Cheapest Airlines

[fridgemagnet]

I have searched this forum for the cheapest airline (for Thai - England flights) but no luck.

Are all you ThaiVisa folk so comfortably off that saving money is of secondary importance to service?

Frankly, I don't care what the flight attendants look like, or how surly they are. Comfy seats tho.......... Air Asia's seats are killers.

Anyone know of other airlines that can compete with a carefully chosen Air Asia flight? Dates chosen for price, that is.

Secondarily, stopovers at an airport that offers good duty free shopping would be nice - a genuinely cheap camera somewhere, perhaps?

[RubbaJohnny]

and a comfy seat ?

www.kayak.com

www.mobissimo.com

www.airberli.com

I would avoid Jetstar Aeroflot mahan and Biman

Oman air is best value great service staff baggage etc as are EVA China and Air France

lao te khun

[Redhawk]

Came home 2 month ago with Air Berlin, competetive price only if you buy a one way ticket because they really do charge for one leg only, regarding other airlines to my knowledge it's cheaper to buy a return ticket instead of a one way, much more expensive.

[gosompoi]

Try http://www.thaifly.com/ or http://www.asiatravel.com/

Your best is this search engine to search airfares for all airlines over a flexible date ranges.

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch

Edited October 23, 2009 by gosompoi

[fridgemagnet]

Thanks a lot for the info. folks - more options on the cheapie flights is so helpful.

[PattayaParent]

Secondarily, stopovers at an airport that offers good duty free shopping would be nice - a genuinely cheap camera somewhere, perhaps?

Dubai and Singapore are generally considered to be good DF destinations and good for a few days stopover too if you have ths time.

[Edward17]

Somebody told me.What is the cost if i get a trip from New Yourk?

Edited November 2, 2009 by Edward17

[Boater]

i just got a deal direct from Lon to Bkk for 500 GBP ... was cheaper then a stop over flight , was with Thai Air

[citizen33]

i just got a deal direct from Lon to Bkk for 500 GBP ... was cheaper then a stop over flight , was with Thai Air

Thai have some good deals in their sale which seems to end later this month. I recently got LHR-BKK over Easter for £513. I don't know whether last week's tax hike may change that.

[fridgemagnet]

AirAsia got me a ticket from Stanstead to KL for £260 on 4th Dec.

KL to Chiang Mai for 180 Ringit.

They do seem to be the cheapest.....

[fridgemagnet]

AirAsia got me a ticket from Stanstead to KL for £260 on 4th Dec.

KL to Chiang Mai for 180 Ringit.

They do seem to be the cheapest.....

[Jimjim]

I thought you did not want their killer seats? EVA I think usually has some good deals Thailand to London.

[fridgemagnet]

No, I dislike the killer seats from hel_l intensely, but my bank balance strongly reccomends me to 14 hours of purgatory.

Air Asia may not be the cheapest forever - I want to keep (rather - get) on top of the cheap flights offered by other airlines, as this information may well be a lifesaver in the future, and may be of some utility to Thaivisa forum members of frugal inclination.

Edited November 4, 2009 by fridgemagnet

[Tonto21]

Hi there found a flight on this airline 10th May 9.10 from heathrow arrive Abudhabi 19.15 leave 21.55 to suvanabhumi arrive 7.15

Return 8.45 on the 24th May to abu dhabi 11.50 on to heathrow at 13.30 arrive 18.15 Total £856.40. for two!

How does that sound?

[cdnvic]

Shopping by price is how we get poor service and rustbucket fleets. If a couple hundred dollars is a deal breaker you are probably taking discretionary trips on too thin a margin.

Safe airlines with good service may not always be the cheapest, but they don't cost that much more.

[Jiu-Jitsu]

Shopping by price is how we get poor service and rustbucket fleets. If a couple hundred dollars is a deal breaker you are probably taking discretionary trips on too thin a margin.

Safe airlines with good service may not always be the cheapest, but they don't cost that much more.

That's a rather supercilious and frankly inaccurate statement.

Ryanair has the newest fleet of aeroplanes of any major airline, so there goes your statement about price and "rustbuckets".

Whereas THAI Airways still haven't kitted out their fleet with seatback TVs, some twenty years after they were first introduced and they are hardly the cheapest airline.

Sheesh.... a man makes a post trying to find a good deal in the present economy and has to read that he shouldn't be going unless he has at least couple of hundred dollars more along with having to digest some fiction about poor service and 'rustbuckets fleets'.

[priorstp]

I find jet airways, egypt airways and eva who fly direct are the best prices, you will find though that return flights generally are the same cost as a one way ticket, if you find this is so then why not book the reurn flight for maybe 12 months time and have the option of returning to Bangkok at a later date and if you dont then nothing is lost.

[asanee]

Return 8.45 on the 24th May to abu dhabi 11.50 on to heathrow at 13.30 arrive 18.15 Total £856.40. for two!

How does that sound?

it does not sound, but looks like.

Found a 1 person return on either EY=etihad or QR, comparable dates (this airline is EY-via AUH) for around 400 GBP.=800 for 2.

try sites ike westeastravel or netflights.

And again I repaeat: it is NOT a matter of chap airline-it is a matter of season-from late april till early june and around sept. about any airline offers very cheap returns to BKK from Europe-from UK from around 400-sometimes even lower.

and these cheap airlines from the Gulf also contradict the ''rustbucket'' remark: brand new planes, the best in screen on seatbacks, 100s of movies etc. And RYAN does not have any of that-not even seats that recline. But yes, most of its fleet is also very new. Which again states that these screens have nothing whatsoever to do with new or oldness.

[madmitch]

The original post refers to Thailand- UK return flights. Most of the cheap fares on here are UK to Thailand which for some reason are generally much cheaper.

I'm looking as well and don't want the dirt cheap airlines either but fares do seem to be higher this year, particularly for summer.

Any other ideas appreciated

[priorstp]

You can book direct through the websites or egypt air, eva air and jet airways from Bkk to LHR and flights in the summer are around 35,000 thai baht return including all taxes but this does change depending on travel dates, I managed to get a return with jet for 375 GB pounds and also a flight from Bkk to London return for 400 GB pounds flying out in june and back in September.

Another tip would be to go through the search engines to find the cheapest flight and then find out what flight carrier this is with and then look at there website directly. this normally is better when having to change dates of travel as you wont be charged the admin fees, jet airways will allow 1 change free of charge but if booked through a search engine such as lastminute you will have to pay 45quid for any change. Irrelevant to the post but i thought the advise may help.

Edited January 5, 2010 by priorstp

[citizen33]

Have been shopping around for the reverse trip for this summer (LHR to BKK) and found Oman and Finnair to be the cheapest of the mainstream carriers. Got a good deal for March/April with Thai, but their prices go up for the summer. I like EVA but haven't seen any keen deals this year. Though I didn't end up buying Oman, I see they have new planes on this route - so certainly not rust buckets (a comment that seems to have no foundation in first-hand experience!)

Edited January 5, 2010 by citizen33

[Jiu-Jitsu]

I find jet airways, egypt airways and eva who fly direct are the best prices, you will find though that return flights generally are the same cost as a one way ticket, if you find this is so then why not book the reurn flight for maybe 12 months time and have the option of returning to Bangkok at a later date and if you dont then nothing is lost.

You are joking, aren't you??

If not, I defy you to find an airline on that route whose O/W ticket price is the same as their One Year Return. Why do people post this kind of nonsense?

[Jiu-Jitsu]

You can book direct through the websites or egypt air, eva air and jet airways from Bkk to LHR and flights in the summer are around 35,000 thai baht return including all taxes but this does change depending on travel dates, I managed to get a return with jet for 375 GB pounds and also a flight from Bkk to London return for 400 GB pounds flying out in june and back in September.

Sounds good. Tell us more.

[cdnvic]

Ryanair has the newest fleet of aeroplanes of any major airline, so there goes your statement about price and "rustbuckets".

Nailed them on the crap service though.

[MarkyM3]

Ryanair do offer low headline fares and a new fleet but when you add the cost of the extras up, like charging £10 per passenger for a card transaction fee, (even when paying on one card where the fee is approx £0.30), they start to become a lot less attractive. They also offer zero backup in the case of anything going wrong. The cost base is also lower as they employ lots of low-hours FO's who are paying for their own training.

Agree that Thai has an old fleet on the LHR-BKK route and it's past its sell-by.

Regards travelling on low-cost in Thailand, Cdnvic's comments ring true when you consider something like the 1-2-Go accident in Phuket. Regulation is not strict enough in Thailand and they were cutting corners everywhere, including falsifying checkrides. The pilots in the accident were unfortunately culpable, as the accident report showed. Phuket Air are also owned by the same guy.

Cheers..

P.S. To OP - Etihad have a good reputation if you don't mind changing planes. Otherwise EVA represents a decent priced option to travel direct. No-one is cheaper than AirAsia afaik.

Edited January 7, 2010 by MarkyM3

[tropo]

Try http://www.thaifly.com/ or http://www.asiatravel.com/

Your best is this search engine to search airfares for all airlines over a flexible date ranges.

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch

Thanks for the links here. Thaifly.com was magic. Asiatravel.com was more expensive.

They found 2 tickets to NZ in February on the exact dates I wanted. Even my travel agent in Pattaya couldn't get me in on these dates and better still, for 2 tickets they saved me 9000 baht on the best a travel agent could do if he could have found seats.

They're very easy to work with and have a customer service line with good English speaking staff. It's all done very efficiently. I opted to pay cash to save a service fee of about 2,500 baht on my credit card. I banked the money on Siam Commercial (they have 3 banks) and was issued a ticket about 1 hour later.

I'll be using these guys again.

[Nostraforce]

Keep diggin', in low-season there can be some really good deals.

Last year flew emirates return from germany for 420E

Flew Rome -Bangkok for 100E last year may, temporary offer though

For Airlines to keep their slots at airports they are often bound to rules like 80% capacity on flights

[NearestTheTee]

Ryanair do offer low headline fares and a new fleet but when you add the cost of the extras up, like charging £10 per passenger for a card transaction fee, (even when paying on one card where the fee is approx £0.30), they start to become a lot less attractive. They also offer zero backup in the case of anything going wrong. The cost base is also lower as they employ lots of low-hours FO's who are paying for their own training.

Agree that Thai has an old fleet on the LHR-BKK route and it's past its sell-by.

Regards travelling on low-cost in Thailand, Cdnvic's comments ring true when you consider something like the 1-2-Go accident in Phuket. Regulation is not strict enough in Thailand and they were cutting corners everywhere, including falsifying checkrides. The pilots in the accident were unfortunately culpable, as the accident report showed. Phuket Air are also owned by the same guy.

Cheers..

P.S. To OP - Etihad have a good reputation if you don't mind changing planes. Otherwise EVA represents a decent priced option to travel direct. No-one is cheaper than AirAsia afaik.

Last year the chief exec of Ryanair was looking at introducing a 'toilet charge' for passengers. That's really taking the p*ss!!

[coolhandjoe]

Shopping by price is how we get poor service and rustbucket fleets. If a couple hundred dollars is a deal breaker you are probably taking discretionary trips on too thin a margin.

Safe airlines with good service may not always be the cheapest, but they don't cost that much more.

Thats all very well, but what if you have a wife and four children to support. Flight tickets are a major expense at the moment in visiting Thailand especially with the exchange rate.

[SantiSuk]

Ryanair do offer low headline fares and a new fleet but when you add the cost of the extras up, like charging £10 per passenger for a card transaction fee, (even when paying on one card where the fee is approx £0.30), they start to become a lot less attractive. They also offer zero backup in the case of anything going wrong. The cost base is also lower as they employ lots of low-hours FO's who are paying for their own training.

Agree that Thai has an old fleet on the LHR-BKK route and it's past its sell-by.

Regards travelling on low-cost in Thailand, Cdnvic's comments ring true when you consider something like the 1-2-Go accident in Phuket. Regulation is not strict enough in Thailand and they were cutting corners everywhere, including falsifying checkrides. The pilots in the accident were unfortunately culpable, as the accident report showed. Phuket Air are also owned by the same guy.

Cheers..

P.S. To OP - Etihad have a good reputation if you don't mind changing planes. Otherwise EVA represents a decent priced option to travel direct. No-one is cheaper than AirAsia afaik.

Last year the chief exec of Ryanair was looking at introducing a 'toilet charge' for passengers. That's really taking the p*ss!!

He's a great marketeer and I believe he had absolutely no intention of introducing such a charge. But the comment got so much attention in the press that it added another x million people to the list of those who know who Ryan Air are and associate them with the cheapest possible seats. Job done! [For some though, including me, it made them barf and vow never to travel with Ryan Air]