(NA-ish) - Scotland/Germany 2024

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TCABM

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We’re going to Scotland and Germany this summer. Plan is to fly from SAT to EDI, then about a week later go EDI-MUC, then about a week later MUC-SAT.

I usually book directly off the airline website, but multi-city fares like this tend to be more costly than convenient.

Anybody got tips for getting reasonable airfare for a trip like this.
 
Probably look at Ryan Air for the EDI-MUC leg. They’re cheap (cattle car), but it’s not a long flight.

We booked on Delta’s website from the states to FRA with a return from MUC last year.
 
We booked directly through Delta for ATL-DUB and LHR-ATL for this summer, but will book something else for the DUB-LHR flight.
 
We went to Europe over thanksgiving. We wanted to do GRR --> Paris --> Rome --> GRR with whatever changeovers were necessary. It ended up being A LOT cheaper to by a round trip from Paris to Rome and back on Lufthansa through Munich, so that's what we did. My suggestion would be book a round trip from here to Scotland, and a round trip from Scotland to Munich. Munich is the Lufthansa hub, so you shouldn't have an issue.

Going over it was GRR -> DTW -> CDG all Delta
Then CDG - MUC - FCA - MUC - CDG on Lufthansa
Coming back it was CDG -Air France-> AMS -Delta-> MSP -> GRR
 
My usual strategy for a trip is to start with Travelocity to get a sense of who flies the route I want. I then go to the airline site to see if it’s cheaper, and it typically is.

We did a trip from Austin to Barcelona then back from Madrid to Austin. On Travelocity they showed a routing all with United. In this case, United was more expensive and Travelocity included one free bag per person.

The other observation is that British Air flies nonstops from Austin to Heathrow. They partner with American and identical flights on the American site are considerably more expensive than on the BA site a lot of times, for the same class.

Moral of the story: consider using Travelocity or similar to do some homework and look at partner websites for options. But make sure it’s apples to apples and includes the full cost of a suitcase plus seat selection (BA charges for the latter but not as much as the difference from the AA fare).

We did our Spain trip for $700 each on United via Travelocity with one free suitcase plus seat selection (we go for the two seats by themselves typically at the very back - more privacy and room laterally).

Good luck!
 
Llewtrah381 said:
…. consider using Travelocity or similar to do some homework and look at partner websites for options.…
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I used to use google flights for that, but Momondo (kayak’s better offering) does a much better job, IMHO.
 
TCABM said:
We’re going to Scotland and Germany this summer. Plan is to fly from SAT to EDI, then about a week later go EDI-MUC, then about a week later MUC-SAT.

I usually book directly off the airline website, but multi-city fares like this tend to be more costly than convenient.

Anybody got tips for getting reasonable airfare for a trip like this.
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Look at fares from smaller cities in the US for the overseas leg, and look at alternate carriers into London.

I've often found that by flying to a secondary market departure city, I can cut the price substantially. About a year ago I found that by flying from Milwaukee instead of a major city, the price of a flight to London was about 40% lower - more than enough to offset the train fare from London to Edinbugh (and that's a nice ride, anyway). I've also found lower fares on some of the international carriers (like Emirates), though they are often tied to irregular schedules (2 or 3 days each week per route).

Finally, you can generally get cheaper fares if you stay over at least one Saturday night, and the lowest if you stay over two Saturday nights (like a Friday to a Monday 10 days later). This supposedly has to do with the airline balancing their loads over time.

All of that being said, I have almost always found that the best rates involve getting a round trip to one major Euro location, then booking local travel separately. The airlines with the best fare to the UK will almost certainly not be the best choice for Munich or Vienna.

One last tip: The Munich Airport Hilton is a great place to stay a night before or after a flight. It's a bit expensive for more than a day or two, but it makes it REALLY easy to get into or out of the airport and save a day's car rental fee.
 
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EdFred said:
We went to Europe over thanksgiving. We wanted to do GRR --> Paris --> Rome --> GRR with whatever changeovers were necessary. It ended up being A LOT cheaper to by a round trip from Paris to Rome and back on Lufthansa through Munich, so that's what we did. My suggestion would be book a round trip from here to Scotland, and a round trip from Scotland to Munich. Munich is the Lufthansa hub, so you shouldn't have an issue.

Going over it was GRR -> DTW -> CDG all Delta
Then CDG - MUC - FCA - MUC - CDG on Lufthansa
Coming back it was CDG -Air France-> AMS -Delta-> MSP -> GRR
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Interesting. We looked at that scenario for our trip: ATL-DUB-ATL with a separate RT DUB-LHR-DUB in the middle, but the math didn't work. I think us flying directly out of ATL, while extremely convenient for not having a connection, also kills us on getting discounts that may come from flying out of markets where Delta is competing for market share.
 
Travelocity, Kayak etc usually can get lower fares. HOWEVER, if something goes sideways like a cancelled flight etc., prepare to be at the very back of the line in getting it fixed. There's a reason it's less.

The best advice you've gotten is book the transatlantic portions on a major, then use a Ryanair type for intra-EU travel.
 
CJones said:
Interesting. We looked at that scenario for our trip: ATL-DUB-ATL with a separate RT DUB-LHR-DUB in the middle, but the math didn't work. I think us flying directly out of ATL, while extremely convenient for not having a connection, also kills us on getting discounts that may come from flying out of markets where Delta is competing for market share.
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It's weird, and there is 0 logical reason for any of it.
I don't know why the pricing just isn't fuel/pax + airport fees/pax and whatever markup.
 
EdFred said:
It's weird, and there is 0 logical reason for any of it.
I don't know why the pricing just isn't fuel/pax + airport fees/pax and whatever markup.
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It is 100% driven by market competition. As with most market pricing, cost has very little to do with price.
 
StraightnLevel said:
It is 100% driven by market competition. As with most market pricing, cost has very little to do with price.
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If that was true it would always be more expensive to fly out of a monopoly hub than out of a spoke, but it's not. Again 0 logic.
 
EdFred said:
If that was true it would always be more expensive to fly out of a monopoly hub than out of a spoke, but it's not. Again 0 logic.
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Look at the number of empty seats and the demand for that route.

Airline ticket pricing is based on very complex and highly refined models that take a ton of variables into account. That's how they manage to keep nearly every seat booked on the vast majority of flights.
 
StraightnLevel said:
Look at the number of empty seats and the demand for that route.

Airline ticket pricing is based on very complex and highly refined models that take a ton of variables into account. That's how they manage to keep nearly every seat booked on the vast majority of flights.
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Which doesn't explain anything when flying the same leg. Yeah, if I go through another hub like MSP or ATL, yeah. But if I'm out of DTW and there's only 2 empty seats, there's still only 2 empty seats when I get on that flight whether I leave out of DTW or GRR. The flights from GRR to/from DTW are always consistently full so your explanation is garbage, because it's not like they are trying to fill up the GRR-DTW flight by cutting me a deal. It's always almost full. Some days it's cheaper out of GRR and some days it's cheaper out of DTW with zero change in the fullness of the GRR-DTW flight. Try and explain BS pricing all you want, but that's all it is, BS.
 
EdFred said:
Which doesn't explain anything when flying the same leg. Yeah, if I go through another hub like MSP or ATL, yeah. But if I'm out of DTW and there's only 2 empty seats, there's still only 2 empty seats when I get on that flight whether I leave out of DTW or GRR. The flights from GRR to/from DTW are always consistently full so your explanation is garbage, because it's not like they are trying to fill up the GRR-DTW flight by cutting me a deal. It's always almost full. Some days it's cheaper out of GRR and some days it's cheaper out of DTW with zero change in the fullness of the GRR-DTW flight. Try and explain BS pricing all you want, but that's all it is, BS.
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:lol:
OK, sure. A $50B+ company in a commoditized industry doesn't have a data-driven pricing model. Sure.
 
StraightnLevel said:
:lol:
OK, sure. A $50B+ company in a commoditized industry doesn't have a data-driven pricing model. Sure.
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Maybe it's the explainer that is the issue.

I provided an example showing your explanation doesn't hold water, and you fall back on that. Try again, or provide the data. Until then, it's a garbage explanation.
 
There are very few airlines that have a total monopoly. The GRR to DTW to wherever, may have to compete with a GRR to JFK to wherever, or a GRR to MIA to wherever.
 
My last two trips to Europe, we flew Icelandic to UK and PRG with a free stopover in Reykjavik. Avoided the UK back to the US to avoid the crazy departure tax on Business Class. Once from CDG and the othe from AMS. Easy to do with the Eurostar early purchase for a cheap ticket.
 
Mikey52 said:
There are very few airlines that have a total monopoly. The GRR to DTW to wherever, may have to compete with a GRR to JFK to wherever, or a GRR to MIA to wherever.
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I get why there's a price difference between UAL, AA, DAL, etc when going from spoke-hub-spoke. It's the same reason why I might be cheaper or more expensive than my competition. What doesn't make sense is when the spoke-hub-dest flight is cheaper than the hub-dest flight on the same airline one day and more expensive the next day/week/month even though the flight from the spoke to the hub always has pretty much the same number of passengers on it on every flight.
 
EdFred said:
I get why there's a price difference between UAL, AA, DAL, etc when going from spoke-hub-spoke. It's the same reason why I might be cheaper or more expensive than my competition. What doesn't make sense is when the spoke-hub-dest flight is cheaper than the hub-dest flight on the same airline one day and more expensive the next day/week/month even though the flight from the spoke to the hub always has pretty much the same number of passengers on it on every flight.
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Because the pricing model changes pricing real time based on actual and forecasted demand. Yes there might be an empty seat or two. What you don't see is the guy that paid a price 3x what those open seats would have sold for because it was a last minute business trip that wasn't price driven. The purpose of the pricing model is to maximize realized price, which has absolutely no linkage to cost. The bigger airlines are pretty darn good at it. Take a poll of what each person on the plane paid, I bet you'll find a very wide range.
 
Hang 4 said:
Because the pricing model changes pricing real time based on actual and forecasted demand. Yes there might be an empty seat or two. What you don't see is the guy that paid a price 3x what those open seats would have sold for because it was a last minute business trip that wasn't price driven. The purpose of the pricing model is to maximize realized price, which has absolutely no linkage to cost. The bigger airlines are pretty darn good at it. Take a poll of what each person on the plane paid, I bet you'll find a very wide range.
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Exactly.

One of the occasional quirks of the system stems from the fact that the major airlines adapt pricing to corporate travel rules. Every so often, you'll find open first-class seats priced lower than the one or two remaining coach seats. They do this because they know that the corporate travel services force coach class, while people buying for themselves will buy based on price. Thus, that last-minute business traveler gets the center seat in row 32 for $950, and I get seat 1A for $875. Both seats get sold; the corporate traveler got soaked because of his company's rules, and the guy who makes his own decisions gets a "better deal", which makes him a more loyal customer of that airline.
 
Oh Yeah that explains the difference in pricing 9 months out. :rolleyes: What last minute buy is there 9 months out?
 
EdFred said:
Oh Yeah that explains the difference in pricing 9 months out. :rolleyes: What last minute buy is there 9 months out?
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There isn't one obviously, the algorithms take all that into account. Broadly, there will be lower fares for some seats months in advance, but they won't fill the plane. As the "cheap seats" fill, the prices go up. They have a pretty good idea of what is going on at that time, so for example, flights from NE/NY to FL in the winter will have a premium compared to the same flight in August.

It's an optimization formula that solves for the greatest amount of total $$ for a given flight. The cheapest seat might be $100, the most expensive $2,000 or more (last minute first class). The rest will be all over the map. They have tons of both historical and external data that drives the models. It's pretty cool if you are into that kind of thing.
 
None of which explains the difference in spoke being cheaper when the spoke legs are always full, and youre still getting on yhe same exact hub outbound flight. Also, I do premium/bus/first, which are always limited and still arent explained by any of this hand waving.
 
EdFred said:
None of which explains the difference in spoke being cheaper when the spoke legs are always full, and youre still getting on yhe same exact hub outbound flight. Also, I do premium/bus/first, which are always limited and still arent explained by any of this hand waving.
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Might be “defending your turf”. But the price is what the price is and all the hand waving about the price and lack of understanding how prices are set ain’t changing the price.
 
This is what blows my mind. Literally the same seats on the same exact flights. $550 cheaper buying from KLM than Delta, who’s operating every leg of the flight.
cef23356272317fb99cc4a568be81cfd.jpg
 
TCABM said:
This is what blows my mind. Literally the same seats on the same exact flights. $550 cheaper buying from KLM than Delta, who’s operating every leg of the flight.
cef23356272317fb99cc4a568be81cfd.jpg
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Yes. Also look at Air France, Virgin, and AeroMexico - they codeshare most of those same SkyTeam overseas flights.

When the partner airline has committed to filling a certain number of seats, they price to sell them. If demand is different on the different airlines for whatever reason, the prices for the exact same seat can be wildly different. I've found more than $2K difference on the exact same itinerary between Delta and Virgin.
 
StraightnLevel said:
Yes. Also look at Air France, Virgin, and AeroMexico - they codeshare most of those same SkyTeam overseas flights.
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Momondo (aggregator, not OTA) does a superb job curating that; I’ve got alerts set for Premium Economy, Business, and First cabin classes, excluding mixed cabins and separate alerts including mixed cabins.

Google explorer, momondo, and several others indicate lowest fares are published about 28 days in advance. Not sure if we’re going to roll the dice that late in the game or we just suck it up sooner and call this the one trip of the year.

Since our son and his wife live outside Munich, we were hoping to make it over for the Christmas markets this year too, but my wife has become infatuated with Highland cows and just has to do a “Coo Safari” for life to continue.

Doesn’t matter that we have a good friend across town that raises and breeds show-winning Highlands and she can shovel their sht everyday of the week if she wanted.
 
TCABM said:
This is what blows my mind. Literally the same seats on the same exact flights. $550 cheaper buying from KLM than Delta, who’s operating every leg of the flight.
cef23356272317fb99cc4a568be81cfd.jpg
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Same thing with miles. Last return from AMS to ORD was 100K Miles on KLM Biz Class. Delta wanted over 400K. And we even got the gin filled houses from KLM.
 
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