To be furious about these prices

[Atissue123]

Seriously...

Flight to Corfu (3.5 hours away) during May half £905 PER PERSON (Jet2)
....The week after £307 (also JET2)

There are some marginally cheaper ones if you go Fri-Fri or whatever (still £750 per person) This is flight only, no seats, bags or meals, no accommodation included.

I am outraged. Why is having school age children penalised in this way by airlines? Who can afford to spend almost £4000 just on flights?

I realise I am lucky to even be able to afford a holiday, but it won't be this!

Do you mean just the flight or an actual full holiday with Jet2? As my costings with them are coming out much cheaper than this?

I mean just the flight from Manchester. Obviously flight prices are dynamic so it’s possible it’s changed since I posted a few days ago.

@AlleycatMarie just looked and still £985 return during half term (sat - sat) per person may 25th. That’s looking on a popular flight search website, not on their website directly. There are cheaper options (Ryanair for one) although not by much. There are also lots of cheap non direct options.

In response to everyone else’s comments;

• I'm fully aware I don’t have to go abroad (we were hoping to go to a family wedding there!)
• i can’t ’go at another time’ actually unless i go without my husband who is in education or miss the wedding
• kids cannot take time off as one is doing important exams.
• yes i understand capitalism and companies making money thanks

my point was prices seem really high and it’s frustrating. My life won’t end I was merely pointing out how much of a huge increase it seems compared to other weeks (including August and October half term).

• someone said ‘you need to book much earlier’ again not strictly true. I’ve been looking at flight prices since August last year. Never been under £650 ish return pp. but I agree that is cheaper.

i know it’s just how it is and I can either suck it up or not go to the wedding but was just having a rant.

thanks for all the helpful comments

In that case it's your relative you need to be 'furious' with if it's their choice of wedding date and venue that's causing you to be pricing up those flights.

If they're dim enough to plan an abroad wedding in a popular holiday location in the school holidays at relatively short notice then they can't expect attendance if you're not so wealthy to be able to absorb the cost without thought.

But as jet2 are selling packages where you could take the entire family from around £2k, less if you don't go for the full week, have you looked into that option on their website?

It may have been cheaper to have booked a package holiday and then not used the accommodation.

It’s called dynamic pricing.
It is how most business operate.
Have you never come across this before?
Example: you go out for lunch. The price is X for Sunday and bank holidays. Y for Thursday, Friday & Saturdays. Z for the other, less popular days.
Hoilday companies are not charities.
Another example taxi prices.
Surely everybody knows that price for peak times, which includes school holidays, are more expensive.
Heres the thing. If the prices were the same all year round then the demand for those dates would be even higher. How would you feel if people without school aged children booked to go then? I bet you’d be moaning that they could go at anytime so why are they taking up these valuable places.

Also the May bank holiday was always THE most popular time of year for people to book holidays to go abroad. I used to work in the industry. All of our package holidays would sell out for that date, always. This was a long time ago but I imagine it hasn’t changed much.

I wouldn't start with package holiday businesses in school holidays. Look at individual flights, airbnb, holiday cottages, different destinations.

See it as lower prices when there's less demand to encourage people to go then. It's fine.

This. It's the person who decided to have a wedding that would involve guests flying at the most expensive time of year you need to be mad at.

It's just like peak and off peak trains.

You cut your clith to suit what you can afford.
Also look for alternatives or less popular destinations. There are plenty of less popular European places that are warm/ hot in the summer, have beaches and loads of things for children to fo.
Get off the beaten track and explore.

Not much help when attending wedding!

@Turophilic
Not much help when attending wedding!
That is true. I could respond in true MN style that is also not helpful that is usually trotted out when it comes to destination weddings, 'It is an invitation not a summons!'

However my suggestion was general and not particularly OP specific and it could help other people who are conscious of flight prices. There are some great prices and gems to be found for places that are off the beaten track for UK tourists.

I guess you have already tried OP but have you put in 'whole month' in your search and considered doing something like a Wednesday out, Monday return or similar depending which days are the cheapest to depart and return. I am aware some places only fly out or in on certain days of the week but many places have lots of flights, I don't know about Cypress though.
It is frustrating though.

It's because it's Sat-Sat of May half term, those very specific days are up there with the very most in demand of the entire year. For lots of routes to European sunshine airports they will be the highest price tickets of the year, it's just how it is.

We are going long haul and extra internal flights whilst there for less - I'm not paying the inflated prices for Europe at Easter or May half term, but you have a wedding invite so can't change the destination, is just what it is.

The trick with Corfu (and some other Greek islands) is to short break/city break somewhere else and then connect). This way you can save a fortune on flights and see some new places as a family. You only normally need to do it one way depending on whether the outbound or return flights are expensive.

Naples, Milan, Venice , Thessaloniki, Athens are good options and there are sometime good deals if you route via German cities.

Corfu is a popular Italian destination and their school holidays are different to ours. This means you can get flights for ridiculous prices if you time it for when they are flying empty planes out to bring back families or vice versa. We once got £30 flights to Naples and 10€ to Corfu last week of August. Done this route a couple of times and its great to do two days doing Vesuvius/Pompei etc then onwards to Greece.

Now that is a good idea - thank you

Looks to me like there are some reasonable flights to and from Athens that week. Connections to Corfu with Aegean are just under 40€ then. This is the route we’ve done most often as it’s super easy with kids. (Lots for kids in Athens and really easy metro system from airport - 40 mins direct to centre).