Consolidated thread about Ex-DUB and other Ex-EU travel.

Just completed an ex-EU without issue but that almost wasn't the case.

Flying on VS on Friday from LAX to LHR (so landing Saturday) with the last leg LHR - DUB on Sunday morning. They automatically tagged my bags to Dublin and then said "your luggage is checked all the way to Dublin". I said "Oh - no, the flight to Dublin isn't until Sunday, I need my things as I'm only taking one of these bags to Dublin with me."

They looked at each other and had to make a call - eventually whoever they spoke to said that as my connection was over 12 hours they could do it but the girls on the gate seemed to be under the impression it had to be over a day, regardless of whether there was an overnight stop.

Ha! Heathrow doesn't store bags overnight anyway, good thing you noticed.

We are doing NYC- LHR in October on the VS26 which arrives into LHR at around 8.00pm. Our ongoing BA flight is not until 19.30 the next day, I'm a bit worried that they might check our bags right through,or do we have the right to ask them to only check to London as we have an overnight stay? I cannot find any information regarding LHR not being able to store baggage overnight. Would you call VS and ask them the question? or would that raise a red flag!!

Any advice would be appreciated.

Steve

Steve,
When you check in stipulate to the agent you only want your bags checked into London ,they should be able to do that for you

A means of forcing your luggage to be checked only to London is, at the time of booking your ex-EU, to ensure your onward flight to EU departs from another London airport. Eg. if flying into LHR make sure your connecting flight is from LGW or vice-versa. You'll then have the check-in agent apologising to you saying "sorry but we cannot check your bags through to DUB because your next flight goes from Gatwick"...which of course is music to your ears ;)

Do I have any chance of checking multiple bags to lhr I leave lax on 27 August arrive 28th on vs008 I made the rookie error of booking my Dublin flight from lhr about 90 mins after we land

Sorry that was meant to my bags no multiple 4 travelling probably 4 bags between us

95% you'll be fine. But VS would be within its rights to insist on checking your bags through to your final ticketed destination, as it's guaranteed to do in the contract you agreed when you bought your ticket.

There are very, very few reports of them doing that and if they did the worse they'd do is charge you a short checking fee. So don't worry about it, but next time either book your final leg for the day after you arrive back in the UK or from a different airport, then you're guaranteed to be fine.

I'm going to say that you are at some risk (even if slight) of them not short checking them.

If you say 'we need stuff for a shower in revivals' or 'we have presents we are quickly going to give to friends' they may quite rightly point out that you won't then have time to get from T3 to T5 (if BA) or T2 (if EI) and re-check them in time for your next flight. - especially given BA's conformance times at T5.

[honey lamb]

Do I have any chance of checking multiple bags to lhr I leave lax on 27 August arrive 28th on vs008 I made the rookie error of booking my Dublin flight from lhr about 90 mins after we land

I'd say you would be in grave difficulty there. You are talking about claiming your bags. They are likely to say that your connecting time to either T2 or T5 is too short and would insist on booking your bags through to DUB.

Just to give a kind of an example, I have an ex-EU fare from AMS booked with the last leg from LGW the following day. Fine! It's nothing like your problem except that I need to book a flight from LHR to Cork (the ex-EU option did not work in this instance). My inbound flight from SCL arrives in T5 at 12.05 and the next onward flight to ORK leaves at 14.05 in T2. Aer John (and experience) has told me that I have a cat in h*ll's chance of making that connection from T5 to T2 and I have thus booked on a later flight in order to be able to claim my bags.

Is ITA Matrix acting screwy at the moment? It didn't find anything for ATL, DTW, MIA, JFK, EWR or BOS in economy OR upper for three dates in October, November and December.

Then it found one at like £4000, by sending me from JFK to Heathrow in upper then back to JFK with BA to wait for an Aer Lingus flight back to DUB!

Then another one just now from LHR to JFK via Detroit and Toronto! But if you select no stops/layovers it says there's none (and weirdly no direct flights to detroit either).

Is ITA Matrix acting screwy at the moment? It didn't find anything for ATL, DTW, MIA, JFK, EWR or BOS in economy OR upper for three dates in October, November and December.

Then it found one at like £4000, by sending me from JFK to Heathrow in upper then back to JFK with BA to wait for an Aer Lingus flight back to DUB!

Then another one just now from LHR to JFK via Detroit and Toronto! But if you select no stops/layovers it says there's none (and weirdly no direct flights to detroit either).

Have you ever seen these fares when starting your journey from the US side? Which you appear to be doing...

For once, the sales are not always on, and not always matched, so you might not always get VS fares even though there's pretty much always a long term ex-dub BA fare. Though never quite sure if they cover certain periods. October to mid November are often not covered even by the normal sales.

But back to the first question. Are you starting from the US?

If you're starting from the US, it's a different fare from the ones described in this thread. Ex-Dub means the start is in Dublin. There may be fares to Dublin starting in the US, but maybe certain cities are better, certain airlines, so looking at Flyertalks premium fare deals forum might be better for that.

No. Every journey starts from and ends in DUB or other Irish airports. I just tried DUB-LHR-JFK (or BOS, ATL, DTW)-LHR-DUB and there's no results with VS with the TATL portion.

When i allow for extra changes, rather than going from LHR (or any london airport) back to DUB it gave me one insane return leg result of JFK-LHR-JFK-DUB.

I think its a VS problem because when i try just a standard LHR-BOS-LHR for upper i get no results (using VS+ /f bc=z to force it to VS upper) but using adding the DUB legs (and not limiting it to an airline) provides a result for economy only.

EDIT: Aha! I changed the fare class to I (the next one up after Z) and it gave a result but with a price of 2700. So it appears VS isnt allowing the Z fare code to be searched?

No. Every journey starts from and ends in DUB or other Irish airports. I just tried DUB-LHR-JFK (or BOS, ATL, DTW)-LHR-DUB and there's no results with VS with the TATL portion.

When i allow for extra changes, rather than going from LHR (or any london airport) back to DUB it gave me one insane return leg result of JFK-LHR-JFK-DUB.

I think its a VS problem because when i try just a standard LHR-BOS-LHR for upper i get no results (using VS+ /f bc=z to force it to VS upper) but using adding the DUB legs (and not limiting it to an airline) provides a result for economy only.

EDIT: Aha! I changed the fare class to I (the next one up after Z) and it gave a result but with a price of 2700. So it appears VS isnt allowing the Z fare code to be searched?

Z is a discounted sale fare as far as I can tell, and I is a different fare (general? discounted but not sale?). Why force codes on the search at all? Only time I've used them is for looking for upgradable VS Economy codes, and those are too overpriced nowadays. I usually just search on it.

Just plugged it in, £1400 via Istanbul on Turkish? 1600 on BA via LHR. VS is 2.5K so that sounds as if they are not matching any BA non sale fare at the moment.

[honey lamb]

No. Every journey starts from and ends in DUB or other Irish airports. I just tried DUB-LHR-JFK (or BOS, ATL, DTW)-LHR-DUB and there's no results with VS with the TATL portion.

When i allow for extra changes, rather than going from LHR (or any london airport) back to DUB it gave me one insane return leg result of JFK-LHR-JFK-DUB.

I think its a VS problem because when i try just a standard LHR-BOS-LHR for upper i get no results (using VS+ /f bc=z to force it to VS upper) but using adding the DUB legs (and not limiting it to an airline) provides a result for economy only.

EDIT: Aha! I changed the fare class to I (the next one up after Z) and it gave a result but with a price of 2700. So it appears VS isnt allowing the Z fare code to be searched?

Ex-DUB doesn't always work as, living in Ireland, I well know. Try another EU airport such as AMS or BRU and it may work to your advantage.

Ex-DUB doesn't always work as, living in Ireland, I well know. Try another EU airport such as AMS or BRU and it may work to your advantage.

DUB works for some destinatinations but not others. Some people get fixated on DUB (possibly because there are lots of flight from various UK airports to it)

At the moment DUB often gives good fares . For a while it was AMS and before that it was somewhere else.

HEL is apparently good for Asian / Oceania destinations. AMS for South Africa

Always try the usual suspects - AMS/CPH/CDG/OSL/DUB and JERsey too

I use google flights as I find it easier to just change the start / end points and then choose individual flight options.

Its not that the prices are high (except in one case), its that in the past few days they simply vanished completely. Everything brings back no results (no matter what irish airport) but last week it did.

Is there a way to force BA short haul flights to economy?

Its not that the prices are high (except in one case), its that in the past few days they simply vanished completely. Everything brings back no results (no matter what irish airport) but last week it did.

Is there a way to force BA short haul flights to economy?

Ie: just a line which says no flights?

That usually means the syntax of your search is wrong, or there's a basic mistake.

Tonty when you use Google flights dies it link to an OTA to purchase or do you have to call up the airline?

Tonty when you use Google flights dies it link to an OTA to purchase or do you have to call up the airline?

When I've found a particular routing on Google Flights or ITA Matrix which I can't replicate on an OTA, I've taken to just calling up Virgin Atlantic. I've never had a problem.

I just did this with an ex-DUB to NYC, where each sector was about a week-to-ten days apart (I actually do need to fly all four sectors: it all came in at around $1.5k for BA in CW, and VS in UC), and I could not get any OTA to replicate the booking (possibly because each pair of sectors was not within a 24 hour period).

So I called up VS, read out the flights (including the two outer sectors in BA), and they quoted exactly what Google Flights said it would be.

Tonty when you use Google flights dies it link to an OTA to purchase or do you have to call up the airline?

It varies. Most of the time it offers links direct to the airline, sometimes to OTA bad sometimes to phone.

VS flights always seem to say phone VS

Thanks Tonty. I've never used Google Flights so might give it a try.

I've just completed my first ex DUB flight thanks to the help received on this forum. The route was DUB-LHR-LAX-MCO-MAN-DUB. My flight landed in MAN at 9am and the flight to DUB was due to depart the following day at 8am.

When I arrived at check in at MCO I noticed that my luggage had been tagged to DUB so I explained that I was staying overnight in Manchester and the luggage was re tagged.

Hi trying to price an ex Europe flight but not coming out correct could someone let me know flight from Dublin 17 Dec to Sydney via lhr then return on 8th Jan first class /upper

VS don't fly to Sydney any more. Which airline/combo are you looking at?

Etihad or Emirates or a good price for first /business on ex Europe flight