|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
TIPS & TRICKS
|
|||||||||
Want To Become An Expert Flight-Finder?
|
|||||||||
|
As you know, we’re all about finding and sharing ridiculously cheap flights here at Jack’s Flight Club - but we also want to empower all of you wonderful people to find great deals yourselves. That’s why we maintain and update all of our knowledge over on the JFC Travel Hub, so you can use the same tricks we do to find cheap flights to great destinations. And we’ve just updated it with even more worldly wisdom - from our expert Flight Finder Genora, here's an explainer on the changes to flight prices and airline habits that we’ve noticed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Intrigued? Have a sneak peek: It's been a roller coaster ride for the travel industry, and as travel starts to open up, we've noticed a few changes when looking for the best time to travel: Airlines have border reopening sales - Although they may not overtly call it that, we've noticed ticket prices go down for countries a few weeks before and after announcing their border reopening. There are dry and wet spells for sales - While airlines were navigating all the new changes, we had long periods of very few deals. Now that travel's becoming more stable, there are more seasonal sales and random big drops (although they're not as generous as pre-Covid). The new normal brought new routes - It hasn't been all bad news for airlines. Many major airlines are branching out into more regions and including more routes. They'll often have a sale or two to gain traction. Last-minute sales are more common - We've noticed an increase in last-minute deals for domestic flights - especially in the USA. These sales happen one to two weeks before departure. Read up on the rest of Genora's tips for finding cheap flights over on the JFC website. |
|||||||||
|
THE BIG NEWS BULLETIN
|
|||||||||
Travel Continues To Unravel |
|||||||||
|
All right, you knew this was coming. Let’s roll up our sleeves, take a big gulp of coffee, and take a look at some of the chaos that’s been continuing to unfold throughout the UK this past week. It’s been…very much not great. And just to make this article a less stressful read for anyone who has an upcoming flight booked, we’re including some totally unrelated photographs of relaxing beaches across the world as well.
What's been happening? Over 300 flights across the UK were cancelled over the Jubilee weekend, with London Gatwick the worst-hit airport. These cancellations posed a particular challenge for travellers returning home after a half-term break, many of whom were forced to shell out for extra accommodation, food, and even medication during their prolonged stays. Gatwick also found itself amongst the airports under fire for their failure to support disabled passengers, after one flier was left on an empty plane for a full hour and a half. Meanwhile, further issues have been caused for European travel by Eurostar disruptions in Paris due to storms, and industrial action in Italy. The Independent’s travel expert Simon Calder has been continuing his excellent work, popping up on TV and in print to advise fliers on ensuring they get refunds and compensation for cancelled flights. (Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has suggested that the refund process should be made fully automatic.) Jack's tips: We’ve had an email from one of our Detour readers, reporting that some travel agents are charging an ‘administration fee’ on tickets that can end up cutting quite considerably into your refund. This is a practice that saw a huge amount of frustration from travellers at the start of the pandemic in 2020 when international flights began to shut down - and some agents scrapped their admin fees after pressure from Which? - and which is for obvious reasons becoming an issue again in recent weeks. If in doubt, always check the terms before booking via a travel agent to ensure you don’t get caught out. What’s next? Needless to say, worries are beginning to grow for the summer holiday season. Advantage Travel Partnership, a network of travel agents, has reported that 30% of their incoming calls are from fliers worried about their future holidays. The problem is likely to worsen due to likely strike action across National Rail in June, and potentially Ryanair and BA staff strikes are on the cards in the coming weeks, too. We’ve also seen the first warning signs that the continued strain on airlines is likely to have an impact on the price of your ticket, with the CEO of WizzAir suggesting that flights will likely get more expensive by the “upper single-digits” (so £9...?) between July and September.
Your experiences of 'travel chaos' We also asked some of you wonderful readers for your travel experiences in recent weeks. We were very happy to read that some of you made it on your flights unscathed (huge shout-out to Edinburgh airport - all of you Edinburgh fliers seem to have had a perfectly nice time), but it sounds as if a few more of you have been through half-term hell! We’ve gathered together some of the experiences below - the good, the bad, and the ugly. For any of our readers who are travelling soon, it's definitely worth reading through these stories to get a sense of what you could expect: “We flew to Malta on 12th May. Our flight was 6am in the morning - we arrived at 3am. It was chaos! Queues were not good, as we had to wait for the self check-in to be opened. Some passengers had arrived at midnight, as they were on the train, and they were not allowed to even queue before 3am. Coming back from Malta, the check-in was in person. It took 5 minutes and security had all lanes opened and manned! The UK needs to get its act together.” - Julie “I recently flew to Bogota, Colombia, on a return flight from Gatwick (booked through a deal you sent out). I flew out 16th and back 30th May and had absolutely zero issues with delays/cancellations, etc. It was a little busy through security at Gatwick on the way out but that's it. Must have been lucky!” - Catherine “Passed through Edinburgh half a dozen times in the last couple of months and everything was excellent. 10-minute maximum queue for security, planes leaving on time. Great service from everybody! Bit of a wait to go through passport control on the way back from one flight, but the queue was well managed. Feel very sorry for holidaymakers from elsewhere.” - Alison “I flew to Amsterdam for a long weekend right as all the 'Manchester travel chaos!' stories were starting. It took me probably 10 minutes to get through security - and this was on a Friday morning. However, the return journey was a completely different story. I got back to Schiphol expecting the usual experience of walking straight up to security - even though they were issuing the same warnings as Manchester - but what I found instead was a queue that must have been easily half a mile long winding through the terminal! That took about 45 minutes to get through, but then came the fun part of the experience - once you scan your boarding pass in Schiphol, you go into a sort of holding area. What I was greeted with was hundreds of people standing there, and flimsy barriers in front of the stairs and escalators. Every ten minutes or so, they would let a handful of people through and the rest would have to wait. In the security area, the queues were even worse - there were four near-fights from people trying to push in, and hundreds of people were missing their flights. When I finally got through, I'd been queuing for two hours and twenty-seven minutes, and my flight was due to have left about half an hour beforehand. I then sprinted (and I mean sprinted!) through Schiphol - and was almost the very last person on-board. We set off about an hour late and my breathing had just returned to normal by the time we landed.” - Michael “I flew from Stansted to Fez yesterday and Stansted was horrendous- by contrast, the medina in Fez feels quite empty! We had a 20-minute wait for the ‘rejected’ bag search at security. In this respect, passengers do have a part to play - e.g. my partner forgetting to take out a bottle of hand sanitiser from his bag, or the people behind us in the queue forgetting that you can’t bring full bottles of water through. There were queues to places like Pret, Cafe Nero and fast food chains stretching metres and metres past the entrance - luckily my mum had warned us so we’d arrived with a meal deal (minus drink). There was also a 40-person queue for the only visible water tap in the airport past security. This one really irritated me; I couldn’t believe how long it took to fill up a bottle! On top of that, because of the volume of people in a confined space, the internet and WiFi weren’t working properly so there were a few panics whilst people (including us) tried to get hold of the ‘right’ covid pass to get onto the plane. All in all, I’d say it’s part user error (I’ve not flown since our cheap deal to Jordan through you guys in Jan 2020), and a hefty amount of overcrowding and understaffing in airports.” - Suzannah “We used BA for a half-term holiday. This too was a very stressful experience. They didn’t allocate us seats on a flight we booked over 10 months ago. All the rest of our party got seats. Trying to get hold of ‘customer services’ took over 5 hours with lots of operatives just cutting us off. Eventually we were given an option of seats on a later flight at the extortionate prices and they still didn’t give us seats allocated on our website area - despite saying we would not be bumped off this time. So very stressful trying to check in.” - Annie “Our Jet2 6am flight from Edinburgh to Corfu today took off on time. We took advantage of the day-before twilight drop-off they have for baggage and can't recommend that enough. To walk in this morning to huge airport check-in queues and waltz straight to security was a dream. Security itself took only 20 minutes- despite being busy at 4am it was well organised. We were in our hotel in Corfu by 1pm!” - Alison
A huge thank you to everyone who sent in their experiences of travel! And to everyone who's travelling in the coming weeks - stay safe and fingers crossed you get to your flights without delays or stress. |
|||||||||
|
IN OTHER NEWS...
|
|||||||||
Our Pick of the Clicks |
|||||||||
|
All the important (or silly, or strange) travel news from across the web this week.
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
AND FINALLY...
|
|||||||||
|
Huge congrats to Kenichi Horie, who at 83 years old has just become the oldest person to sail across the Pacific Ocean solo. As Horie arrived back home in Japan this week, after 69 days at sea battling storms and currents, he happily told reporters, “I’m in the middle of my youth!” We’ll think of him and feel embarrassed the next time we get out of breath going up the stairs. |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
Thanks for reading! |
|||||||||
Let's start with 
Well, that was all gloomy stuff - time for another relaxing beach pic. This one is taken from the Anse Source D’Argent, on 
And let's end with a gorgeous beach that Alison might enjoy! This is Porto Timoni on Corfu - a rare and extremely beautiful double-sided beach on the island's north-western coast, and only accessible by water or 
|
||||
You can now receive instant flight alerts on our mobile app: With your help we've planted 620,810 Trees so far. Login to our website to manage your email settings, deal preferences and account |
