Super-cheap/Fare Errors on BA.com
 

Super-cheap/Fare Errors on BA.com to a few short and medium haul destinations out of London :-

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...5&page=1&pp=15

Get 'em while they are hot ! :)

Don't think this is a fare error. You can get that cheap VNO fare at ba.com, just on other days from the days on which you can get it on Travelocity. So it looks more like a class accessibility thing. Booking class is Q, fare rules do not exclude certain days of the week.

Which is why I wrote 'Super Cheap' dash 'Error Fare', and I was referring to the other fares too - even better if the are not errors fare, cos then they will honour it and you will get miles and SCs.

Something strange does seems to be going on though - they are coming up 10 quid less than the just published lowest sale fares (which is a lot off a 50 quid fare).

50 odd quid return (all in) to Thessaloniki/Salonika is an amazing fare, cheapest way I know to earn 40 SC ! ^

Ah rats now you've made me look.

:D ! Enjoy, hope you find something that works for ya KF.

Absolutely! :DNo, I don't think that anything strange is going on.

The "lowest sale fares" that you're referring to are for one-ways. So LON-ALC is advertised at £29 one-way all in, but it doesn't say that it's £58 round-trip all in.

The one-way fare is priced at £6 + tax = £29, taxes therefore being £23. Of that, £10 is the ex-UK departure tax, and £13 is everything else.

The round-trip fare is £12 + tax = £48, taxes being £36. Of that, £10 is the ex-UK tax, and everything else totals £26, double the "everything else" for the one-way trip.

So it all seems to make sense to me.

The BUD phenomenon you found is attribuable to tax as well. The £31 each way is an estimate made by taking the base fare and adding an estimated amount of tax. It looks like the software driving the estimated tax calculation for the calendar display uses the highest amount of tax that's payable.

If you book LHR-BUD round-trip, lowest fare appears to be £39.00 + £49.30 = £88.30.

If you book LGW-BUD round-trip, lowest fare appears to be £12.00 + £44.80 = £56.80.

However, the calendar display estimate obviously uses half of £12 (LGW fare) and half of £50 (higher taxes) = £31.

It might theoretically be possible to re-write the software to give a better estimate of taxes. But the problem is that when the outbound calendar display is shown, ba.com has no idea whether you're going to go for a route with higher or lower taxes, or indeed a mixture of airports. So the policy seems to be to take the safest route, which is to make the calendar display show the highest possible estimate, and then charge a lower actual fare if appropriate for what you've booked.

At any rate, nothing funny going on here, either. Personally, I much prefer displays without tax partly to avoid irritations like this and partly because I find fare comparisons much more transparent, but I know I'm in a minority on this issue.

Thanks Globaliser, did not realise some of that is how it works, yet again I learn something on FT / this Forum !