Difficulty in getting Business Class flights to show?

Thanks to the Ex-Dub thread I have been playing with all sorts of dates and times for DUB-LGW-MCO-LGW-DUB with the LGW-MCO-LGW section from mid-August to early September, needing to return before school restart. I am getting some great prices in Economy but I am interested to see what the Business Class prices are like. Unfortunately, of the 17(!) flights I have saved in Google Flights I can only get one to show me the Business Class price for the specific flights I selected and that gives me £1,079 for a flight ex-Dub on 15th August with Virgin.

I would prefer Virgin (or maybe BA) and I have seen advice that I should select them in the Airline section but it doesn't appear. If you can understand what I'm rambling on bout can someone explain please why I'm not getting this to work?

May be they are just not offering any flights ex-DUB that day. It does happen.

It could also be that you are asking for too many seats - 4 but only 3 on sale

VS weren't appearing when I was searching for my next ex-EU in January (which is starting in CPH)

[buns]

You do not say how many seats you are looking for.

Remember, there is only a total of 14 UC seats available on VS flights to Orlando. Chances are, that some will have been snapped up already for the busy holiday period

buns

VS doesn't always give you the best routing and subsequent price based on using LGW as your connection point. Add in the fact as Buns said, of only 14 upper class seats.

How I've got around this, is to use the ITA matrix advance routing codes.

Here is a good article: http://pointstobemade.boardingarea.com/ ... ts-part-3/

X: specifies the connection point like X:NYC or X:ATL will move your main connection from LGW to stateside and means you are likely for a better availablity of LHR upper seats across the pond and a shorter hop to MCO.

Delta currently do hourly flights from ATL to MCO so it's definitely better to connect stateside, clear customs and you get free delta sky lounge access as you've just come from an international flight.

Just some options for you to make this fare game more confusing/difficult/fun

I use google flights for a quick check, but never been impressed.

Go to https://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Choose DUB departure, MCO Destination, departing 15th august, 6-10 days, business class for cabin and GBP for currency.

I see 1000-1060 quid, pretty much all airlines and connections, for the 17th of August.

To tune for virgin, click advanced routings, and type 'ba lon vs' under origin, and 'vs lon ba' under destination.

Tune using the top buttons of the list of flights given, ie: if you wish to depart late.

The matrix gives you a limited set of flights due to timeout, there are more, if you see a specific flight you want, ie; leaving late in dublin to overnight in london, you can type specific flight numbers in the advanced routings, ie:

BAxxx VSxxx (reverse it in return).

Thanks for all the replies. Just for a bit more info which should have mentioned before, there are definitely ex-Dub flights that day as I have checked on the Virgin website for the days in question. I have only been checking with one passenger at the moment, I will need 4 eventually but will tackle that when I come to it. RyanJW, thanks for the link to the great explanation (my head is hurting now!). The reason for choosing LGW is that we live about 10 miles away so we always prefer to fly from there. Flying to the States for the transfer is a further complication for us. The only day that I can get a Business fare to show is for Dub-LGW on 15th August which is the day before our preferred date for flying LGW-MCO allowing us to leave our luggage at home and also spend the night at home. We would fly back MCO-LGW on 3rd September with the outgoing LGW(or LHR)-Dub on 5th September . But I am getting some great Economy prices doing the Dub-LGW leg months in advance (May 1st, April 17th) which would be great as that would make the August return flights e straightforward. These are the ones I can't get to show Business Class fares for the same fights.

Smid, as I said above, around this date is the one I have succeeded in getting Business class fares for. Iin t's the ones where I have the positioning flight months advance of the main flight which I can't make work.

Hope you're all still with me! Thanks again for your help.

I think the positioning flight from DUB needs to be within 24 hours of the VS flight

There's a thread at viewtopic.php?f=4&t=287783&p=887793&hilit=Dublin+TimCrawley#p887793 where TimCrawley explains how he played around with his positioning flight to give him 2 separate trips. The positioning flight can be much earlier, apparently, and it seems to vary as to whether the last flight has to be within 24 hours of landing from the 3rd flight.

Could the problem be no airline offers a Business Class product between LGW & DUB, therefore the system can't price up a DUB-LGW-MCO J fare because one doesn't exist?

Only BA currently offers a J class between London & Dublin, but from LHR & LCY, not LGW.

Possibly living up to your name, Gumshoe! I checked and the only one I successfully changed from Economy to Business includes a positioning flight from Dub-LHR with BA. I don't really care about the positioning flight being Business, only the trans-Atlantic flights. Is there a way to plug this in so that you can specify class per flight?

What are you using to search for the flights?

When I use Expedia it often brings up the economy Aer Lingus options.

I was using Google Flights. I just tried Expedia and I can't get it to show me any Virgin flights at all. The BA flights for the same dates in Economy are around £300 pp more than Google Flights is showing me and it still won't show me any Business Class prices for the dates I am getting Economy fares for.

What dates/flights are you looking for?

Have you tried other EU start points?

Dates and times aren't set in stone but I have been using 16th August outbound and September 3rd back as a constant together with 5th September as the last flight. The positioning flight is the one I have played around with to get interesting prices, from 1st May, 19th June to 15th August. I have tried Brussels, Paris and Copenhagen for Business Class fares but still the same result. Copenhagen had some good Economy prices though, but probably the flight there would be pricier than the trip to Dublin for us.

Expedia comes up with £1076 in upper with the DUB-LGW flight being aer Lingus economy, it seems to be available most dates around then.

I'm obviously doing something wrong with Expedia. I input the same as I'm inputting on Google Flights with 15th August as a start date and it is coming up with BA Business at £1,700, Economy at £726 and no Virgin flights at all in either class.

On google flights 15 Aug to 3rdSept I am getting £1235 for business class Aer Lingus/Virgin

I got £1076.92, BUT there is only 1 ticket left at that price, for 4 people its £1767.

On Expedia, enter DUB-MCO on the dates you want and select business class.

Once it has searched, on the left hand side where it says "Airlines included" click "show all" then select Virgin.

DUB-MCO
dubmco.tiff (460.64 KiB) Viewed 1275 times

The lights are Aer Lingus DUB-LGW and LGW-DUB (BA codeshare) and Virgin for the MCO flights.

Also I realise you were looking for the return to DUB to be later, so this might not be too helpful, but it looks like Virgin aren't offering any fares with the longer layover.

So much help on this forum, I'm really grateful! Penny_L, I'm getting that down to £1,082 by adding the 5th September flight back to Dublin. Great price, but ideally I'd like to get the positioning flight out of the way in advance. Hamster, I can't actually see your attachment but have tried as you suggested and can get to £1,077 by flying out of Dublin at 07.00 and LGW at 10.00. I'd probably be better off doing the Dub-LGW leg the day before (if not earlier)so as to not need to take the luggage to Dublin and to save on a hotel cost. BTW, I'm not really bothered about a longer layover - I was only looking at October with a thought to a long weekend in October visiting family but would probably be less complicated and cheaper to book the last leg on the day after getting back to Gatwick.
Now I need to firm up on my dates and talk to the OH about what we should do. That might be tricky, I've briefly outlined how ex-EU flights work but now we've got to get in to the nitty gritty. I haven't mentioned the possibility of Business Class to him either while I explored the possibilities, but I suspect that the amazing deals on ex-Dub Economy flights might prove too persuasive.
Again, thanks to all for your help. One last thought - if I phoned Virgin to book the flight I mentioned in my original post (current price £1,081 Business on all flights) would they be able to change the Dub-LGW and Lon-Dub flights for Economy to bring the price down even further? I can't get Google Flights to show this, as Gumshoe suggested earlier, but wonder if Virgin would be able to? Can't quite give up on the thought of trying for a Business Class trans-Atlantic flight, always wanted to turn left!

I believe the DUB-LGW will be economy anyway

It is in most cases which was why I couldn't get them to show but that particular one is showing as Business all the way. If I could get a bit cheaper that would be great but also the ex-Dublin flight is to Heathrow and I live 10 miles from Gatwick so an Economy Dub-LGW would be much my preferred option.

To be honest changing the LON-DUB-LON legs from Business to Economy won't save you that much money - it will be £10s if that. Not sure if EI even have business class

These trips are priced for the whole journey not per leg.

But over night stays are often part of the cost of these trips and you need to factor them into the total trip costs though I can see why people want to avoid them - especially if they live near LHR or LGW

I've just booked an ex-CPH and the price went up by £100 because I wanted to push the last leg back a couple of weeks (so I really could have a weekend in CPH) plus I didn't want the hassle of the luggage transfers as you can't route luggage through the same airport on the same bag tag on the same day.

I've spent £100 to get to CPH the night before because a back to back on the day isn't possible (especially as I'll have luggage) plus £80 on a hotel.

It is in most cases which was why I couldn't get them to show but that particular one is showing as Business all the way. If I could get a bit cheaper that would be great but also the ex-Dublin flight is to Heathrow and I live 10 miles from Gatwick so an Economy Dub-LGW would be much my preferred option.

Yes you'll get BA club class from DUB-LHR
But if you want to got to and from LGW they'll be no club or business just economy

I was looking at Copenhagen prices and can get them ridiculously low, one is coming in at £431! But we would probably need to add a hotel for 4 and Heathrow isn't as good for us as Gatwick but at that price it would be impossible to rule out. Linyilee, thanks for confirming that.

[honey lamb]

Not sure if EI even have business class

They don't. It's only on the TATL flights that they have Business Class.