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

I agree with Smid - the value of ex EU is in the premium cabins rather than in economy. That's not to say you'd never find a cheaper Y ticket going ex-EU but the savings won't be much and would quickly vanish when you add in the cost of the positioning flight(s) and possibly a hotel too.

I just did a random dummy booking for June 5th / 18th - LGW-MCO

Flying Economy direct on VS = £ 572

Ex-EU - BA to LGW then VS to MCO - £ 918 (priced on expedia)

Flying Upper

Direct = £ 3,741

Ex EU = £ 3,011

You've got to know the routes too, and you'll get some proper bargains if you go the right time...

For instance, I know its 1200 UC from Dublin on VS for Vegas next christmas. Similar time to MCO around then, 1064 UC.

I know there's also spots in August (high season, who would have thought it), going to MCO UC for 1068 UKP from Dublin... For a few quid more you might even avoid Aer Lingus economy, and get BA Club over. 13-19th of august for instance for 1074.

I agree the best savings are at the pointy end of the aircraft, but don’t write it off completely for economy travel, I think it depends on the prices on the day you want to fly.

I’ve recently booked a DUB-LAX/LAS-LGW(LHR-ORK) trip and for the flights starting in LON it is just under £800 each in economy, whereas starting in DUB it was only £380. Add to that £58 LHR-DUB EI tickets to start and an overnight in LHR (£50 spread over two pax) and the saving comes to £337 per passenger (or £674 for the two of us). That pays for the hotels while we are there. Ok you could argue that I wouldn’t have chosen VS at those prices but even UA who were cheapest was in the region of £600, so still a decent saving, with the advantage of not having to fly UA

Thanks - will weigh up whether it's worth ex-EU'ing it for discounted M fares closer to booking time

I just did the maths for a trip to SFO.

Economy Return
4th / 14th April

Direct LHR>SFO - £858.86
Ex EU DUB>LHR>SFO - £445.89

£400 cheaper :-)

Not just the pointy end. Lets see for Upper:

Upper Class Return
4th / 14th April

Direct LHR>SFO - £3143.86
Ex EU DUB>LHR>SFO - £1313.09

For me, Ex EU to SFO in Upper is regularly £1100-£1300 all year. Makes a significant difference compared to the direct price as I usually pick up a Ryanair special at £17.99 to DUB and spend the night at the airport for £65 :-)

For the conscious v-flyer, I suggest tacking on a Dublin weekender paid for by the savings and Ryanair it back home after a few Guinness and Jameson's.

Wow - that really is a good saving on economy there, as well as UC!

You might well end up spending 100 quid on positioning flights per person and an extra hotel for the night, which you might not have needed (depending on how close you are to the 'throw). Then there's the extra hassle. I'd not do that to save 250 quid per person. But I'd do that to save 2 grand pp.

Oh I don't know, £250 isn't insignificant. If you live close enough to the airport not to need a hotel you can enjoy a day trip to Dublin/Amsterdam/wherever without your luggage, go home for the night then head back, luggage in tow, for your long haul flight the next morning.

A nice appetiser for any holiday, and even nicer knowing that day trip has actually saved you money.

It is very convienient at the moment with DUB being the cheapest starting point as if you live near LTN, STN or another Ryanair base, you can regularly get flights one way for £17.99 or less.

What an excellent tip, I'll certainly be looking into this for my next flights.

Isn't it a shame the lengths we have to go to in order to get a good price in a British Airline from the UK these days?

It seems insane that faffing about going to Dublin first quite literally HALVES the price of an economy return to Los Angeles with VS.

The direct prices are enormous at the moment, higher than I've ever seen them. Almost £1000 return in Y for September.

Yes it's crazy. It shows just how much UK passengers are being ripped off, especially as only a tiny minority of people know about, let alone take advantage of, the ex-EU trick.

But like anything the industry will charge what the market will bear. An arline's sole purpose is to deliver returns for its investors, not to help passengers afford to fly.

The savings really are crazy. I've just been pricing up UC flights to SFO. On Virgin's website, Z tickets come out at £7,187 for two return tickets. Using ex-DUB I can get the same tickets for around £2,600 including flights to and from Dublin. A saving of over £4,500!!!

I was intending to buy M class tickets to try and upgrade using my miles (I have just over 130,000), but I can't see that being much cheaper and being a lot more hassle to find available reward seats.

Now that I know about this little trick, what will I do with my FC miles? All of my Tesco Clubcard points (from shopping and Tesco CC) get auto converted to FC which, along with the odd purchase from Virgin Wines, gains me around 40,000 miles a year.

I don't really understand how it works, if VS have plenty of us Brits happy to pay almost a thousand quid to fly to LAX in Economy why lose income offering people from Dublin the same ticket plus an addon flight for half the price? Why not sell those seats to people from the UK prepared to pay a grand - after all, there are apparently plenty of them?

No doubt they'd rather fill every flight with passengers who pay top dollar for the most expensive flexible fares - but that's never going to happen. There's a bewildering array of fares on every flight that vary according to demand, competition and other market factors.

The ex-EU fares are (relatively) cheap because VS (and BA) want to attract Irish, Dutch, Belgian etc passengers to fly long haul with them rather than direct from their own country or via another hub. To do that they have to be competitive.

I didn't mean fully flex, the current non flex cheapest possible bottom of the fare ladder ticket to LAX in September is about £850 return. Or £397 from Dub on the same flights. The difference is just insane. On the one hand you have the highest non-peak Economy fares I've ever seen and on the other you have the lowest!

I'd book tomorrow direct even at say £150 more than the ex-Dub price.. surely I can't be the only one

[honey lamb]

I didn't mean fully flex, the current non flex cheapest possible bottom of the fare ladder ticket to LAX in September is about £850 return. Or £397 from Dub on the same flights. The difference is just insane. On the one hand you have the highest non-peak Economy fares I've ever seen and on the other you have the lowest!

I'd book tomorrow direct even at say £150 more than the ex-Dub price.. surely I can't be the only one

And if you were to look at the DUB-LAX fares on EI you would find it would be roughly somewhere in between it and the LHR-LAX , the differential being the lack of APD. It however would be a routing of DUB-JFK-LAX, the latter being on JetBlue or United.

I'd book tomorrow direct even at say £150 more than the ex-Dub price.. surely I can't be the only one

No you won't be the only one but a lot more don't want the bother of positioning flights and possible overnight stays and extra flights - especially if they are with kids or would have to take an extra days holiday from work (or have a day less when abroad) or worrying about mis-connects etc.

I did a dummy search on Expedia for DUB-JFK in Business in June

EI direct was £ 1357 (flight time approx 7 1/2hrs). Flying BA and VS via LHR is £1117 (flight time 10 1/2 hrs) so a difference of £240 and 3 hrs.

Now if I were Irish (or at least living in that fair land) I'd more likely still go the direct route because I'd be able to pre-clear US immigration in DUB.


But for comparison flying direct from LHR on the same VS plane on the TATL sector would be £ 2,548.

So even allowing for a hotel and positioning flight you would 'save' £1,000 but a lot of people still won't do it because they can't be bothered to plan a bit more - that's even if they know about the ex-EU trick.

I've just booked my flights (2 tickets) to SFO through Expedia, saving the £4,500 on Virgin's own UK price.

Just a quicky for anyone in the know. I'm about to do the DUB trick (DUB-LGW-LAS) and have been given the option of taking LGW-LAS the day after DUB-LGW.

My main question is, because the main flight is the following day, can I rock up to LGW saying I missed the DUB-LGW and found my way here by other means? I ask this as I take it they would let us have our luggage back for an overnight at LGW. As a secondary question, I take it most people still find it ok to ask for their bags to be labelled for a London collection instead of carrying onto DUB?

Many thanks in advance,

AC.

No. If you miss the first leg from DUB-LGW you'll be deemed a no show and your entire ticket may be voided. The only leg you can safely miss is the final one.

With regard to luggage, no-one's ever reported problems with short-checking on VS. However they would be within their rights to refuse and there's currently a lengthy thread over on Flyertalk which suggests BA are, sometimes, doing just that.

The only way to be 100% certain that your bags will only be checked to LGW on the way home is by ensuring that your final leg to DUB leaves from another airport eg LHR.

Always Chillled, I'm doing similar to you except ex Amsterdam. We are positioning to AMS and returning to LGW the day before the VS flight to Vegas. That way there's no need to take any luggage at all, we'll simply leave ours at our room in Premier Inn. We'll then just chill that evening back at Gatwick and check in for our VS flight to LAS the following morning.

As Gumshoe says it's worth picking a return combination whereby your final sector is from a different London airport, eg. we return on VS to Gatwick but out final sector to AMS is from Heathrow - thus they'll be forced to only check our luggage through to LGW at LAS check-in.

Hi,

Following on from all the help I received in my "Dub trick dilemma" posting I took the plunge and booked the following on Expedia:

26 Dec 2015 BA839 DUB-LHR - Club Europe
27 Dec 2015 VS19 LHR-SFO - Upper Class
12 Jan 2016 VS42 SFO-LHR - Upper Class
14 Jan 2016 BA826 LHR-DUB - Club Europe

The flights all appeared in both my VS and BA accounts within a couple of minutes. I'm really pleased at just how much cheaper this was, worked out at £1289.29 per person about half the price of the sales fare I paid last year

As I don't have any status with BA I'm not going to pay any extra to pick a Club Europe seat as far as I'm concerned for that money I'll sit in the hold!

Oh and as a bonus (possibly) I'm on the B787-9 evening flight from SFO, bagged 05A & 06A as they seemed to be reasonable, halfway between the forward galley and the bar and on the side where you're not staring at anyone else. Will be my first trip on a 787 so looking forward to see if it's as good as it's meant to be.

Finished it off with a cheap as I could get it Euro Traveller seat from LHR-DUB on 26 Dec (BA834) for £75 per person just to get me to the starting blocks for my first attempt at this "trick".

Thanks again everyone for your thoughts on this - just counting the days now

Are any you experts able to help me as I am going round in circles? Ideally I would like to book:

16/9 MAN - MCO
3/10 MCO - MAN

I would like to do the initial Dublin leg any weekend before hand and the return leg any day afterwards. I would also consider LGW instead of Manchester. I want to fly PE but can only get prices for economy if I split the booking up. If I book it as DUB - MCO return I can get prices (out via Gatwick and back via Manchester) but even putting in that combination doesn't work. Any guesses???

Thank you

Two things here:

1) To get the best value out of ex-EU fares, the initial leg from DUB or wherever has to arrive in the UK no more than 24 hours before your long haul departs, otherwise you will have to pay APD on the long haul, thus negating some of the saving. You'll still save money on the normal ex-UK fare if the "stopover" is more than 24 hours, just not as much.

2) Expedia won't find ex-EU fares that involve PE. This is because, as you've specified PE as your preferred class, it searches only for itineraries that offer PE on all 4 legs which, of course, don't exist as there is no PE on the short haul legs. VS may well be able to offer ex-EU PE fares if you call them direct, I don't know.

Always Chillled, I'm doing similar to you except ex Amsterdam. We are positioning to AMS and returning to LGW the day before the VS flight to Vegas. That way there's no need to take any luggage at all, we'll simply leave ours at our room in Premier Inn. We'll then just chill that evening back at Gatwick and check in for our VS flight to LAS the following morning.

Ahh, now that is interesting. This could save on lugging our baggage over to Dublin and back. So the Gatwick Premier Inn will let you check in early enough before jumping onto the AMS flight? We'd have to check in at the hotel around 12/1pm to make it to Dublin and back that day. Also, I take it they don't ask why you never checked anything in at AMS but will the next day?

Cheers again,

AC.