francesco96

I want to buy a one-way ticket from Osaka to Hong Kong for next July. These are the cheapest airlines:

Air India (Boeing B787-800)
Peach (Airbus A320-200)
HK Express (Airbus A320-200)

The price is the same (€ 100-150), which is the best? I travel with my family.

I cannot travel with Cathay Pacific or ANA because the one-way flight costs a lot with these companies. From Hong Kong I take a flight to Italy with British Airways.

Sorry for my english. Thanks.

dvs7310

Air India is a full service carrier in Star Alliance. Of the 3, that's absolutely the one I'd take. The other 2 are LCC, so you'll have tighter legroom and paid extras, like luggage, food and maybe drinks.

francesco96

Thank you very much. Personal experiences with this company?

dvs7310

Zero unfortunately since it's a pretty recent addition to *A but in general I can't think of any good reason to go with an LCC over a full service airline when the route is non-stop and prices are on par. From what I've read though it doesn't seem bad though some say the food is on the spicy side. Since you'd be on the 5th freedom sector, you also don't need to worry about Delhi airport which seems to be another common negative I've read. I wouldn't hesitate to fly them at all. I wouldn't be expecting service on par with ANA or Cathay but as you mentioned you didn't want to pay their prices and frankly nor would I if I were going one way to HKG and there was a *A option like AI cheaper. It's a 4 hour flight, so priority is getting there on time and in my case getting *A miles in my account.

On the other hand, your other 2 choices. I would expect Peach, being a Japanese company to be reliable and well run. I very rarely fly LCCs and never on flights over an hour or so, so again no personal experience with them. Haven't heard people here speaking badly of Peach though, but be warned they have a 29" seat pitch. That's a frequent trade-off of LCCs, you get a low price but they put a heck of a lot more people in a plane than a full service airline. AI is 33" seat pitch on the 787.

Hong Kong Express has no shortage of terrible reviews here and on other sites. Their on time reliability is abysmal, service is near zero if any issues come up, luggage is definitely not free, last time a friend flew them a few years back there was no in seat entertainment. I would never fly this airline if other options existed.

francesco96

Thanks for the great answer!

go_around

Not sure if you're open to connecting, but I usually use EVA between Hong Kong and Japan and have found them to be very good. Excellent safety record, good punctuality, food has improved a lot, service outstanding and tickets are often cheaper than on other mainlines. You will have to connect through TPE though, but this is quick and easy.

Yoshi212

I'd also suggest Air India, new plane+luggage standard.
Also, nothing wrong with your English. What you wanted to know came across very clearly.
Enjoy your flight. Buoni viaggi.

dvs7310

I think BR (Eva) prices much more competitively ex-HKG than they do ex-Japan. International fares are almost never reversible, so while you may get a HK$2500 return fare to Japan, the same flights originating here going to HKG might be JPY70,000 (or more than double the cost). I've never seen a decent BR fare from here to anywhere in Asia, well to anywhere at all actually. Our cheapest mainline to HKG tends to be CA, followed by JL, NH, and CX being a bit more. I'm certainly looking forward to a bit more competition in the Tokyo-HKG market when ET finally starts up their 3x weekly flights, just hope the schedule is actually useful for me since it's not daily.

will2288

Make sure you leave enough time for your connection, if they are on the same day. Because they are separate tickets, if you miss the BA flight, they may not rebook you for free.

go_around

Interesting to know! It's funny how some airlines price well out of some places and not others. Fascinating that BR prices well HKG-TYO but not vice versa. Presumably there are models underlying these decisions. Airlines like JW, MM and UO are feasibly considered a different market from mainline carriers, I wonder if the mainline carriers themselves can be broken down into further sub-markets too (including on price). e.g. CX is invariably exorbitant out of HKG (to anywhere), IMO largely due to a captive market in Hong Kong. Many people in Hong Kong fly CX because it is CX (and not for example because it is good or flies at convenient times or compares well with the competition - which on a number of routes it doesn't). Is this part of the CX customer base therefore the same market as those who would, within a reasonable price range, shop around for BR, JL, NH and so on?

dvs7310

Back when I was flying Tokyo to Hong Kong pretty much monthly on my own dime I was buying my round trips in reverse, HKG-TYO-HKG for that exact reason. I usually did CA, not that PEK was convenient, but because even the cheap tickets were incredibly flexible so I could make a change once free then a pretty low fee for subsequent changes. Also could do stopovers in PEK either direction if I had the inkling. It was about US$200 cheaper to buy the r/t ex-HKG than ex-Japan. We get taken advantage of badly on fares here because local consumers tend not to be terribly price conscious. Fares from almost anywhere in the world to Japan are typically far less than fares from Japan to the same places.

LCCs operate on a very different model as you noted. I don't know why that model works for them but not legacy carriers. Sometimes when going regional One-way, to get a reasonable price the choice is either use miles or use LCC. The OP is lucky in this case as they have a full service carrier operating a 5th freedom route which tends to be priced more like an LCC than a home base legacy carrier. Some great deals to be had on all those BKK 5th freedom routes too.

s0ssos

I don't know if anybody that has responded actually has used Air India. I haven't either, but I have talked to many Indian people who said they would never fly Air India. I know they have horrendous delays in India, but I don't know how it is in other parts of the world.
I think the issue with your other carriers is that LCC tend to include less amenities, so if you check-in bags or want food onboard it tends to be more. You should price it out altogether to see how much it is.

But service on LCC isn't necessarily inferior. There are plenty examples of full-service carriers with horrendous service (just look on the forums for America-based airlines)

Yoshi212

I took a sampling of 4 flights of AI 315 (KIX-HKG) for 3 months and it has a pretty high on-time rating. If flying within India or from India one may wish to provide large buffers of time between flights as per reported delays, but this sector seems to operate pretty smoothly.

moondog

But, they usually drop by at least 50% if booked as part of a travel package.

dvs7310

Oh don't even get me started on these "packages" they push here, LOL. That's all mainstream agents know how to sell, try to ask for anything remotely out of the ordinary like a mixed class booking and they just look at you dumbfounded. Drives me nuts. To add insult to injury, all the package agencies advertise these great prices but not a single one of them puts a system online that will give real time availability, it's more often than not "sold out" when you try to buy it at the price they advertise, then it goes back to the regular price that you'd see on Expedia or airline websites.

I think you're right, you may be able to get BR or some other carriers at a discount, but it's been an absolute waste of my time trying to get those prices in the past so I don't even look at them anymore. You have to be extremely flexible to make those work, or just plain lucky.