Hi,
Traveling to London in June for the Southern England tour. This is our first trip overseas for awhile, and I'm out of practice. Any suggestions on how and when to pick a flight to get the best deal would be most appreciated. We don't want to use a budget airline, and I need to buy the extra legroom seats if I can.
Thanks for any help offered!
Rob
You’re going to have to give us a clue about where you’re coming from.
Input your date on google flights. It will show you all the options. You can request price alerts if the prices don't suit you. Of course you book directly with the airline, but this shows you all the choices.
Oh, yeah. I'm flying from Seattle.
We always find our best price on opening day which is always 330 days from return flight back home. Esp when we want to upgrade to Premium Select.
The best time to purchase a flight is when the prices are lowest. When that is, no one knows. Airline prices the last few years have been completely unpredictable. I would look at google flights and skyscanner. I think flying from Seattle, you may also want to start stalking the Delta website. Enter flexible dates and look at the website every few days or so. It is just a big guess, on my part, but you are fairly early so you could watch ticket pricing for a while. You could also watch for airline sales, often folks will post sales they've observed on the forum.
I never purchase nonchangeable tickets. So even after I've purchased, I might periodically look for a price decrease. If you are lucky and prices go down, you can rebook and get a credit which has to be used within a year. (That's for Delta, I'm not sure what the other airlines do, but I would guess, similar)
When you go to buy the tickets look at the various flight options. The difference between main cabin and comfort plus (again, Delta) is not always the same, and can vary by flight.
For us, from Minneapolis, a good main cabin price to say, London, Amsterdam, Paris would be anything around or under $1000. Lately, I find pricing around $900 and I jump all over it.
British Airways has a direct flight to London, which we take every year. They have a sale through Dec. 4, so you could book now.
We fly with miles and usually in business class, but last time we could not get that and flew Premium Economy. It was surprisingly comfortable, and the seating (2-3-2) is good for coulples (pay the extra to choose your seats so you get the pair by the window and aisle).
https://www.britishairways.com/content/en/us/offers/sale
Edit: I just checked the sale prices on random dates in June. Regular Economy (with checked bags, not the budget option) would be around $1200 each roundtrip. Premium Economy is almost double that, unfortunately. The legroom in Economy is 30-31 inches; in PE it is 38”.
Do you have a bunch of Alaska Miles by any chance? It looks like there are quite a few Premium Economy choices on British Airways left for June flights. BA charges quite a lot for award redemptions, but it would bring the price for Premium Economy down to a reasonable level (like around $1000 RT, plus the miles). Most of the options involve a plane change somewhere—-Vancouver, Las Vegas, Portland. . . Different options on different days. But it would get you PE seats on the long flight, which is otherwise pretty expensive.
I just checked Delta for comparison; they also have a direct flight from Seattle to London. For the same dates in June that I checked on BA, Delta charges $1200 in Main Cabin (Economy), $1310 for “Comfort Plus”, and $3052 for Premium Select.
The Comfort Plus says it has “more legroom” but doesn’t say how much. And it says it varies by aircraft. A search of that topic brings up an AI generated thing that says the legroom is 34” in Comfort Plus.
The Premium Select is more like the British Airways Premium Economy, with 38” of legroom and other similar benefits. But it is more expensive than BA’s PE. So if the 34” in Comfort Plus meets your needs that might be the best choice.
Thanks for all the answers!
