find yourself somewhere that advertises itself not as a ‘hotel’ as such, but a ‘guest house’ or ‘bed and breakfast’ (typically abbreviated to b&b’) anywhere in zones 3, 4, or 5, and within 10 minutes walking distance of a London underground station. This is all you need. It won’t be anything classy, but it will be a way to stay in London cheaply. The London underground (tube / metro) system is vast and extensive, easy ansd safe to use, and you can easily get in and out of central London to see all the sights and touristy bits. The money you save by staying in a cheap ‘bed and breakfast’ place in the outer zones will be far more than the extra cost of your tube fares, especially if buy one of the weekly discount tickets known as a travecard. I can’t/won’t actually find a place to stay for you, but if you want more info about this inexpensive option or tube travel, email me (see profile).
I strongly doubt it. The only way to train from Paris is to London is via the Eurostar cross-channel tunnel link. This is very expensive. Basically, the only people who ever use it are those whose trips are paid for by their company.
To answer the OP, I’ve done a lot of international travel including trans-Atlantic flights. Generally speaking, you’ll get the best deals if you can commit 3 - 6 months in advance. There’s always the slight risk that by doing this, you’ll miss out on a price reduction that comes along later, but I don’t think this happens very often, or often enough for it to affect your buying policy. Other than that, I can only offer the usual money-saving tips that are well-known. Shop around, take your time, compare prices. Airlines reward early commitment and less flexibility. The best deals are often found online, but not always. Sometimes, going to see a real flesh-and-blood travel agent and pushing them hard to give you a good price on the cheapest option they can find does work, but a lot will depend on human factors (how much you can persuade them to cut into their own commission / profits to give you a good deal).
One more thing about flying into London. When you arrive at Heathrow or Gatwick, never, never, never take a taxi to get into London itself. You will pay at least £50-£60 and maybe more, and it’s a ripoff. The airports only allow what we call ‘black cabs’ to tout for trade, and these are very, very expensive. The cheaper London ‘minicabs’ are not allowed to tout for trade, and can only collect passengers by prior appointment booked via the minicab office (difficult but not impossible to arrange from overseas). Always use the public transport options. The tube and train services are fast, frequent and not too awful to use. The coach (long single-decker bus) services are a little slower but cheaper. Just never, ever take a taxi. Complete waste of money.
I don’t want to advertise in the thread, but contact me if you’d like some details about an hotel in London that has worked well for me in the past (and I can refer you to the manager by name) – email or PM, both will work.
As for flying into Paris and driving to London – do not do this unless you are very confident driving in the UK. I’ve done this, but it was… interesting. And I have 5 or 6 stints of UK driving under my belt. It is a lovely drive, however
Also – probably a no brainer, but note that unless you return the car in Paris (i.e., fly back from there as well, which is why I said it’s a no-brainer anyway) there will be a huge fee for returning a French rental in Britain – it may run to several hundred Euro! :eek:
I’m not going to drive into London - I’m from the US and don’t drive that much here plus the congestion charge makes it not worthwhile.
ianzin last time I was there I came into Gatwick and took the train in. I never took a cab the entire time I was in London last time.
One of the things that makes it so expensive is flying from the west coast. I would try Vancouver but I may not be allowed into Canada (long story). Portland might be doable.
Noone Special last time I was in London I stayed at the Crown Plaza St. James and hung out in the bar. Got to meet the business travellers from all over (got invited out drinking with the S. Africans!) but I think that I’ll stay in a hostel this time. I need to meet more people my age, doing the sort of travelling that I’m doing. I think the anxiety I had last time I was there had a lot to do with being alone a lot.
I might consider flying into Ireland and going from there, but that would probably cancel out, farewise.
I need a travel agent in this thread, consarnit!
I’m travelling on the budget of a hosteler/student, but with the income and debts of an adult. With some medical bills I have to pay off on the side. Oy!
I was thinking along the lines of something less than the Crown Plaza… not quite a hostel, rather more like an “Apartment Hotel” – not a place for you to do your hanging out, you’ll need to find someplace else for that, but you can (read “must”) buy stuff at the store and prepare your own meals. Not fancy, not quite in the middle of town, and hopefully not as insanely expensive.
If you do want to hear more, again, PM or email – I’d rather not advertise here.
I will. Seriously, last time I was there I was so glad for my hotel room, since there was a hot water kettle there and I got most of my meals from Sainsbury’s. Pot noodle, yay!
Will contact for info. It’s predicated upon me being able to get there at least by bus late at night.
I travel within the US about 3 or 4 flights/week and overseas perhaps once or twice a year. I am not a Travel Agent but for true cheapskates like me they are not always the best for airfare bookings.
The single most important thing in booking a cheap flight to Europe is flexibility of travel dates and times, not how far in advance you book. The closer you get to Christmas holidays, for instance, the higher your fare is going to be. The airlines all try to charge as much money as possible for the flights in demand–supply and demand.
The second thing is your flexibility of departure airports.
The answer to your OP is probably around 3 months but you might find a last minute deal so who knows? A new startup, or British Air trying to get customers back after a strike, or whatever.
My favorite site for looking at all carriers at once is kayak.com so you might play with that awhile for a couple weeks and just track fares. Be sure to use the flexibility tools for travel dates and nearby airports. If your final destination is London you will not save money by going to continental Europe first, although EasyJet is incredibly dirt cheap intracity in Europe.
If you really want to stretch, you can look into consolidators and couriers. These two groups will advertise in the Travel sections of weekend editions of major newspapers (NYT; Chicago Tribune; etc) and I am sure can be found online. Not sure a courier would be happy using someone even the Canadians have marked up.
Finally, consider booking your travel in two pieces: West Coast to East Coast and East Coast (NY, Dulles, ATL…) to London. The biggest disadvantage of that is that separating the tickets means if the first leg gets screwed up by one airline the second airline doesn’t care and may not be as generous helping you rebook emergently. Also don’t get burned transferring airports in NY–very annoying. If you decide to do so, leave plenty of time for traveling from LaGuardia to JFK.
All the advice from ianzin is spot-on. I consider London hotels an incredible overpriced crapshoot. I am a B+B guy and my last stay in a London B+B was fabulous.
PS: I have never heard of the Canadians not liking anyone except George Bush. What gives?
Ianzin,
Thanks for your input. You gave me good tips about London travel, some of which I’d been doing (like staying in outer rings) without even knowing.
Merry, good luck and remember to send yourself a post card while you’re there. When the card arrives, it’ll bring back warm memories of the trip.
Gross misdemeanor in 1999. It’s probably not a huge deal at this point, but a couple of years ago I was planning to take a day trip to Victoria and asked about it at the Canadian embassy. They told me I would probably be denied entry at that point.
I think after 10 years I can petition or something. And really, I think if I tried to go over the border on land I’d be fine. I wasn’t keen on the idea of taking the ferry up and then never being allowed off the boat though.
The Canadians are surprisingly strict about stuff like that.
I’m going to start a thread shortly, and I’ll let you know.