Fill your boots folks..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Qatar airways. I was messing about on the qatar website, looking for an inexpensive one way for my stepdaughter, and tried to see if a return would work out cheaper, not really, as the fiirst portion would be lost altogether..... Anyway....... 1st Feb to 1st march it works out at £608 and a few pence, all taxes included... So if it is of any use to anybody... Go for it and let us know the result.
Also worth checking out the Cathay Pacific website for flights from UK-MNL at around £550 A friend of mine recently used that price with her regular Pinoy agent and managed to secure same flight, same price but with 30kg baggage allowance. Always worth asking.
A good site to check for cheap flights is www.skyscanner.net In just one search you can find flights for the main airlines (including Qatar & Cathay Pacific) for a whole year from United Kingdom (any airport) - Philippines (any airport) in just one search! The search covers many agents as well! I used www.skyscanner.net to check for cheapest flights this year from Manchester-Manila - it quickly showed that the cheapest flights were with Qatar in the month of February (£608 return). But it also showed the same flights could be booked via Travelpack for £599! Flights from Heathrow - Manila in February are as low as £439. It is also worth calling the telephone-only travel agents as they often undercut deals, especially if they have special arrangements with certain airlines.
Skyscanner's on the main page of the site Howerd although I guess most of us miss that because we navigate via "recent" and "todays" posts. It is very good though.
I'm looking at the tail end of the Phils summer and hoping it gets a bit cheaper as we get closer in time. April would be nice but it's currently still expensive then.
I actually view the main page but never noticed it before - I must just be good at ignoring adverts! When I went to Philippines in 2009 I used Skyscanner but found it much cheaper to book via travel agent - simply because the travel agent (Crystal Travel) had very cheap flights with Cathay Pacific (around half the price of booking with the airline direct). They said it was because they purchased seats in advance.
I added the Skyscanner tool as I was always checking their site out and it made it easier on me. It's kind of an ad, except it doesn't generate any income for the site but like the currency converter I just think it is a cool tool....
Me too Howerd Recently when I've been using Skyscanner there have been a lot of dead dates, in other words the times I want to travel they come up with no flights? However it was interesting that some of their advertising (probably Google ads targeting me) pointed out a site called hoodaki.com which has some great deals for the dates I'm interested in, particularly Singapore airlines which I am interested in trying as Micawber rates them so highly, flights on Singapore for 592 quid return from Manchester, and the total travel time is not too bad either. I've always flown KLM and I like the travel times but my miles are running low and KLM is uncertain about future commitment to the Amsterdam-Manila route, so my long term loyalty to them is waning.
I have always seen dead dates on Skyscanner. Maybe on less frequent routes they only show a sample of flights or maybe they only show those dates which the airlines will allow them commission on? Are you in Holland OSS? The problem with flying KLM from the UK is that there are at least two flight changes to get to Philippines. My nearest airport is Humberside and the only international flights from Humberside are with KLM. But to get to Cebu from Humberside requires three flight changes (I think) and KLM don't fly to Cebu anyway. It would be a tad expensive too.
No Howerd, I'm near Liverpool and KLM have just dropped John Lennon Airport after offering 4 flights a day for the last few years Over the last 7 years it's been really easy to get to Amsterdam as I had several choices when I was down here, MAN-AMS was the obvious one, when I was at home the GLA-AMS route was the best as I was only a few miles along the M8 from Glasgow Airport, but lately LPL-AMS was the best as the parking or taxi's were a lot cheaper than Manchester. These days I guess it's back to Manchester again, I am used to one change at AMS and I like Schipol Airport, plus the flights out and back are at convenient times of day, so I will miss it when they pull out of Manila, out of my 23 or so trips, 21 have been with KLM (about 6 of them have been free because of the flying blue miles)
Thanks for the tip, Dom. The big problem with a wait in Doha airport is that it is the dullest airport to be stuck in for more than an hour
I only went through Doha once, and thankfully it was a quick stopover. Just enough time to nip to the loo before heading on to my next flight.. However, there is a new Doha airport about to open soon.. So, perhaps it will have more for travellers as the old one was really overused and suffers from too much overutilization.
The 4 times I went to Doha it was being remodelled, cables and dust everywhere, the toilets were awash with water, there were no announcements over the tannoy systems, and some of the Overhead monitors werent on.... The whole experience wasn't too pleasant, but the price was right.......... I guess they must have finished now...............
Well I did lose my business during that time and things got a lot harder after that, but the flights were often a lot cheaper back then. I had a good few flights at the 400-500 quid level and at a time when I was earning a lot more, I have two kids over there so I really wanted to be with them, now not so easy, twice a year if I am lucky and possibly only the once this year I did also get six return flights for free (only paid the tax about 300 quid) and I also paid for 1 and a half flights for Ana by miles, getting her to Korea to get some of her papers and then Korea to the UK, so I've had seven or so return flights based on the miles I earned on the other paid flights and I still have one return flights worth of miles left, (or two return flights if they are doing promos). I would far rather I had been able to get them all here years ago and made fewer flights, but as it is I don't have hotel costs and so on over there as I rent a property for my family and when I go over we live on just a little bit more than I send Ana every month anyway. I could not have made that many visits if I had been paying hotel bills every trip, I just checked 2006, one of my best years over there, that year I spent 116 days in the Philippines it was great. Since I met Ana I've spent about 450 days in total in the Phils and she has spent about 120 days in the UK, just wish we could bleedin get married, still waiting for her divorce recognition, the courts are now late by our lawyer's estimates regards the case processing time.
Yeah it's a good tip Dom, it's clear that there are good bargains to be had on the other airlines these days, I will just have to broaden my searches in future, I think
Didn't know your situation, Jim. When Ana is free again, will you marry in the Phils and then start the spousal visa and dependent visa processes so your family can move to the UK?
That would be the plan Mike, but I don't get a lot of holidays each year these days, even compared to jobs I had back in the eighties, so timing and planning will be an issue, my side is fairly simple as I have never been married before so most of it should be the running around in the Phils. I am hoping that Sean's upcoming adventures will read like a Philippine wedding handbook Anyway all that is for other threads
Pretty much the same situation for me except I don't get to go to the Philippines because my loved one is scared for me to visit her until her annulment is over - and that is overdue too!
It is hard to wait but when your time comes oss and Howerd, I'm sure being together with your future wives will be too good for words Best of luck to both of you
