9/10 day breaks to Tobago

[Nigel H]

I have travelled this way with BWIA many times and have a quote from BA, but does anyone know whether it is possible to fly out on a Sat and return on a thursday with Monarch?
BWIA must still be in trouble as their economy seats are almost twice what I've paid in the past.

[Steve Pitts]

Hi Nigel

It should be possible to go out on a Saturday and come back on a Thursday, provided the seats are available and not all taken by 'standard' passengers. You may have to pay over the odds for deviating from the norm. I would check with Golden Caribbean (their telephone number will be somewhere in the main air travel pages).
By the way. How much did your BEEWEE flights cost?
I just booked a flight with Monarch, for 10 days time (Thursday to Thursday) Gatwick, via Grenada, to Tobago, for £333.

Cheers
Steve

[Glyn Kirpalani]

Hi Nigel

I may be wrong on both counts but this charter non-weekly flight issue is likely to be covered in the flight info pages, plus in my personal experience Golden Carribbean will not sell any tickets for a non weekly period on their charter bus service. In other words you will be restricted to one, two, three etc weeks only, but might be worth a try.

The alternative would be to purchase a two week return ticket, then wander into the GC agants here (Tourist Services in the Rollocks building, Scarborough) and pay a penalty to change your ticket for an earlier return. It worked for some friends once but they had a suitable (and genuine) sob story to proffer with their £50 fee each. No idea whether or not it would work for you but Steve will know I am sure.

All the best
Glyn

[Nigel H]

Thanks for the tips. I may try in the future. As I visit T&T several times a yr.
The Monarch flights are now all full as its the Oct half term. I've booked with BA from a thur to the following Sat for just under £600. Virgin is quoting about the same Mon to Mon ( 1 week only) and BWIA is quoting £1100 for the 10 days! I'm waiting for Clayton Fraser at Sunjet Reunion club to contact me, as I usually pay under £500, but I've left 10 messages, e-mailed him, written and left 2 messages through BWIA reservations so I don't hold out much hope of beating £600. Monarch were quoting £360 2 weeks ago- but I've missed those.

Thanks again,
Nigel

[Glyn Kirpalani]

Hello again Nigel

And for my next tip...

An english villa owner I was chatting to a while back paid just £199 return incl taxe for his Monarch seat - all he did was call Golden Carribean the day before his flight and bagged himself an otherwise empty seat (cancellations come up) at a fare pretty much invented on the spot by the company (they charter the jets so can charge anything they like - including group discounts for weddings etc etc).

Good luck anyway, but it might be worth having a word with BA to see if the £600 fare is likely to ba available the day before, then calling GC first, if you like a gamble!
Regards

[Steve Wooler]

Hi Guys

Your ‘problem’ intrigued me, so I decided to look into it.

Fortunately, Golden Caribbean is a company you can talk to. Whenever you’ve got a special request re the Monarch/Excel service to Tobago, ring them up and have a chat.

Anyway, as Glyn said, GC tell me that it is not their normal policy to offer flights for durations of other than full weeks (i.e. outbound and return on the same day), but said they will consider alternative durations at slacker times of the year. Likewise, it is not their normal policy to offer one-way only flights. However, if you ring them a day or two before the flight and there are unsold tickets, they will gladly consider one-way flights.

As I say, you can talk to them, so just ring and discuss your situation. Contact details are given on our Air Travel pages.

[Steve Pitts]

Hi Nigel

Unfortunately you have fallen foul of the game of Russian Roulette that we normaly play when booking flights.
Once we've chosen a date for the hols we start the countdown by checking on flight prices. Usualy, they don't come down much at first and then 20-30 pounds can be discounted a couple of months before departure. If you can hang out until a week or so before, the cost can come down considerably, as Glyn has already stated.
Of course you can lose out in this game if you coincide your holiday with public or school hols, bumping up demand and you're never sure how many other players there are in the game. There could be a cricket/ football team or wedding party out there waiting to snap up the last 15 remaining seats.

Then it's a case of back to BA etc and paying more than you could have paid originally. Then you feel like shooting yourself!

I remember that someone mentioned the 'frequent Virgin' deal a while back. If you travel quite often, perhaps you would qualify for a discount after a few trips. It might be safer in the long run?

Cheers
Steve

[Nigel H]

Thanks,

I'll try all of these in the future. The joy of having kids over 12 is they are adults on scheduled flights and can only take time off in school hols. This means full flights and top dollar.
I must say I like the sound of Golden Caribbean and I will see what I can do next time.
Nigel

[James Blackshaw]

We were having problems with the non weekly flight arrangements we wanted. Found in the end best solution would be to fly Virgin on a Thursday to Barbados and connect Carribean Star on to Tobago. We are then returning on the direct Monday Virgin flight 2 and half weeks later.

There was no additional charge on Virgin for taking this route.