It turned out Virgin was the cheapest this week down by around R25K ($1.4K) from last weeks prices. The volatility in flight prices are worse than crypto.
This last weekend I was spending time searching for flight tickets for our impending trip. The prices are like a yo yo and like I found doing my search just changing the date by 1 day could be a R30000 ($1600) difference which is kind of crazy and worrying all at once.
I had found Air France was the best option or I thought it was with an online price of R112K or $6K. I then phoned the Air France call center hoping just maybe I could get this cheaper dealing directly with someone. The lady burst my hopes when she said they were more expensive than the online option, but asked her to do the exercise anyway. Her price direct from Air France was R131K so she was right except it was not.
I started the process to pay the R112K online option only to find that it requested me to book the seats at an additional cost. There was no option to skip this and just receive the seats when you check in like it used to be a few years ago. These seats with 3 different options all in economy with no extra leg room varied between R750 and R850 extra. 7 passengers and 4 flights in total being a multi city ticket and we were already over what the lady had quoted me saying she was expensive.
My family had mentioned they had found tickets on Bookig.com for R101K and by this point I stopped the Air France purchase and started looking again. The R101K option was for economy light meaning you don't take any suitcase lol. This was now with Virgin ad eventually after another few hours juggling dates settled for R108K with luggage plus the 44 GBP per seat per person allocation as the hidden extras. I may have saved somewhere, but still feel shafted.
What I did notice was the taxes are nearly the price of the airfare and it is no wonder airlines are trying to charge you for things that they never used to. The baggage on the Booking.com flights option was an extra R2500 per suitcase by upgrading to the next level which I find ludicrous. Who is travelling on a long haul flight with hand luggage only because it is not something any normal person would do?
I have still paid around $7K and sadly it was the best deal available without the other crazy prices with the Air France flight I was looking at earlier being the most expensive advertised at R345K which is as good as $20K.
The budget of $20K for the 11 day trip should still suffice however even with car hire etc and hotels as I have now decided to cancel the London overnight stay. The prices were just too wild and can stay for 5 nights in Paris for the price of 1 night in London. If anyone wants to go to London then they can catch the train and this also saves on an airport shuttle which I have already booked 2 for Paris. The prices are seriously scary and has been a massive wake up call on how far salaries are behind in South Africa.