What’s my best option to fly to Hong Kong from the UK?

Q I am hoping to make a short trip to Hong Kong at the end of the month to see friends from my pre-pandemic time as an expat there. Fares from Heathrow are predictably much higher than the £500-£600 I fondly remember paying. But I see fares are much cheaper on Cathay Pacific via Manchester. Can I just buy one of these and board the plane in Manchester, which is equally handy for me here in Leicester?

Jane T

A You are quite right about the high fares: on Cathay Pacific nonstop flights from London Heathrow, a test booking out on 24 March and back on 29 March reveals a fare just £8 short of £1,000 return. One reason for the increase is the sharp rise in the journey time due to the closure of Russian airspace: add a couple of hours to the length of the flight compared with pre-Ukraine war, pre-Covid times.

British Airways, on those dates at least, is priced at more than twice as much for what many would say is an inferior product. So let’s stick with Cathay Pacific. As you say, there is a £130 saving on the same dates if you fly out on the 7am British Airways departure from Heathrow to Manchester, with a three-hour-plus stopover before the 11.25am onward flight to Hong Kong – which, because you first flew in the opposite direction, will take an additional 20 minutes on the long haul to east Asia.

I imagine Cathay Pacific is doing this because of poor loads from Manchester and has a deal with its alliance partner British Airways for carrying passengers from Heathrow. You might imagine that forgoing the first leg – just turning up at Manchester airport to check in – would do everyone a favour but I am afraid it would result in extreme disappointment. You will be regarded as a no-show from Heathrow and your full booking cancelled. If this sounds mad, let me explain. The product you are buying on the outbound flight is a one-stop flight from Heathrow, competing with everyone from Air France and Lufthansa to Turkish Airlines and Qatar Airways who offer flights via their hubs. You would expect to pay a premium for a nonstop flight, and £130 looks about right.

I naturally checked the fare for Manchester-Hong Kong on those dates, and I can offer you a deal of £962 – with the catch that on the inbound leg you fly from Hong Kong to Heathrow and connect with BA to Manchester. Simpler to take the flights you first thought of, from and to Heathrow.

open image in gallery

Q I fly four to six times a year with easyJet. Is it worth signing up for easyJet Plus?

Name supplied

A “Legacy” airlines have frequent-flyer schemes such as British Airways’ Executive Club and Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club. The way that you achieve meaningful status with these carriers, unsurprisingly, is by travelling with them often, particularly in business class.

Britain’s biggest budget airline, easyJet, does things differently. You pay £215 for a year’s membership which buys you a wealth of benefits. Even if (like me) you don’t place any significant value on a dedicated bag drop at some airports, or on speedy boarding, or a 10 per cent discount on inflight sales there are other very tangible benefits. The most significant is the free large cabin bag allowance, enabling you to bring a piece of hand luggage measuring 56x45x25cm as well as a handbag or small backpack. Typically this will cost £20 on an easyJet flight (with speedy boarding thrown in). If you are on a long flight and need extra legroom, or your schedule means you really need to be at the front of the aircraft, then the free choice of any unassigned seat on the plane will be very valuable – call it another £20-worth.

Next, two benefits that every easyJet passenger used to enjoy in the distant past. First, the “price promise”: “If on a rare occasion, you find the same flight on easyjet.com at a lower price, we’ll give you the price difference towards your next flight.” Second, the opportunity to get an earlier return flight home on the same day as you are booked to travel at no extra cost. So long as a seat is available, you can transfer onto an earlier flight departing on the same day as your original return flight for free (you do this by calling a dedicated customer service line). On routes with multiple daily flights, such as Manchester to Amsterdam or Gatwick to Nice, this is very valuable – and you can even work a moneysaving trick with this option. Generally, later flights are cheaper than early departures. So you book the final flight of the day and then hop on to an earlier, more expensive one assuming seats are available. Note that this is only for the inbound leg of a return flight.

For frequent easyJet travellers (say one flight a month), buying into the club is a no-brainer. In your case, I believe it will still be worthwhile – and I am about to sign up for it, too, having researched the subject in depth.

open image in gallery

Q l know it’s hard to predict but what would be your best guess on whether it’s best, price-wise, to book flights now to and from the US, or wait until nearer my trip in January?

Alan R

A To buy or not to buy? That is the perennial question for those of us searching for airfares. The standard refrain in the travel industry is that the rewards go to those who book early, in the shape of the lowest fares, but I am not so sure.

I recommend, for off-peak journeys like yours, waiting until shortly before departure to start looking. You will not be a hostage to the fortunes that lead so many people to find that a flight they booked months ago is no longer suitable – and as a fairly late booker, you could well be that annoying passenger who paid less than anyone else. On the benchmark London-New York route, for example, plenty of deals are available for flights during March – fares on the well-regarded JetBlue for departures from Gatwick to JFK in the next few days are available for under £400 return.

The latest attempt by a Norwegian airline, Norse Atlantic, to compete on the same route is delivering comparable fares on the same route. From Heathrow, the much larger people-moving operation to JFK and Newark airports will doubtless be delivering the usual two-dozen departures on American Airlines, British Airways, Delta, United and Virgin Atlantic in January 2024.

During off-peak months in winter, the airlines are closely focused on business travel. They know they will have lots of empty seats at the back of the plane. All are happy to put tickets on sale on the off-chance of the occasional buyer 10 months ahead, but they won’t really start concentrating on filling the economy cabin until perhaps two months ahead. At that point – November 2023 – you could start taking an interest, but I wouldn’t be too keen on committing until Boxing Day or beyond.

It is not impossible that I have misjudged demand: you might wake up on 26 December and find fares look annoyingly high. In that case, choose an indirect routing – eg via Dublin, which has the advantage of no air passenger duty if you book separate tickets, as well as “pre-clearance” of US Customs and Border Protection. So, I suggest you make a conscious decision to remain inactive for a good few months.

Email your question to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder