In this post I wanted to talk about a topic that’s near and dear to my heart — airports with consistently great airfare pricing, especially in premium cabins.
Continue reading: Airports With Cheap Premium Airfare: Cairo, Colombo, And More!
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Being creative with your origin airport can be tricky for visa purposes. Some countries, like the US, need to see a return ticket if you are not a citizen or resident. Sometimes the check-in agent will check if you have a return ticket. In flights to the US, the agent at the gate checks the return ticket.
Cairo is a lot more compelling w/ the Le Meridien attached to the terminal. Tunis is pretty EZ too and has some (much) more appealing flight times thru Europe to boot
Does this apply to award ticket fuel surcharges too? I want to try Emirates First but not if it's $800-$1300 in surcharges.
@ Super -- Unfortunately not. Surcharges do vary based on your origin, but airports with cheaper fares don't necessarily have lower surcharges. If you want to fly Emirates first class with low surcharges, book one of the fifth freedom transatlantic flights, as JFK-MXP and EWR-ATH have low fees.
@ Willem -- Indeed, the LM CAI does make things easier, and it's a very pleasant hotel!
Just curious - What do you tell the immigration officer when they ask about why you’re in Cairo / Colombo / etc…
The claim that airfares originating from the USA are 'the most expensive' is ridiculously simplistic.
The USA isn't a cheap market, but you can hardly claim that it always is the most expensive in the entire world. For example, DXB-NYC and back in BA A-class (discount first) in July is about 50% more than NYC-DXB and back.
By the way, the person who lives in Houston can always jump across and start long haul tickets from MEX, CUN or some Caribbean island if they don't like the prices from the local airport.
It DOES apply to surcharges, both because they can vary from market to market (e.g. Lufthansa charge four-figure sums from the USA but not quite as much from Europe, and a bit less still from Mexico) and because there are a couple of jurisdictions which restrict (e.g. Japan) or outlaw (e.g. Brazil) surcharges.
Normally this only concerns the country to which you are travelling, but there's never a need for an actual return ticket. If you don't have specific plans, a cheap onward international flight (e.g. Italy to Moldova, BKK to KUL) on a low-cost airline is normally more than sufficient to keep check in staff happy.
You're transiting. Most of the time you'll have your BPs on an app to even show them. TUN is an airport I've done it a couple of times - it's annoying but so cheap and you get a lot of status miles. They have never given me any problems aside for checking my bag for drugs (My Canadian passport always causes a secondary search for cannabis).
I think TUN is actually pretty tough. No airside transit or airport hotel. The Saudia flights are so cheap but they leave at 11:40 AM so not much room to manoeuvre if on a morning flight. The lounge is also not so great. Never done CAI to know but TUN is no walk in the park.
Fares ex Argentina are also a lot of fun, AA business class is nearly double flying EZE-NYC-EZE than NYC-EZE-NYC due to the absurd impuesto PAIS which Mr Milei has 'forgotten' to abolish.
Last year there was deal for Kolkata, India to NYC on Singapore business class for around 1700 round-trip. Since I travel there multiple times a year booked a couple of these around different actual trips (since I reside at the "destination")! Booked Qatar qsuite one way for the "positioning" legs using aa miles!
Living as I do in a remote part of Spain (Canary Islands), I check several hubs for prices when booking C class seats.
The two obvious hubs for me - MAD and BCN - are usually pretty expensive and I have flown from AMS (HKG in Feb 2020) and FCO last year. The price from FCO to SIN last August was much, much cheaper than elsewhere in Europe (Saudia, which was great). Unusually, I did find the best deal earlier this month to KUL was from Madrid (with Etihad)
I have never found CMN to be cheap, in spite of Morocco being a lower income country than Spain.
I have a great idea for a new post. With all of the newly minted BA Golds, what would be the cheapest for us to fly by October 14th?
Great article. As a pricing professional, you nailed it - willingness to pay is often key to understanding pricing, not just in aviation but in many industries. At an all-hands meeting last year, though my company is not in aviation or even direct provision of transportation, we had a Delta executive come in to speak to us about their pricing practice. Absolutely fascinating discussion with the optimization of profitability across all passenger fare categories a degree of complexity that I do not have to worry about nearly as much in my business!
Kathmandu is another sleeper. I regularly see <$1800 fares in J to the US from there.
The Novotel is also pretty good. There is a shuttle you can get to/from the airport. Just call the hotel when you arrive for your pick up location. Hotel also has great rooms which are comfortable and modern. And it's normally cheaper than the Le Meridien. The airport shuttle leaves the airport every 30 min, but if your running late, just order an Uber (it's crazy cheap in Egypt, a ride to the airport from the Novotel is $2 - that's including the huge airport surcharge).
It’s been quite some time since you last wrote about this topic. Thanks for revisiting it.
I'd recommend buying a refundable ticket with an airline rather than a cheap one-way nonrefundable ticket. With the former, just refund it once you've shown it to immigration, and you get all of your money back. With the cheap throwaway ticket, you will still lose some money.
I rely on Istanbul (IST) since fares are pretty competitive, at least when it comes to flying roundtrip in business to the US (on BA, RJ, and a few other carriers). I usually preposition in IST because it is much cheaper than flying out of the Gulf. Have never found Islamabad to have cheaper fares to the US, however.
Lucky what are your thoughts about using a vpn to spoof locations to other regions to purchase tickets. i.e tickets may be cheaper if purchasing while location is in brazil vs usa
Great article, but scrub Bangkok (BKK) off the list. Post pandemic, the great J class fares have dried up. How do i know this? I knew about the cheap fares, and regularly positioned myself to Bangkok as my 'originating' airport for business class long hauls to Europe and the Middle East. Cheap J class fares are now over (but hopefully will return one day).
Lucky, Casablanca not anymore, at least not on Qatar Airways to the US. This was the case 4 years ago,then it disappeared fairly abruptly. Curiously, the fares from Marrakesh, Morocco, a stone's throw from Casablanca, remained extremely cheap for over a year after those from Casablanca increased dramatically.
The reason for the increase(s) was that fares remained cheap for Moroccans but not for foreigners,The trick was to still have low fares in Moroccan Dirhams, but those could be bought exclusively with Moroccan credit cards. For the rest of us, although nominally in Dirhams, the prices are now much higher and converted "for show" into Dirhams from a level established in USD. These fares are payable with cards NOT in Dirhams.
Ok, so I would expand your comments/strategy to award redemption on Outbound flight and then look for opportunistic one way fare back to the US from the cities you mentioned.
For example I booked Outbound flight May 31st SFO-BKK in business class using 75K Alaska Miles. I had the return booked with 85K Aeroplan points SIN-BOM-JFK. But then I stumbled upon a purchased ticket in Business Class one way on Singapore Airlines KUL-SIN-SFO using Amex IAP fare on their portal for US$1800. Calculating the 5x Membership rewards and all the AS miles that would earned as a Gold 100K, this fare was much cheaper than the award redemption.
I have noticed that "lower fare" countries have significant local currency devaluations and airlines make the premium fares "more affordable". I also speculate that air fares are "regulated" by countries of origin and thus airfare cannot "float" on a weekly basis based on currency exchange rates.
One thing to mention is that you get a nice 30% discount originating from Canada if purchasing in US$. Challenge is the positioning flight from USA.
That can often work, but even ostensibly refundable tickets sometimes come with admin fees for cancellations, so care needs to be exercised to ensure they don't end up costing more than the low-cost option.
Don't even THINK of applying for an Algerian visa just to use Algiers as the base for a RT to the World. Things are extremely disorganized, corrupt to the bone, and also practically impossible if you are French (the former colonial power) with a lot of hostility towards France 62 years after the "Algerian War".
In addition, the hard and soft products on Air Algérie (often needed) make Air Koryo feel like Emirates.
Absolutely and definitely not true from Casablanca! The pricing is similar ex-Southern Europe and often more expensive! I've been spending 20 years on a regular basis looking for those cheap fares and then have some extensive knowledge for that matter.
And I don't underscore ex-RBA which is considered as a premiuim high yield outstation by AF.
Do you have any relevant cheap fares examples ex-CMN? Maybe some super rare exceptions/price appeals like CMN-NYC-CMN with the three alliances around 1700/1800€ all year but nothing really "cheap" in comparaison with ex-TUN or ex-CAI if you consider the global network.
Even super deals from CAI in F class are extremely rare and AF deleted "by principle" all fares less than 7000/10000€ even from North Africa. Preferring to have an average factor load of about 50% or less for all destinations (except the US) rather than lowering its prices in La Première as it used to do to have full F cabins.
Last but not least, your example with LX is not very relevant and it's the exception which confirms the rule since it's a mix with a what is considered as a short long-haul in EuroBusiness in A320 (which means Economy+) with a LX LH First Class. A typical local First Class pax in North Africa would never spend more than 2,5/3h MAX on those non-comfy pre-long-haul flights.
But since the US are a very big country, you don't have the same psychological sensitivity/prospesctive to what is considered as a definitely too long medium haul flight.
Can you do immediate return on two separate tickets without a bag checked and without entering the country without a visa?
You mentioned tools such as Google Flights. Perhaps you would like to expand on what tools you regularly use.
I don’t know, but your website is getting to be very annoying with all the pop up ads… it almost impossible to read an article with more than a dozen pop ups appearing one after another! Just something to consider
That's something I am wondering about too. I know airlines keep an eagle eye on one's location when booking.
Maybe a 3rd party booking like Google, booking.com etc. would overcome that issue?
Bangkok, Saigon and Kuala Lumpur are no long cheap airports to find J fares. Jakarta is the only one, hands down.
Great post! Even for me I am looking to try different first class products as a 'holiday' and positioning to these airports are one of the best ways to do it.
Though it would be good as someone else pointed out if you could do another post or update this post to reflect how it actually works in practice. I know you have written extensively about Cairo but more generally like do you stay in hotels and plan an overnight, do you leave a buffer, do you not check bags and just transit at the airport, do immigration officials ever question you, obviously different countries have different visa rules etc.
I routinely find return J seats CGK to ORD or SFO or YUL for about $3300. Great deals if you look. If I try to book from DPS the fares double.
Also worth pointing out that roundtrips can often be cheaper than one way tix. I recently needed to book a one way ticket from Europe to the US, but found it was a couple hundred dollars cheaper to book a roundtrip with the "return" to Europe for early November.
Worth mentioning that the first class fare from Cairo to NYC via Zurich is only in First class from Zurich to NYC; the first leg is on A220 (Intra europe Business class / Blocked middle seats for 4 hours), thats the case for most north african routes
Another yes!! And not everyone jumped on the status match right away. Some waited until the end of the promotional period.
Lucky didn't mention it, but Manila can also be a good place for booking relatively cheap premium airfare. SQ flights are particularly noteworthy for this, in fact.
Here's something to consider: an ad blocker. If you're on a Samsung, just as an example, open Settings, choose Privacy Dashboard, and swipe Block Pop-ups to the right. Voila, no annoying ads on OMAAT and no download required.
Yep! I booked a RT Etihad Biz from MNL to GVA for $1450.
That's heck of a deal
a few $ and you have an onward ticket for 3 days to 14
No need to mess with miles /points $
Georgia (Russia) has a similar fare anomaly. Return flights to Batumi from W Europe are almost double those to Tbilisi (which is further).
Totally agree. I’ve been using Cairo for business class from the Middle East to Colorado. ITA or Lufthansa. Unfortunately I don’t see those great deals anymore as of my post. Hopefully they come back