Buying flights really early

Well I didn't get the dates I wanted, I have to return before New Years day but I get a good long trip that includes Christmas 2019 and I got my preferred airline KLM and I got the kind of price I wanted at £541 return

The final leg is Singapore to Manila on Singapore Airlines but the rest is operated by KLM, the return first leg is also via Singapore Airlines, my only worry now is whether baggage will be checked all the way through to my destination or whether I will have to pick up my bags in Singapore and check-in again, it was all booked in one transaction via KLM's website.

Every other flight I looked at was going to cost over £1000 and up to £1600 and after the last few weeks I would not have been able to book until August when they would probably have been even more expensive.

At £541 I doubt anything will appear in the next 6 months that would result in me being disappointed with that price

edit: just discovered that the SIN-MNL leg is on a 787 Dreamliner, that will be a first for me never been on one of those

Yes it includes the MAN-AMS-MAN sectors, I have some quite long connections, on the way out AMS is about 5 hours and the way back SIN is over 4 hours and the AMS-MAN connection is a bit tight but that's KLM"s problem if there are any delays.

But overall it is great value.

All I will be looking for in Changi is a beer but I will have a wander around as it will be a first for me.

I woke up this morning to an email saying that they couldn't find my payment so I've wasted a fair bit on phone calls to reservations, called the number they gave me got through to a Filipino lassie who put me on hold and the next thing I am talking to a lassie from the Flying Blue call centre who is speaking to me in Dutch, after a long explanation that I was sitting looking at the payment in my credit card online account they ended up asking me to call again.

On the second call the found the payment and issued the e-ticket thank god and I got a chance to ask about hand baggage, the catch is that hand baggage allowance is determined by the first carrier in each direction so I will get 12Kg on the way out but only 7Kg on the way back which is a bit of a bummer, I would have to risk two of my best lenses in my checked baggage on the return trip to get the weight down low enough or do as I did this trip and not carry my best kit

I would have thought that it should be 'most significant carrier' but I will check with Singapore airlines to make sure.

It is a single e-ticket under the KLM banner so fingers crossed.​

I do that already Dave but even the biggest jacket is not going to get a Canon 70-200 f4 L in the pocket

I can fit the 16-35 f2.8 L in the pockets of my North Face jacket but that is a £1000 worth of lens rattling about and bumping into things I can also fit the 24-105 f4 L which is another 650 quids worth but it all starts to look very droopy

I wear a fishing/photographers gilet which carries my tablet phones, wallet, passport and all the little bits and pieces which add up to quite a bit of weight too, but the whole point of flying with KLM is so I can carry my heavy full frame camera the 1Ds mkii and it will not fit in any kind of pocket so I have to get away with slinging it round my shoulder on a sun-sniper strap and slinging my jacket through the strap .

Yeah I just checked that and it should be ok I would have been relaxed about it if the girl I spoke to had not said otherwise.

From https://www.singaporeair.com/en_UK/gb/travel-info/baggage/checked-baggage/



It is really hard trying to work out airline codes and their interpretation of words like stopover, stopover can mean a connection of more than 4 hours and is often used interchangeably with layover but they are not always the same thing.

I'm going to ask the airline directly although even that is no guarantee as it is just one person's opinion at a point in time unless you can get it in writing.

I will probably leave my expensive stuff at home and go with the same kit I travelled with the other week, the cheaper kit is less stressful to carry, if I lose it I am only losing a couple of hundred quid of eBay purchases and I can relax with it in the checked baggage, plus it's nearly as good as my top end stuff, here's an example.

(you can click on this to get a larger version)

Sunset at MoA


Info for Mike, this was taken with the plastic mount Canon EF-S 10-18 f4.5-5.6 which I bought on eBay for £160.

Just a fun observation, I prefer KLM but have been flying Emirates for a couple of years, on the final leg home last Sunday in an A380 the pilot was Argentinian co-pilot Portuguese and as we were on our way over Europe with about an hour to go he thanked us for flying with Emirates on our Dubai to Maastricht flight, there was lots of muted nervous laughter while passengers tried to figure out if he was serious or if it was a joke or just a mistake on our Dubai to Manchester flight

Some years back I had my small lightweight photographers backpack the one I use for the 7Kg allowance airlines, I was flying Emirates, it is pretty small but they made me weigh it on the belt, since then Emirates have been more concerned with the appearance not realising that I can stuff a lot of kilograms into that bag, but when you have expensive equipment that can't go in the hold you just can't take the chance.

I have two main bags for hand luggage, both are Lowepro bags, one issue for hand luggage is the weight of the bag itself, the Lowepro CompuDay Pro 250 weighs 900 grams they no longer make it I was lucky to get one about 9 or 10 years ago on eBay, it is still in mint condition and can carry two small laptops a few lenses Camera and a couple of hard drives and chargers, with that lot it is well over 7Kg so I spread a lot of it around my body until I am through security.

My second bag is a Lowepro CompuTrekker AW which I bought 14 years ago for about £200, that one I use for KLM it weighs about 1.6kg on its own but it is much larger close to the maximum physical dimensions for carry on bags on most airlines, I could fit 17 or 18 kilo into that one but KLM have the 12 Kg limit, it will take an old style heavy 15 inch laptop and I loved it for that as I still have one, an old Lenovo W520, and I would really like to just take that laptop alone.

So as you say the hand luggage allowance is the domain of the operating airline, the one that checks you in, and that would agree with what the KLM reservation desk lassie told me.

I would have preferred the KLM route MAN->AMS->TPE->MNL but that route was ridiculously expensive whereas the MAN->AMS->SIN->MNL route is ridiculously cheap so I will resign myself to my smaller Lowepro bag and cheaper kit until I am a bit older.

By the way I have about eight Lowepro bags a photographer can never have too many I have two over in Phils which I use for day outings and others here which are used for similar day trips but I only have two that can take a laptop.

One solution to my problem would be to buy a 5th Generation Lenovo X1 Carbon which weighs about 1.2kg then I would need only one laptop but I suspect that is a project for late 2020

Just for fun I checked the current price of this flight last night and it now stands at £1,115 so I think I definitely made the right choice buying when I did, can't find anything else cheap on KLM for that period at all now although Emirates had the dates I wanted at a price I might have paid but still more than £400 more than I ended up paying.