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Evening folks,
I’m looking at booking some flights from London to Tokyo departing next year and was just having a look at what’s available.
I’m not really seeing anything in CW departing London so decided to take a look at Manchester
It sends flights departing from Manchester has a decent amount of CW availability
Example:
MAN-LHR-HND 27th Jan: 6 CW available
LHR-HND 27th Jan: 0 CWBooking for 2 using BAPP companion
I know the reward search has been iffy recently and isn’t know if this is another symptom.
Maybe a follow up: is London to Tokyo normally a hard route to get in CW?
It has been reported here a dozen times and there are one or two articles about it on the site.
This is because new-style 241 vouchers have access to extra inventory (pulling some from I-class) and availability of I-class is higher from the regions.
Tokyo has now joined the ranks of Sydney, Maldives and Cape Town as the most popular route. If you want to start in London and use the voucher, you need to stay up until midnight/1am to book or wait until last minute.
Yes Rob has mentioned a number of times that starting at the regions is much better
re availabilities for most route. Although I don’t think he ever explained why, the flight does after all stops in London, saying that what time do you have to leave MAN as the Tokyo flight is already pretty early from LHR!You can do the MAN-LHR leg the day before – in fact I would generally advise this in case of delays or cancellations on the domestic route, which are not uncommon.
I think I class must apply to the first point of departure, so MAN instead of LHR.
Does the same work in reverse in terms of additional availability i.e. from international to regional?
If so, depending where you live (i.e. MAN not being more convenient than LHR) you could book MAN-LHR-HND and then return HND-LHR-LGW-LGA which would result in your bags being returned at LHR. There is then always the possibility that you get stuck in traffic and never make the LGW flight.
As an aside, this would be easier if BA still flew LGW-MAN. It is a shame, and by shame I mean massive annoyance, that they do not.
Yeah.. Ideally i’d fly from any london airport (Bristol based)… Maybe i’ll try the midnight calls and see how i get on.
If i were to book MAN-LHR-HND, Would I need to actually do the first leg of the journey? Or could I just do the LHR-HND part?
Yeah.. Ideally i’d fly from any london airport (Bristol based)… Maybe i’ll try the midnight calls and see how i get on.
If i were to book MAN-LHR-HND, Would I need to actually do the first leg of the journey? Or could I just do the LHR-HND part?
It’s a 1 am call due to BST.
Yes you must do the MAN-LHR leg otherwise they’ll cancel the whole ticket.
Indeed, massive annoyance re MAN-LGW. Then they dangled it again briefly before snatching it away.
I’ve always been amazed that EZY dont offer to fly that route to connect with their larger operation at Gatwick
Yes Rob has mentioned a number of times that starting at the regions is much better
re availabilities for most route. Although I don’t think he ever explained why, the flight does after all stops in London, saying that what time do you have to leave MAN as the Tokyo flight is already pretty early from LHR!This article clearly explains why https://www.headforpoints.com/2021/09/06/british-airways-american-express-241-voucher-availability/
Yes Rob has mentioned a number of times that starting at the regions is much better
re availabilities for most route. Although I don’t think he ever explained why, the flight does after all stops in London, saying that what time do you have to leave MAN as the Tokyo flight is already pretty early from LHR!This article clearly explains why https://www.headforpoints.com/2021/09/06/british-airways-american-express-241-voucher-availability/
I read this a long time ago, it explains I class availability. It doesn’t explain why starting from the regions has more availabilities. The lHR-TYo leg is a subset of the man-lhr-tyo leg, it makes no sense why the subset has less availabilities than the whole. Rob had hinted he knows why but did not want to elaborate.
It is a general rule of ticketing in airline industry that direct flight is more expensive than then the connecting flight hence why there are more I-class availabilities starting outside London. Article does say that I-class is discounted fare.
Yes. MAN-TYO BA is competing with all the other one stop options, Lufthansa, Emirates etc. So usually needs to discount vs LON-TYO where it can command a premium for it’s non stop flying
It is a general rule of ticketing in airline industry that direct flight is more expensive than then the connecting flight hence why there are more I-class availabilities starting outside London. Article does say that I-class is discounted fare.
ok that now makes more sense
Yes Rob has mentioned a number of times that starting at the regions is much better
re availabilities for most route. Although I don’t think he ever explained why, the flight does after all stops in London, saying that what time do you have to leave MAN as the Tokyo flight is already pretty early from LHR!It’s to do with fares BA has filed I think. For the architecture of a fare MAN to LHR then LHR to xxx has a completely different architecture and searchability (or not, in various systems) than MAN to xxx.
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