OMG I'm going to New York!

[sunseeker100]

this has been at the top of my bucket list for years and for various reasons we've not been, but we've just added NY onto our Orlando trip for April!

took me about a month of constant subliminal persuasion to get my partner to agree but finally she agreed to ringing virgin to price up the change of outbound flight...what a debacle that was. I must tell you as I was totally bemused by the whole thing. So we were originally booked on MAN to MCO return in premium. I rang yesterday to price up an outbound change to JFK a few days earlier keeping the return the same. Now I know I'd need to pay a fee as our tickets aren't flexible. First of all to get an indication I did a multi trip on the website for our dates and flights in premium, showing as £1772 (without an internal flight as I'll book that on skyscanner or something), we'd initially paid about £1800.

The first person I spoke to on live chat said £250 each fee and I'd need to call for a ticket price. So we have a £500 fee to start with, remember that. I then rang them, they first quoted an additional price of £3k ... er what? with a fee of £200 each on top after much questioning by me turns out they had done an internal flight too with delta from JFK to MCO, she said if I booked that myself it would reduce the cost, so without the mind bogglingly expensive internal flight, the extra would be £1100 plus £400 fee for both, so £1500 to pay. I said thanks and I'd think about it.

Last night we were both totally bemused as how they had worked this out, I checked one way flights, all different permutations online and couldn't fathom it, but assumed they've used some calculation that isn't relevant to the online view we see.

this morning I thought I'd try again as we weren't going to pay another £1.5k. So did live chat and explained what I wanted, what I was quoted, what I'd seen online this morning and that I wanted to know how it was worked out. She did the calcs again and quoted £150 fee each and just over £3k extra. I pretty much said ≈≈≈? I ended up sending them screenshots via email whilst we chatted (very good service by the adviser this morning) and she said that she'd done a connecting flight...so she removed that and quoted £204 each...all in, inc fee. hmmm quite different from everyone else then! anyway I paid there and then, sorted seats and now have my booking

we go on 21st April to JFK and onto MCO on 24th, then back to MAN on 10th May. mega excited is an understatement so I'm off to order a new york guide book and read a million trip reports. oh yes I also need to find a hotel for 3 nights lol

any advice welcome please on who to fly internally with, should I wait for post xmas flight sale, what is a good guide book?

[baboons]

Congrats on finally getting there! JetBlue were outstanding last year, great service and great legroom.

[Guest]

Congrats on your successful subliminal advertising campaign and negotiation mith Virgin, which I suspect paled in comparison

Absolutely second jet blue. Make sure you book JetBlue PLUS as this includes a hold bag. My feeling is that prices are a bit like easyJet. Cheaper on issue and climb thereafter.

They have a rewards club. Join and get emails for sale updates.

[sunseeker100]

fabulous thanks both! will definatley look at jet blue, was previously just looking at delta so good to get other thoughts. will be our first time flying domestic in any country so have no idea really.