Rocking up at the Airport and Buying Last Min Cheap Empty Seat at the Check In Desk


I had a look at Tui last week for last minute deals and was surprised to find a package to Benidorm, full board, 4* hotel, at the end of the month for £254 each. Going from Manchester like but that's not a problem 😃🥳😎👍🏻
The surprise in your post is that there is a 4* hotel in Benidorm, and i quite like Benidorm.
 
Flights on scheduled services get more expensive in the last 24 hours as airlines know that anyone who absolutely needs to fly on that flight will be willing to pay a premium. The airlines would rather fly with an empty seat and hope that someone will turn up at the last minute and spend 10x the normal price.

Package operators are more likely to have late availability deals. A few years ago I was made redundant with immediate effect so went straight home and booked an AI holiday to Turkey leaving at 6am the next morning for less than £300 all in. You just can't be picky about destination or hotel.
Yeah, I've seen really cheap last minute flights to Florida with Tui.
 
Dynamic pricing is a massive scam. I'm tracking some flights to Jakarta for this August on Google flights. I get emails when the price changes and got one yesterday saying it had gone up by £600. That's for one passenger in economy. Up from just over 1k to just over 1.6k.

I was doing the same for a trip to Auckland. One day £1.2k return, the next £2.5k then the next over £4k. Day after that it went back down to £2.2k.
 
I don't know how they come up with the numbers. I flew with saudia airlines last July to Kuala Lumpur and it cost £525 each return. This year it's over three times that price around £1590. I expected an increase maybe up to 20 or even 30%. But 150% is just taking the piss big time.


Flew to Barbados last year from Manchester, same flight this year they wanted a 165% increase.

Flight was full coming out a fortnight ago , so they’ve got something right.
 
I was doing the same for a trip to Auckland. One day £1.2k return, the next £2.5k then the next over £4k. Day after that it went back down to £2.2k.
I find Google flights a bit annoying. I click on a flight that is on the price graph at say £800 and when the link opens its £1100. That's a canny price hike in 2 seconds. I like Google flights though because of the graph. You can see at a glance sometimes big savings by flying a day or two later/ earlier.
 
I find Google flights a bit annoying. I click on a flight that is on the price graph at say £800 and when the link opens its £1100. That's a canny price hike in 2 seconds. I like Google flights though because of the graph. You can see at a glance sometimes big savings by flying a day or two later/ earlier.

Skyscanner is the same if you select whole month instead of a specific date.
 
You just choose whole month then you can scroll to the next month for return, it's easy.
When I click on select month, July, it's all highlighted. I then click August and it cancels July. I'm then left with there and back in August. I can't get it to do a return over two months.
Click in the "depart" box and it gives you the option of whole month at the top. Do the same for "return" box. You can choose different months.
I'll have another bash.
 
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Nah I can't get it to work. I can't even put the destination in. When I type Jakarta it opens up a page with a selection of deals over the next three months. Clicking off that page and back the destination box is empty. So I left the destination box empty selected the month to return and the outbound month is removed. So I only have August. Return is selected as well
 
Having worked for a major airline in their booking department, you're nearly always booking as early as possible to get the best price. They'll have X amount at a certain price point, then once they sell out you go up to a higher fare class.

Depending on who you book with you might get it cheaper combining flight and hotel into a 'holiday' booking, which sometimes gives access to lower fare classes again

Also, Google flights was always way out from the fares we actually had available, so use it as a start point but check directly with the airline for confirmed prices. Clear cookies and use incognito mode too as they're sneaky bastards and sometimes put the fares up if you keep looking.

Good luck getting sorted
They are all data harvesting now. Wouldn't surprise me if Google Flights were passing customer tracking details on to flight sellers
 
Nah I can't get it to work. I can't even put the destination in. When I type Jakarta it opens up a page with a selection of deals over the next three months. Clicking off that page and back the destination box is empty. So I left the destination box empty selected the month to return and the outbound month is removed. So I only have August. Return is selected as well

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