Originally Posted by
gary_nj
Hi -DSH-. I am not sure there is an appropriate place. In my small experience, most of the requests for flying a particular route in a small range of dates are answered by a recommendation to speak with a travel agent.
My only suggestion for ways to search would be to use the ITA tool and leave the "check seat availability" option un-checked. This should give you the ability to see the lowest fares available in the market. To be honest, I have never been able to find things that are very well-priced in late December and the first few days of January. And a $3500 business class ticket on AMS/NRT does not seem too far out of line for me, even before the stop in SIN or HKG. The natural candidates for such a routing (SQ and CX) have prices that are waaaaay out of the range.
You might also consider hopping a quick flight to London and checking out something like LHR-HKG (through a consolidator, perhaps?).
I don't think you're dealing with a real easy request, to be honest.
I see. Thanks for replying,
gary_nj.
Normally, I'd start my trip in LHR (and book a cheap return to London on the side) but for some reason the fares are actually
higher than from AMS. Haven't seen this before - EVER. AMS is normally quite expensive. I think this has something to do with the UK APD tax, which is effective from October I think.
The $3500 is not with a stopover - the fare with stopover is $4000. The lowest fare I have found is $2850 with Swiss, but don't like their seats (old-style, unfortunately). Virgin Atlantic has a decent fare, $3000. Are these good fares for Europe-NRT? I'm wondering if I should book now, or later. I don't really fly to Asia often so can't really comment on this myself.