brooks.7

Im looking for best prices on premium economy or business flying from LHR to SYD in December, can anyone advise?

WorldLux

1) Get used to it, that nobody will hand you over a great deal
2) Read. There's lots of information here and elsewhere
3) Book if you find a tempting price

That's about it. And if that's too much work, there's always the old fashioned travel agency, that will happily assist you.

guv1976

If you can find low-tier award seats (and that's a big if), it sometimes makes sense to buy miles directly from an airline (like AA, AS, or UA) when they are running a sale, and then redeem for an award ticket.

Another option might be to take a positioning flight to a European city outside the U.K., if the fares are significantly lower from there. A good fare-search engine, like the one at matrix.itasoftware.com can be useful in searching fares from cities that are within a 500-mile radius or so from LON.

Mwenenzi

brooks.7 Welcome to FT

FT is not a travel agency not have secret access to low priced fares.

What research have you done? Just use google flights
Look at the UK travel agents as advertised in week end newspapers: Trailfinders and the like
For lower priced business fare start in Eu: Norway has been popular recently

guv1976

Also, is this for a one-way, or a roundtrip?

LondonElite

Welcome to FT brooks.7! I would echo the advice given above. There is no secret stash of low cost premium fares we have access to. The trick is to keep looking at the usual websites and consider unusual routings (staring from outside the UK, flying via AMS, etc) or going with cheap carriers.

JB300

Long Time lurker but have finally joined FT to follow threads like this as I'm always interested in cheap premium flights from SEA (Sin preferably) to U.K. (Man ideally).

Echo the other guys comments about following the usual sites (& would sign-up to the carrier's FF schemes & promo emails), 1 site that occasionally has some awesome deals is secretflying.com, register for the UK & Mainland Europe daily deals newsletter,

Also 2nd pulling the trigger when you find a good deal, recently missed out on Sin-Man-Sin Business class with Finnair at s$3,200 because of a mate dithering about dates, it's now s$4,600+

sdsearch

Welcome to FlyerTalk, brooks.7.

Chances are the best prices (in either of those cabins) are going to be with out-of-the-way routings and/or on obscure carriers you've never heard of.

But you can find all that simply by using some many airline search engine like Kayak. There are no tips on lowering the prices you'll find form a many-airline search engine, just on not restricting yourself to simple/direct routings and not avoiding airlines that you've heard of if you're interested in saving money.

The other possibility is looking for "flash" sales, but by their very definition they're only around for a short time, and not dependable (and I don't know of one place that keeps track of all of them). Qatar Airlines just had one a while back, but it's gone by now.

Or using miles. Miles availability tends to be best in many case when booking 11-12 months out, which is roughly where you are right now. But if you don't yet have (enough) miles, that won't help much, because it'll take quite some time.

Mwenenzi

And if looking for a flight mid to late December will be harder again. Thousands of people look to go home or go to Australia for Christmas - New Year. Airlines into Australia will expect to sell, for top money, every seat from about 15 Dec. The chances for a frequent flyer award seat are low:- need to be booking those now, if available.

LondonElite

There are also a number of airline sub-forums here with threads on premium fare sales.

brooks.7

ok thanks for all the advice, i will keep looking and also buy a lottery ticket

JerryFF

Check out the consolidators, such as -

http://www.businessclassconsolidator.com/

There are others you can easily find with Google.

MSPeconomist

Some airlines are cheap for good reasons: Egypt Air, Saudia, Pakistani Airlines, PAL (Philippines), MAS (Malaysian Air System), maybe Kuwait, etc., in addition to the
LCC/ULCC usual suspects that aren't likely to be very useful for your trip.

32bttln

Just joined - great forum and look forward to becoming very active!

As a first post, does anyone have any experience with Business Class Consolidator (http://www.businessclassconsolidator.com/) ?

Was given a quote by them for a flight to South Africa that was about 15% lower than I could find anywhere else.

I did a forum search, but could not find anything specific to these guys.

Greatly appreciate any feedback you may have.

beckoa

Welcome to Flyertalk 32bttln.

Please follow the redirects as we merge and move your posts as there has been limited discussion about companies that offer this.

~beckoa, co-moderator Information Desk