Not allowed to view the US website!
 

I had to look at fares ex-USA this evening and the BD website now blocks you from doing so!!

We notice that you have requested our US country website. We recommend our visitors from the UNITED KINGDOM, use our UK country website. Please check your preference and press continue.

What's this all about then?

B:mad:

bmi doesn't want us to see that US customers sometimes get offered much better trans-Atlantic fares and LHR -> Europe fares than we do :mad:

I had this problem with consumerreports.org, pandora.com, and buy.com (I could access the site but they would always cancel my orders) and other Internet retailers due to a non-US IP address. Whenever it happens, I log into http://www.publicvpn.com/, which shows a US based IP address. Also, it is a safer way to surf the net when accessing hotel wireless networks and public wifi hotspots.

I got excited as I thought I could listen to Pandora again, but with 70 USD access fee it's not happening.

I'd use any travel site except the bmi website to get those prices though, we all know how reliable the bmi website is to come up with the lowest price ;)

ITA is good as a start.

great...My internet connection at work comes out in Germany (even though I'm based in the UK) so my IP address makes it look like I'm not in the UK when I am.

It's always been a problem with google searches, now bmi are overlooking this problem with their own website. Won't affect me immediately but I'd expect some USA based customers to have the same problem. Most places at least give an obvious way to override the setting.

It has spurred me to explore the other international sites though -> Seem to be a few on-the-ground offers on the Canadian site.

Ditto, at my workplace I can ONLY see the USA website. Grrrr!

I can easily switch between the different country wesites but to be honest, I cannot find any country website with some hidden gems.

I had the same problem recently when I was at the LHR Hilton. Tried to access flybmi.com (I'm a US citizen and resident), got that message, and even after selecting United States from the pulldown I still got directed to the UK site. Enormously frustrating! They seem to discount the idea that I may have logged into the US site for a reason.

The US site has better prices for transatlantic tickets, but this is more likely a reflection of the marketplace trend that UK-US return tickets on most airlines are significantly more expensive than US-UK returns.

On various airlines, the fuel surcharge does not apply US-EU, but is pretty hefty on EU-US booked tickets. On a small island to the west of Europe, it is common practise to buy two one way tickets to avoid the surcharge. :D

I wonder if this is the case here? Not that I can see it now... :rolleyes:

I wish it were only the surcharges, but it is the sad fact that airlines are able to rip off those originating in the UK because we put with it!

I use free Tor software http://www.torproject.org/index.html.en with the Firefox browser to get round problems like this.

When the software is enabled, a website is unable to determine your location. So no problem accessing the bmi US website from the UK or vice versa.