[LuganoPirate]

Isaiah, I’m not sure Martyn’s response was particularly aimed at you. Also, a lot of information and experience has been given amongst the various posts from different forum members.

Maybe you didn’t see my response, and I was the first to respond to you, suggesting you look at the middle eastern carriers. I also congratulated you on your good news and advised your husband not to go Economy.

A lot of us get a lot of stick on this forum, I guess being anonymous emboldens some but I don’t think I am, and Martyn is certainly not, an “odious bigot”.

Do feel free to ask your questions if you’re unsure and I’ll certainly try and help with a reply if I can.

[isaiah12v2]

LuganoPirate

Please allow me to introduce myself. Karen Chambers. Certainly not hiding behind anonymity. I did see your reply and was very grateful. Thank you.

I feel so affronted because I specifically pointed out I was posting for the first time. I am therefore likely to consider the comment “a lot of people seem to be stumbling upon this thread” followed by references to spamming and trolls, was aimed directly at me and my fellow first time posters. Clearly it was intimated that we were employees of The Company That Shall Remain Nameless and that it was our only reason for being on the thread. I work for the NHS, haven’t had a pay rise in 7 years, am sole income in our family and certainly have no access to staff reductions on travel costs.

I have no wish to purchase tickets with any illegal connection. Nor do I want to spend money I clearly can’t afford if there are cheap, legal options. In the event we are travelling by Qantas to Dubai then emirates to Auckland. My bank account is now empty but this is an event we will never be able to repeat, and my long term sick husband’s comfort is paramount. As we are unlikely EVER to be able to repeat this spend it is also unlikely my husband will be able to go again.

I would like to also point out that the negativity wasn’t across the thread, just emanating from certain individuals. Whilst I don’t know the people in question, my response indicates the way they come across. They may both be awfully nice people. They have not shown this in their comments on this subject. Instead they have repeatedly made reference to newcomers and bumping rather than considering that maybe, just maybe these requests were genuine.

To those if you that gave constructive advice, I genuinely thank you. To the rest of you, please give people a chance to be genuine. You have no idea what broken hearts you might be trampling on.

[NameRemoved-18/12/14]

@isaiah

Certain people on this forum, including LP and Martyn, will do their utmost to help you. Of that I am sure.

If I knew even the slightest detail about SkyLux I would share it with you.

Meanwhile calm down and think about me..I am flying to New York in Economy with my mother later today. I would sooner fly to the moon lol

[MartynSinclair]

This is a very contentious thread about a company that no one is able to fully identify. I don’t recall any full review by a poster but there are a lot of first time posters. We have also had comments from a poster purporting to represent SkyLux.

I am very sorry Isaiah/Karen, but all we are trying to establish is credibility of the information and exactly who SkyLux actually are.

With regards to the discussion about buying mileage tickets through a broker DONT. Besides the fact that if the airline catches you, you could be denied boarding, I would also check with your travel insurance company to see if they consider the ticket as a scheduled / charter purchased ticket…

[isaiah12v2]

Ok apologies for getting irate. This has been a nightmare trying to sort for someone who’s never ever done this before.

My experience of skylux is as follows:
Came across them purely by googling. Prices seemed ridiculously cheap. Called the number given and spoke to someone called Martin. To begin with he basically quoted prices that are similar to other companies that I called that just seem to be normal business flight companies. Suddenly he came up with tickets coming back from Auckland with Singapore airlines for $2300pp which translates to £1400. To say I was taken aback is an understatement. His plan was to see if he could find outward bound flights to match the Singapore airline homeward bound flights. I was concerned about the validity of the company, so started googling for reviews. That’s how I found this site. The more i read the more I became concerned that to get business class flights £1400 was virtually impossible. I even asked another company if they could match it, and he replied that it was 50% what it should be, would be very interested to know how they were doing it, and was it legal?

In the end bit on the proverbial bullet and paid £4000 a head for my husband and daughter and myself, before I changed my mind and booked cattle class. Once the paramedics had resuscitated me I was able to start to look forward to flight lol.

As for skylux, I don’t know. Something just didn’t sit right…..

[WeeTravels]

Hi Isaiah, don’t take comments personally. I’ve only posted here three or four times myself and seem to have got caught up in other’s crossfire at least twice. Also there are a lot of suspicious looking posts on this thread hence the sceptism. Anyway as a payer of my own travel, whenever I do long haul, if premium economy or above is too expensive I would always try to book exit row seats or bulkhead seats. It’s a realatively cheap way of getting extra legroom. It’s typically £20/30 pounds per passenger each way (if not free) to pre-book such seats but you need to do it as early as possible as they can go pretty quickly. Also consider last row seats. Depending on the configuration of the plane you may find you’re in a set of two seats rather than three thus your husband can stretch out in all directions. I have looked at Skylux in past but because there isn’t that much information about them I too have decided I’m not willing to take the risk. My next big trip is Japan for my birthday. If I turned up to the airport and they deny me boarding my wife would probably leave me! Anyway congrats and hope you have a great trip. New Zealand is one of my favorite countries.

[LuganoPirate]

Hi Karen, just thinking about this some more and I think Martyn may be on too something, perhaps Skylux are mileage brokers hence the cheap fares and all he says is valid.

A couple of things. Consider buying one business and one economy ticket and take it in turns. I have a friend who does this and he could easily afford 2 business tickets but they have a “ahem” bit of an unruly child, so one sits back with him and they alternate.

The other thing as mentioned by another poster we don’t see much of anymore, mores the pity, Papillion. She got a Tesco card I think, and converted her miles into two free First Class tickets to Australia! Maybe with family and friends you could get enough for a free upgrade from Economy to Business.

[SimonS1]

Karen – whilst appreciating the circumstances I wouldn’t be too sensitive. This is a forum and people express opinions. The way I see it is as follows.

1. Here is a supplier that is offering air fares well below the going rate.

2. You would have thought that would be a very popular thing in the travel community, so a tad strange that when you Google around there is little or no information in the public domain.

3. The company have come on here a couple of times to make comment. Fair dos but the grammar is poor for a professional business. The giveaway for me was in the first post – “during the first decade we’ve already booked over 2000 tickets”. Really? 200 in a year or about 17 a month average? One client every other day? Doesn’t sound too robust to me.

4. Plenty of first time posters but few people bother to come back after the event. To be fair KIngston did but seems to be referring to long layovers. I wouldn’t consider a 17 hour stop over a viable proposition for most business travellers (remember this is a business travel forum) and it makes you wonder where they get their tickets from.

5. If it is too good to be true it generally is. If this was a robust way of doing business you would have thought there would be more known info about them and/or more suppliers doing the same.

Good luck to anyone who uses them, it won’t be including me and I sense you have made the right decision. It would be disappointing if you missed a special moment in your life due to a snafu over tickets.

[FirstClassWannabe]

I am amazed that nobody seems to have never bought a tickets from Sky Lux. Surely there must be someone who has travelled with Sky Lux or L4L etc? They have been around for quite a while now so it is strange. One point to make is that although none of us can find a review of anybody having had a successful flight with them (apart from first time posters”, by the same token there are no reports of anyone having being denied boarding?

Next time I am going on a city break on my own, I may give them a try if there is a huge saving, as it wouldn’ t be the end of the world if I was denied boarding, at least we would then all know.

I am planning to go to Boston soon but there are some good offers at the moment so the saving would be a small amount and not worth the risk.

[Bath_VIP]

Sorry to bring this thread back but since I had issues with logging in, I wasn’t able to make this point at the time.

I was checking my email spam folder (trying to track a missing email) when I noticed that all the BT notifications of the latest posts on this thread were appearing in the spam folder. Yet notifications about all other threads were appearing in my inbox.

What do Microsoft know about SkyLux that we don’t?

[malbarda]

@FirstClassWannabe: if you go two comment pages back in this thread, you will find user reports by K1ngston and tigerland. Both have had, it appears, no issues.

[aussie_trek]

Well I thought I’d add my 2 cents. I’m new poster and I’ve not travelled with Skylux but I am in the middle of obtaining a ticket and I searched for the term, “is skylux legitimate” and this thread came up. hence I suspect many other people do who are first time posters. I can’t give any suggestion either way as my flight won’t be until december but if I book it and if it works (or doesn’t ) i’ll be sure to write up again so everyone else knows. I also emailed the agent whom i’m dealing with asking what assurances I have and do they have a physical office etc.

I’ll post any responses.

ps the ticket i’m looking at is SYD-SFO and they’ve quoted me US$3950 for a december travel period on VA, J class. and no miles accrual so I’m guessing its likely a miles trading business. or scam, this i’m hoping it’s the first.

[MartynSinclair]

aussie_trek – if indeed you think it is a scam/miles trading or indeed worried in any way about the validity of the ticket, my suggestion is to:

1. check with the airline
2. check with you travel insurance company they will provide cover/benefit described in their T & C’s if you travel on the style of ticket being purchased.

Of course – we could all be worrying over nothing and the tickets supplied could be straight forward scheduled tickets..

[canucklad]

Reading between the lines, is this company not a reincarnation of the old bucket shops that most of us probably took advantage of back in the days before the internet?

And although not officially sanctioned by the airlines, their existence relied on those same airlines feeding them unsold tickets. Thus allowing the airlines to sell seats at rock bottom prices but not devaluing their brand by explicitly advertising rock bottom prices next to their name.

So could Skylux = http://www.bucketshop.co

[charles-london]

I don’t really understand why folks (especially folks on the brink of giving them thousands of pounds) are unclear about how Skylux do business, becuase Skylux themselves are open about this. I asked them a while back (and posted this on p1 of the thread), and they told me: they book redemption tickets. How they obtain the miles they did not tell me, but there are only two ways I can think of.

First, they could open various frequent-flier accounts in your name, and then purchase the miles to make the booking. This can be a good-value way of flying, especially if they make use of times when airlines like USAir and Avianca/Taca offer their regular generous bonuses. But of course the canny frequent flier would know these options already, and would be able to do this themselves without paying Skylux’s profit margin.

The second way would be via a miles barter system which is far more dodgy.

But redemtion tickets it is. This is why (they told me) the tickets won’t earn miles and why availability is very limited (and they said I would need to be flexible on date, route, carrier). It was so limited that, asking for three return tickets at Christmas from UK to Hawaii just wasn’t possible, so they offered to sell “regular” tickets instead “at a much higher price” – but in fact never got back to me with a quote.

So I don’t think there’s any mystery as to what kind of tickets are being sold here. But if I was spending my own money I would want to drill down into the legitimacy of how they obtain the miles.

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