Planning to go out for three weeks during school hols. Best deal so far is finnair, which I don't fancy at £660 and Eva for £760 to £806, which sounds better to me.

Its for me and my 15 year old son.

Haven't called WestEast yet. Any suggestions?

Thanks

Ian

Fares for travelling to Thailand during the school holidays seem to have increased a lot the last month or so. A little over a month ago my wife and I were offered tickets around £550. we waited with our purchase as we were not quite sure about the dates we were travelling - eventually we had to settle for tickets with Emirates at £685 which we bought a few weeks ago with Dialaflight.

Last year we bought our tickets in April and got them at £640. Prices seem to have gone up. Last year Qatar almost always came out as the cheapest - this year it seemed to be Gulf Air if you check sites like airlinenetwork.

Anyways, I hope someone might be able to help you get a better deal than we did. At the moment I'm just glad that we didnt wait till April like we did last year.

Best of luck.

PS, I just searched airlinenetwork. On some dates you can find cheap flights with Oman air (£536) - example dates outward 22 July - Return 26 August. I know this might not fit in with your plans but playing around with the dates yourself might result in a good deal. Otherwise dialaflight or southall travel normally have reasonable deals.

I have travelled to Thailand at all times of year and with the exception of Christmas time and very late bookings, I have never paid more than £525 - usually considerably less.

I'd suggest you shop around Ian but granted, the school holidays are usually more expensive. I used to use WestEast but recently I've got the best deals from Southall Travel. A quick check with them produced a fare of £596.60 with Gulf Air - 11 July - 4 August.

I've always found it best to book as early as you can we paid £1393 for 3 tickets 2 adults and a 5 year old to travel on 20/03/08 with Emirates booked it up in November.

Hi Everyone

I searched every possible site about a month ago to take me, Max and Beam (5 year old) in the school summer holidays for a month. There was very little under 2,000 for all three of us. I then looked going two weeks early, around 7th, 8th, July. Best deal I managed to book was with emirates, £1500 for all three of us.

Good luck with your search. I think you may have done what I did and left it a little to late.

Andy

Hi

I used to use this website a lot when I lived in Germany www.billigflieger.com and find it still useful now that I am back living in UK. Only problem is that it is only appearing in German language, but I think that you can work most things out. If nothing else it may give you some clues as to which airline websites to look at. For me, it is more extensive in it's searching than Expedia, for instance.

Hope this helps

Another thing about booking with companies like Dialaflight (which I'm sure a lot of people know already) is to enquire with similar companies such as Southall first. Note down the cheapest offer you may have had and when dialaflight comes up with your first quote on your preferred dates of travel say that southall offered flights at such and such a price. Many times the agent will try to question the validity of an offer that is maybe £50 lower than what he quoted. However, if you are booking for more people he will be anxious to get you as his customer. In many cases he has told me that he was going to make some phonecalls - probably to haggle with the airline to lower their prices. That is how we had our Emirates flight lowered from an original quote of £740 to £685 (not especially cheap but we had to fly on some specific dates)

ive always found airline network to be the cheapest and just booked two weeks in summer for £489 with qatar and booked one for april last week with etihad for £460,the trick is to keep logging on everyday and checking the prices as the do go up and down quite a bit....dont just log on and book the cheapest one keep checkin.......my april flight was up to £765 a few days ago and down to £525 now

quote:

Originally posted by David&Em:
Hi

I used to use this website a lot when I lived in Germany www.billigflieger.com and find it still useful now that I am back living in UK. Only problem is that it is only appearing in German language, but I think that you can work most things out. If nothing else it may give you some clues as to which airline websites to look at. For me, it is more extensive in it's searching than Expedia, for instance.

Hope this helps

Danke. Ich spreche Deutsch ein bischen!

Ian

Thanks for all your replies. I will start searcing in earnest on Tuesday and let you know how I got on.

Ian

Just got BA for £300 plus tax. using the BA intranet site(have to have a friend who works for them) for Songkran

NOKYAI,

For BA thats very good especially Songkran, whose your friend ?
colin 244

So far best bet looks like SAS dep 8th, return 30th, £665. I am tempted to go for that.

Any views on SAS?

Ian

Ian,

You discounted Finnair at the start, why ? I've flown them from Bangkok to Singapore and thought them to be very good.

Keith,

Thats useful to know - but the connection at Helsinki was very poor, making it a long trip.

Ian

does sas codeshare with tg via cph? if so, then u might be able to find a sas-branded flight on a tg plane. in any case, u can add the miles to ur thai royal orchid account if u collect tg miles. one thing to watch with the nordic airlines (i’m unsure whether it’s finnair or sas that does it) is that one or two flights to or from asia stop in both stockholm and helsinki, meaning that there is a schengen visa issue for some nationalities (sorry about being vague, but i’m unsure whether it relates to thai nationals) because of the intra-schengen sector.

ian.

Hi IanB

With www.billigflieger.com, looks like you could go with Austrian, via Vienna, for around 523 Euro, which will be considerably less than SAS I reckon.

My wife flew back with Austrian last year and had no complaints. Maybe it's time to put your German skills to the test!

Hope this helps

quote:

Maybe it's time to put your German skills to the test!

Bear in mind though that the German is not the "hoch Deutsch" you may have learned at school,but delivered in a heavy accent with a lot of "slang". At least it was on my only flight with them Vienna-Salonika,it's probably better on long haul.

quote:

Bear in mind though that the German is not the "hoch Deutsch" you may have learned at school,but delivered in a heavy accent with a lot of "slang". At least it was on my only flight with them Vienna-Salonika,it's probably better on long haul.

I'm English. When in doubt, I will just shout louder.

Ian

quote:

With www.billigflieger.com, looks like you could go with Austrian, via Vienna, for around 523 Euro, which will be considerably less than SAS I reckon

David,

That address seems unavailable. Did you mean www. billigflieger.de ?

David,

Billigflieger was good - but the prices do not reflect what is on the Austrian Airlines website - not surprising as 600 Euros would be really low. It looks like the Austrian Airline fare was for a single fare, so there is no saving using Austrian.

Ian

Ian, you have said you have looked at Dep 8th return 30th. I haven't got kids so don't know what month school holidays are. Is that August?

Sorry, yes, August.

Ian

Cheapest I've found for those dates is £679 with Gulf air.

Thanks. I think I'll go with SAS. £655 with Southall. I understand they fly you there in a chinook, and you have to drop into the airport from a rope. Or was that a different SAS?