When a good deal surfaces, you cannot wait to book it. Even a few minutes.
Earlier today I saw a post from View from the Wing highlighting an incredible deal from Vancouver to Sydney, Australia on All Nippon Airways (ANA). Prices were coming in at under $600 round-trip in business class.
When I see a fare like this, I drop everything and attempt to book it. Naturally, I take a look at my calendar to make sure I am not double booking, but I don’t wait and have a discussion with my wife and then check on hotel availability. Nope, I just book first and ask questions later.
This particular fare came with the following rules:
- Fly Monday – Thursday in each direction
- 21-day advance purchase required
- 7-night minimum stay + 6-month maximum stay
- CA$500 fee for refund / CA$450 change fee
So the refund fee would be 2/3 of the ticket price (i.e. not worth not flying). Still, ANA provides customers a 24-hour grace period when booking any trip on its website, so I booked worry-free: I can sleep it on and always cancel the trip tomorrow morning.
The Particulars of This Trip
I want to take my wife on an extended holiday to Australia, but this wasn’t the time. Sure, we could have brought baby along and bought him his own seat: it was not an issue of price. Instead, it was an issue of age. Augustine is now 10-months old and the trip back from Frankfurt last month was rough. He’s outgrown a bassinet and is at the age where he’s not a particularly good traveler. Instead, he needs a routine and a week in Australia would wreak havoc on it.
My friend John and I have a business associate in Australia we need to meet with and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. A couple problems, though: first, we don’t need to be in Australia a whole week. Second, we’ll have to get back and forth from LA to Vancouver. Flying via Vancouver and Tokyo will be far more annoying than nonstop from LA. But at that price…
Booking It
There was no time, however, to sort out this issue. We could not even confirm the meeting since it is Saturday. There was only time to book it. So I did. I navigated to the ANA website since the 7 day x 7 day search feature made it easy to see which days had the lowest fare available.
I found a date in November and went through the booking process, but it erred out during the booking process. I figured the jig was up.
But I tried again, found alternate dates, and this time was able to secure the tickets. It wasn’t the dates we wanted, it wasn’t the routing we wanted, but we got the seats for $623 round-trip.
On the way out we’ll fly Vancouver to San Francisco to Tokyo Narita then from Tokyo Haneda to Sydney. That’s much more annoying than just YVR-HND-SYD. But $623 r/t to Australia in business class?! Beggars cannot be choosers. Plus, it will mean a 777-300 on the way over and 787-9 on the return.
My credit was charged and the tickets were instantly issued. From the time I saw the fare to the time I completed booked: less than 10 minutes.
Mistake or Not?
You can criticize me all you want, but I believe both the Ethiopian and Qatar Airways “sale” fares were not mistakes, particularly the Qatar Airways sale last Sunday.
I do believe this fare is a mistake. Therefore I do not plan to challenge ANA should it decide to cancel my ticket. I do hope that ANA will have the courtesy to reach out to me before doing so, but I’m fully prepared. We’re not booking the Park Hyatt Sydney yet!
CONCLUSION
The point of this post is to walk you through my thought process when booking a cheap ticket. Assume the fare will disappear within minutes, not hours, and if you’re remotely interested, simply confirm the airline has a 24-hour courtesy cancelation period and book it. You cannot wait for everything else to fall into place or else it will be too late.
The fare was pulled moments after I completed my booking.
image: blackqualis / FLICKR
Congratulations, that is an amazing fare! I’m looking to fly to Perth, AU in January. Can I ask how you found out about it so quickly as most of the dates I’ve looked at are in the 5K mark.
Just keep an eye on Boarding Area (boardingarea.com) all day long and also keep an eye on this Flyertalk thread–
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mileage-run-deals-372/
I was able to book 2 seats on this date, hoping ANA will honor them. I also didn’t ask my wife when I booked them.
Brilliant . If you hear about a deal like this one again would you pls email me? Thank you
20/20 hindsight, you could have booked the return as SYD-TYO-LAX-YVR.
At least for the later bookins, ITA was quite helpful since it managed to find dates with long TYO stopover that ANA failed to see.
I actually did think about that, but figured that even if the fare wasn’t pulled, the “Z” booking class would be exhausted.
I think it held up surprisingly well – perhaps because of the 7 day minimum stay? Straight turns would have been far more appealing for a mileage run – I know I’d try to do some.
Also Z isn’t even the lowest class, and the domestic segments booked into A. So between YVR, SEA, SFO and LAX there were quite a few gateway options which leaves HND-SYD as a bottleneck – but that route seemed always pretty readily available on points so the loads can’t be that great.
I booked this deal also (yesterday) but paid quite a bit more because I was randomly looking into MEL, not SYD. The itinerary uses ANA YVR-HND-SYD and QF SYD-MEL, but it is booked on one PNR for a total of $1700USD. I realize this is significantly less than their normal fare, but at the time I booked it, China Eastern was quoting $2400. So, while I knew this was a fantastic deal, even at $1700, it was in the ballpark (kind of) of their cheapest “competitor.” What I didn’t realize at the time of booking was that the SYD-MEl leg was the most expensive leg (which is why I paid 1700 vs 598). Even with that difference, I’m happy- I just don’t know if they will be. So, do you think I have an argument to make if they cancel? Also, when will I know I’m in the clear?
I got one seat also, same scenario as you on the error. On the Nov 14 – 21st flights. I tried for 2, but wouldn’t ticket for me. Flying from Vegas to NYC on the 21st at midnight so going to be a long few days. Fingers crossed
Same itinerary is $4505 now.
Good luck!
you need to transfer to Haneda airport from Narita airport.
It’s like 2hrs bus ride. It could be a pain in ass.
Those airports are not close to each other.
It’s a 50-minute bus ride and I’ve done it eight times before including twice this year. It’s a hassle, but not a deal-breaker.
I am new here. So don’t have any idea what are you talking about. I want to know how do you know when is the deal? Do you get automatic email with these super deals? I saw quite a bit of super low peice post in your post once the price is gone and after few days later.
It does not help us just telling about the deal..please tell us HOW to get those prices..what do we have to do?
Thanks those posts anyway…I learned many things about airlines.
Its unfair to compare ethiopian with qatar and ana. They are different league.
So my reservation went through but didn’t ticket because of a schedule change while they were in process of issuing the ticket. Got a call today saying that they were going to honor the fare, and just needed me to authorize the credit card again. If you get a call from 310-782-3011, it is ANA customer service.
Great data point.