Flexible Long Haul Flights….

[Trinko]

Trying to organise a once in a lifetime trip to Colombia for next Christmas with my family of young adults. We have worked out that it would be cheapest to fly out on Fri 11th Dec so that they all only have to take 2 weeks annual leave but have 3 weeks away due to Christmas close down. The outlier is my youngest who is at university and won’t know exam dates until a month before in mid November. So 11th might be OK for them - or they may have to fly out and join us a couple of days later. We are paying for all of the flights (8 in total) so need to keep costs down. Does anyone have any experience of an airline that will allow to change a flight a month before at a reasonable cost?

@Trinko if you go on Expedia, for a given flight it gives you a range of cost options depending on degree of flexibility required. You could book all but one as non changeable and pay more just for that one ticket.

Buy 7 flights at the normal rate and one at tge flexible rate

Great that’s what I was hoping was possible on the same flight.

Does anyone have an idea of how much more expensive a flex ticket would be (none listed yet for Dec 26) and if there would be a risk of all flights being full once we know the situation in mid Nov?

No one can know about cost op but you do pay more for flexibility. Christmas is a busy period for flying though so I wouldn’t risk a late booking. It could work out more expensive too at that short notice. You could check what availability there is for dec 11th this year as a comparison?

The problem you have is that the cost to change the flight will depend on the availability of the flight that you want to change onto.

Most long haul tickets are flexible, you pay a change fee, plus whatever the additional cost is for the flight you want to change to.

So, if you're changing from a low season empty flight to a peak season busy flight, the cost to change will likely be very high.

You'll have to chose whether or not to chance having to change, or just waiting to book the flight at a later date.

Its a toughie!

This.

With e.g. Emirates a flex ticket will be around £300-500 more than a non flex ticket. Then you pay a change fee of around £150. That looks to be free with a Superflex ticket.

The main issue with price though is you will have to pay any difference in fare. That could be quite significant if you change it close to the date plus there’s the challenge of availability too.

Wow that’s really helpful - I had no idea it would be that much more just for a flex ticket + change in fee and then the extra cost at late date.

I might be better then to shift all of our flights along so we all travel out on say Xmas Day (think this might be a cheap day to fly) and they can all take 10 days AL in Jan.

I will have to do the maths on the whole thing…..

If I look up prices for this year 2025 will they reflect what I could have paid for the chosen dates when flights were released last Jan or will they be a higher cost due to relative late in the day booking.

Go on expedia for a wide price offer, but if you are likely to make changes, book directly on the airline website, way way easier to make changes directly than via a third party.
Flex tickets offer flexibility, but around Christmas, prices will go up, so you might have not to pay a fee for changing, but will pay hundreds for a new date.

I suggest you have a play around on eg the emirates website. They won’t show flights for that date this far out (usually 365 days) but you can see their ticket types and costs. For example choose a random return date in November and keep clicking through until you are selecting options.

They will have saver, flex and flex plus. Saver is the cheapest but no changes allowed. Flex changes allowed plus fee plus difference. Flex plus is changes allowed free but pay the difference. They will have a limited number of Saver tickets and sometimes don’t offer them at all . For a random date I chose between LHR and Bogotá there are no Saver tickets but Flex is £990 and Flex plus is £1230.

Yes a check on price now v price in a years time is a good ish gauge of amount you may need to pay to change but lots and lots of variables come into that. You never know if there a big conference or event happening at your destination which can blow out availability and cost. Remember airlines set fares dynamically.

Comparing the same flight leaving tomorrow and another next November in the Emirates website shows no difference in fares which indicates to me it’s nowhere near fully booked so you wouldn’t pay anything additional but December is a whole different matter!

That’s a great idea @youegg

What dates are the exams this year?

Not sure from the above If Emirates is seriously being considered but if they are it's maybe worth looking at the routing.

Contact a company like Dial a Flight or similar. They are great for stuff like this and can be helpful.

It was an example only. The same strategies go for most airlines.

Fair enough and agreed...

You do sometimes find there are some who fall foul of bizzare itinaries so I thought it was worth the heads up..