Dear Alex,
Your October issue (BTE) carried an article entitled “20 ways to be a smart traveller” with cost-saving tips. Please excuse my stupidity but what are back-to-back tickets (tip seven) and how do I book them? Also, tip eight recommends starting your journey in mainland Europe rather than the UK, so how can I benefit from using Amsterdam to fly to Cairns, Brisbane or Sydney?
Our local airport is Humberside and fares to Australia via Amsterdam [Humberside to Amsterdam with KLM is the airport’s sole international route] are very expensive, so we always fly from London for our regular trips to that country.
Sue Taylor, Hull, UK
Alex replies: You should forget about departing for Australia from Amsterdam. National airline KLM no longer plies the route and as you have found there are more and keener options from London with variable pricing.
For our readers in general, back-to-back tickets are useful for regular travellers wishing to avoid Saturday night stay restrictions applicable to cheap excursions.These rules are still applied by train firm Eurostar. Let’s say an executive takes Eurostar from London to Paris or Brussels every week, travelling out on a Monday and back on a Wednesday. Normally his or her standard class return ticket would cost £160 or more, but by using back-to-back ticketing and planning ahead, the cost could be cut to as little as £59.
So the first Eurostar ticket would be booked to travel out on the Monday but returning on Wednesday the following week. The second ticket would be purchased in France and would be issued for a trip to London on Wednesday (two days after arrival) with a return on the following Monday.
In an airline concept it’s useful for city pairs like London-New York. The return cost of over £900 (for a stay not involving a Saturday) can be cut to £260. This procedure can be continued indefinitely. But travellers must be careful to present the correct Eurostar ticket coupon or airline PNR (in the case of an airline e-ticket) at
the time of travel.
Another back-to-back ruse when flying regularly in premium class between countries with different currency values is to arrange your routing to buy in the country where the price is lowest. So regular travellers between, say, Europe and South Africa would buy their tickets in the latter.
Tip number eight is based on buying your ticket in, and flying from, hubs like Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Zurich. The savings vary depending on the airline and destination. Flights to the US and Asia can be priced advantageously rather than those to Australia.
The time of year is also important as cultural factors can influence traffic volume. For example, a lot of UK residents with friends and family in Singapore visit the city state over the Christmas period and home airline SIA is a natural choice. So that is why, in mid-October, online agent Ebookers (ebookers.com) was quoting London-Singapore return in business class (out December 15, back December 30) with SIA of £3,444.
Without these cultural ties there’s less demand from Germany. So SIA flights on the same dates departing Frankfurt are quoted at £1,899 (E2,720) by Ebookers’ German website (ebookers.de). A further benefit here is that SIA’s B777-300ER operated flights from Frankfurt feature the carrier’s new flat bed, whereas London flights feature the older product. There are so many options that I suggest you shop around with the various airline and online agency websites.
