Manchester v Heathrow pricing

http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/gb/en/id ... anada.html

It would seem that if you wish to travel to LA, see bottom of page, Virgin are effectively paying you almost £100 to fly Little Red.

Bizarrely it is almost £100 cheaper to fly from Manchester and connect through Heathrow than it is to simply fly from Heathrow.

Whilst obviously airlines price indirect flights at tempting prices all the time and it's common that they'll be lower than the component direct fares, this one seems particularly odd.

Whats going on?

We shall call this "the Ex-Manchester trick"

We shall call this "the Ex-Manchester trick"

The difference with this trick being - I don't mind a night in Amsterdam or Brussels - but Manchester….well that's another world.

How bizarre.

On a separate point, I did also come across some super cheap PE fares for St Lucia on the VS website -- for a PE return apparently it's from £594 (bargain!), suspiciously the same as the EC fares... Funnily enough it's the bottom line in the table, so I am guessing that some of their excellent IT people had managed to copy and paste the table from the EC offers, and got bored at changing the prices before they reached the end of the table....

I asked online chat about where I can find this amazing fare, but they couldn't help me...

We shall call this "the Ex-Manchester trick"

But on a serious note can anyone shed any light on why Virgin would do this?

http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/gb/en/ideas-lowestfares/usa-canada.html

It would seem that if you wish to travel to LA, see bottom of page, Virgin are effectively paying you almost £100 to fly Little Red.

Bizarrely it is almost £100 cheaper to fly from Manchester and connect through Heathrow than it is to simply fly from Heathrow.

Whilst obviously airlines price indirect flights at tempting prices all the time and it's common that they'll be lower than the component direct fares, this one seems particularly odd.

Whats going on?

I had this recently when booking my flights to Grenada. I was £250 cheaper flying EDI - LHR and LGW - GND that the single return flight from LGW.

Saved me splashing out for a flight from GLA/EDI - LGW, and have booked my Chauffeur car from LHR - LGW.

I certainly wasn't complaining!

Dan

[honey lamb]

When I was researching flights to LAS earlier this year I researched ex-MAN and ex-LGW as both were do-able from Cork but the LGW flight was coming in cheaper and there was no mention of the LR flight to LHR. Mind you, BA First was coming in significantly cheaper than both so it was a moot point.

I have booked UC to HKG for March 2015 and looked at either ex LHR or ex MAN and it was £85pp less going MAN/LHR/HKG than just ex LHR. The problem was the connecting times either were a tight 2 hours ( with no lounge time!) or an 8 hour wait which I booked. This has now been rescheduled and we have almost 10 hours at LHR even though an extra flight MAN/LHR has since been added which would mean just 5 hours wait. Unfortunately VS wont let me change for free as the rescheduling was "minimal". They will allow me to change but, by sheer coincidence, it will now cost me £170 more!
This is partly due to tax increases. Is there a time limit for the UC lounge? The person I spoke to at VS commented that there may be a 3 hour limit.

No, there's no time limit. Though with 10 hours to kill I'd be minded to leave the airport and go into London or something.

Lovely as the Clubhouse is, at the end of the day it's an airport lounge and 10 hours is a very long time in a waiting room!

There's a 3 hour limit if you purchase CH access through VH or the Guest List package

This weirdness goes on in the USA too. We once drove 75 miles to Monterey to fly back to SFO and on to Oahu at Christmas. Tix were about $450 less each. Hope someone in this forum can shed some light on what seems to be strange polices.

The difference with this trick being - I don't mind a night in Amsterdam or Brussels - but Manchester….well that's another world.

True. It is so much better than either of those cities....