quitecontrary

I posted this in the Newbie Lounge on the 20th but have had no replies -

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Hi, I'm trying to book a LON-MSY then JAN-NYC stopover LHR online and each time I search a completely different itinerary and price comes up - is there anyway of forcing it back on to flights previously found. I did try ring AA but the fares are much more! It's in Y for my student son +1 so it's important to get the best deal. I'm searching by price.

Another question - I see that baggage fees are charged on domestic flights - does that also apply to domestics connecting from an international flight and flights as part of an itinerary which includes international flights?

Mark_T

If you have specific flights that you want to use then you are better booking by schedule rather than price and use the specific airport codes for those flights, not LON and NYC

clacko

i agree w/ post 2....

there are a large # of combinations of flights for your route, which may have something to do w/your problem.......so, when you see a reasonable schedule & price, note the flight #s and then if you want to buy, use schedule to select those flights....perhaps the price won't change...

is there any reason you want to use aa?

could mem work rather than jan from msy?

are you using all airlines or aa & 1 world?

what dates?

good luck...

edit to add....jfk & ewr are the likely airports to fly from to lhr, but if lga is more convenient, you could check from there....where will he be in ny?

what does the ba site offer?

quitecontrary

Thanks for the replies so far - no reason to use AA only that I got one cheap fare which I can't find again. MEM might work but but JAN is closer to where they are going to be. I'll keep searching.

clacko

i got $1202 for random dates starting in july and returning in aug....

more detail may result in some help....

good luck..

gemac

1. The newbie lounge is for those new members who do not care to put any effort into researching their question - they just want to ask their question, and have somebody else do the work to answer it. It is also for those who want to answer such questions. Such questions used to be asked in the main forum, and it became rather tiresome answering them, so the newbie lounge was organized for that purpose. Personally, I avoid the newbie lounge, and leave it to those who enjoy answering the same questions over and over again. Your first question doesn't fit into that category, so I'll answer it, and throw in the second one as a bonus.

2. You can force a particular itinerary using multi-city search by schedule instead of by price, but it may not price out as before. AA has multiple fare buckets that it uses to price. As the plane fills up, fewer seats are allocated to the lowest fare buckets. As the date of the flight gets nearer, more seats are allocated to the lowest fare buckets. So the price of a particular itinerary can be quite dynamic. Just because it priced at a nice low fare last week doesn't mean that it will price at that fare today. Searching by price should give you the lowest fare available at that moment. It doesn't always, but it is one of the best tools to find it.

3. Bags checked through on an international itinerary get the international baggage fee rules, even if there is a domestic segment. If there is a stopover between the segments, the domestic bag rules would apply to the domestic segment.

quitecontrary

Thanks for the info - as I'm new to the AA board I wasn't quite sure whether where my question should go!

In the end I've booked the flights on Expedia as there was little difference in their price and the cheapest available on AA.com yesterday. I wasn't aware that the price could go down closer to the date but that's a gamble anyway. The cheapest AA flights left LHR at 7.45am whereas the Expedia flights are on BA and and the outbound is at 13.45 which is a much more sociable time.

And gemac - thanks for the info on checked bag charges.