steviewander

stephenjc

I did this the other day, stayed up to 1am, phoned up and booked two F (1st class) tickets from NRT-LHR-EDI, no issues at all, took about 25 minutes.

One thing the CSR said was that when I booked the outbound, I should have called them and let them know what inbound I wanted and they would have called me at 1am to complete the process. Have you tried that?

A13

i had something similar last year when i accidentally called up at midnight rather than 1am (during BST) and the CSR took the details, secured the flights and called me back.

steviewander

i have eventually secured my return flight after much faffing. I called at 01:00am but was told that the tickets for my travel date wasn’t released until “tomorrow” which of confused me because it was definitely 355 days ahead. But then the operator asked if I wanted to get a call back to book the ticket as soon as it was released. I said yes.

Meanwhile I received a proposed itinerary from my travel agent that worked best for returning from Osaka rather than Tokyo. So as promised I received a callback just after 01:00am. I had just checked online that there was availability in clubworld for Osaka return and there were 4 seats free. I was told that my seats from Tokyo to London had been secured and all I needed was to pay the taxes - so it would seem that you can effectively reserve seats for when they come out by requesting a callback! However since I wanted to change my booking to Osaka, she checked for availability and I was told there wasn’t any. Very odd as I rechecked online whilst she was on the phone with me and it was showing up with 4 seats available. She insisted that there was none. I ended up Settling for the Tokyo return leg and thinking I would need to change my itinerary. Just half an hour ago (6 hours later) I rechecked for availability from Osaka on my desired date online and sure enough seats were still showing up available in clubworld but there were now only 2 left. Another phone call this time to the UK office and I managed to change my booking to fly back from Osaka. The operator told me I might have been unlucky and all the seats might have been taken within the first few minutes from 01:00am and they may have been cancelled a few hours later.

So I guess it’s worth persevering to get exactly what you want and keep rechecking! Thanks everyone for their tips and advice.

mikeyfly

The website really needs the functionality to add the return booking. The whole 01.00am saga is really really duff

Theirin

It would also be nice if they could standardise the timings. The website lets you search 355 days out from 00:00 BST but the fares aren't loaded for another hour. It may not be a major issue but as a quality of life improvement they should be able to ensure that the search goes live at the same time that the fares do.

mattyw

It's duff for the average punter, but probably helps reduce the competition for those of us who know how it works.

The_Editor

Very useful thread, I'm looking to do the same so which is the best number to call in order to request the callback to secure the return?

Thanks!