Carolinian
TUG Member
I have had a surprise in working on a ticket for a relative to fly here for Christmas from NC. None of the four airlines I have miles accounts with could come close on offering the date range we were looking for, on wanting 150K miles, three times the normal TATL amount. Multiple calls found the situation getting worse, not better, so award tickets were out.
What I found on revenue tickets was just as surprising; TATL legs already in the high fare classes and European legs sold out or in high fare classes. I expected to pay something above normal shoulder season fare on the outbound since it was close enough to Christmas to be in shoulder rather than low season, but the return is in what has traditionally been called ''dead week'', the week after New Years, because travel falls off a lot then. Not so this year! I was having problems lining up both TATL and intra-Europe legs then, as well as domestic US legs. I have taken long weekends after Christmas in the past because I had the time then and air fares were cheap and seats plentiful. TATL flights were half empty in those days at that time of year. On one carriers website, any dates that would come close to working this year were over $3,000. After playing around with both US departure cities and European arrival cities, I finally found a fare that came to a bit over $1,200 all-in, almost twice what I would have expected to pay in years past.
If you are flying at Christmas, especially if it is over the pond, I would not let any grass grow under your feet in booking tickets.
What I found on revenue tickets was just as surprising; TATL legs already in the high fare classes and European legs sold out or in high fare classes. I expected to pay something above normal shoulder season fare on the outbound since it was close enough to Christmas to be in shoulder rather than low season, but the return is in what has traditionally been called ''dead week'', the week after New Years, because travel falls off a lot then. Not so this year! I was having problems lining up both TATL and intra-Europe legs then, as well as domestic US legs. I have taken long weekends after Christmas in the past because I had the time then and air fares were cheap and seats plentiful. TATL flights were half empty in those days at that time of year. On one carriers website, any dates that would come close to working this year were over $3,000. After playing around with both US departure cities and European arrival cities, I finally found a fare that came to a bit over $1,200 all-in, almost twice what I would have expected to pay in years past.
If you are flying at Christmas, especially if it is over the pond, I would not let any grass grow under your feet in booking tickets.