Trying to Book BNE - LHR for September (Pricing Issue)

[Nicholas Wood]

I'm currently planning a family holiday to Europe for the end of the year and as my wife and I will be traveling with our 18 month old daughter we are hoping to travel premium economy.

When I choose flexible with dates I see pricing that looks like we are hoping to spend, however when I choose any day and proceed to the next step all premium economy shows as sold out with all flights only offering two business flights at more than twice the price.

Has anyone else experienced this and have any ideas if this is a bug that Virgin indent to resolve.

 

[TheInsider]

Maybe because Etihad doesn't offer Y+??

 

[bullerdude]

I'm currently planning a family holiday to Europe for the end of the year and as my wife and I will be traveling with our 18 month old daughter we are hoping to travel premium economy.

When I choose flexible with dates I see pricing that looks like we are hoping to spend, however when I choose any day and proceed to the next step all premium economy shows as sold out with all flights only offering two business flights at more than twice the price.

Has anyone else experienced this and have any ideas if this is a bug that Virgin indent to resolve.
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Thats another annoying bug in the new Sabre booking system - the 'Flexible with Dates' page currently doesn't work correctly.

For instance, when I search for fares, it only every shows prices for Economy fares regardless of what class you search - And then when you progress to 'Select Flights't it shows you the actual prices.

In your case, i'm not sure what prices its showing you??

 

[bullerdude]

Also, premium economy only exists on VA 777's as Etihad/Singapore etc do not have Premium Economy. And the VA 777 to AUH only flies out of sydney - the only flight you can get Y+ on is SYD-AUH - the AUH-LHR leg will be in economy on Etihad.

For some reason the booking engine doesn't seem to be showing a BNE-SYD-AUH-LHR option that includes Y+ but searching from SYD-LHR does show the Y+ options.

 

[websoft]

I was trying to book a similar trip BNE to LHR last week.

I wanted to go Premium Economy and as others have stated Etihad doesn't offer that service. I also prefer Virgin Atlantic to Etihad to be honest, based on a bad experience doing BNE to LHR with Eithad last winter (dirty plane, hidden stop in singapore making the flight drag on for ever, long transit in AUH).

The way i worked round it was to book Virgin Atlantic SYD to LHR via HKG, and then booked a separate business class ticket BNE to SYD.

 

[notzac]

I've managed to price it on the VA website by searching specific dates (though not the actual dates you were looking at, given that VA29/VA30 is not a daily service); here's what I found:

24AUG: BNE-SYD-AUH-LHR (VA 942, VA 29, VA 7011)
23SEP: LHR-AUH-SYD-BNE (VA 7018, VA 30, VA 925)

Comes to $5108.59 per pax. I'd honestly recommend looking at other options - VS are only slightly more expensive and you'll get premium economy for both flights rather than just the one.

 

[bullerdude]

Virgin Atlantic is about $3500 per pax from Sydney to London which is a fairly decent price (don't search out of brisbane as that brings up expensive Singapore flights).