WHB Budapest Trip Message 1

Dear All WHB members who have selected attending,

First of all let me congratulate you on your potential participation in this once in a lifetime trip. The message that follows is quite long but is fairly important regarding the organisation of the trip and keeping costs at a minimum. We really need you to read the message carefully and provide some sort of response. Even if your response is “I don’t care just book something” or a simple “yes I agree” or you wish to enter into a debate over a certain aspect. If you don’t provide some input we may book something that you cannot attend/are not prepared to pay for, which would not be ideal.

The first thing we need to know is that everyone on the attending list (that’s us guys!) is definitely attending and has paid some money (at least £50) into the account or has made arrangements to do so very soon. If you haven’t and you don’t think you will be paying in anytime soon then it would be very helpful if you could remove yourself from the attending list and let us know. This will help us to avoid booking more flights than is necessary and keep the chance of cancellation fees to a minimum. You can always change your mind at a later date and cover the cost yourself without paying into the group account. No biggy.

You may notice that I have posted a lot of information on the event wall regarding flight departures/destinations and associated costs. Here I aim to outline clearly the things we need to consider before any booking, options that we are presented with (in terms of flying to Budapest), my opinions on each option and in turn hopefully gather your opinions on the whole scenario:

As a search for flights outward on the weekend beginning 15^th September (I only used this date as an example, this is not necessarily the holiday date) I came up with the following as basic cost for return flights:

Birmingham – Budapest return. Flight time 5hrs, 1 change over, cost :£155
Luton – Budapest return. Flight time 2hrs 25min, direct flight. cost: £88

The Birmingham flights seem relatively fixed at £155 or above, but with the right combination of days I found that could get Luton flights down to around £77 return. So as a basic pricing we have Brum=Approx. £154, Luton=Approx. £77-£88.

The first really important thing to consider is that as aeroplanes get closer to capacity (ie the closer you get to departure date) the price per seat becomes more expensive. For this reason it really is imperative that you have filled in the google docs spreadsheet and gave us a good idea of any dates that you aren’t available for. Then we can establish a suitable week and start working towards booking flights ASAP to keep costs to a minimum. 

Certain days are more expensive to fly on than others (depending on how full flight already is, amongst other things). For this reason I think choosing 5 days as the trip length would help because it would allow us to try a different combination of departure and return dates within the preferred week. This would mean we could find the cheapest combination and roll with that, rather than being stuck with whatever the price is from sat 15^th returning sat 22^nd (for example).

Although flights from Birmingham take almost twice as long they do have the benefit of including one piece of hand luggage and one piece of luggage in the hold, in the per person price. Flights from Luton include an item of hand luggage (which I believe they are quite strict on the size and weight of) but any baggage in the hold costs an extra £30 per bag. I still think that Luton would be the best option as the flight would be quicker and direct so no chance of complication at change-over or missing the connecting flight and incurring extra costs for new flights.

My thinking regarding Luton is as follows, we basically have 3 options.

1)  To book 1 flight and 1 piece of checked in luggage each (at cost of £30 per bag). This would bring total cost of flying per person to range of £107 - £118 (depending on prices at time of booking). I think this is the best option as it makes absolutely certain that everyone has plenty of baggage allowance to pack for 5 days (for example).

2) To book 1 flight each and 1 piece of large checked in luggage for every two people (i.e. 12 people = 6 bags). If going for 5 days this might be manageable as I doubt we would need a lot of luggage each really. But, we would have to sort out who was taking a big bag and others place their smaller bags inside at the airport and there could be issues if one person packs loads more than others and might occur extra charges at airport where checking in bags costs twice as much (at £60 per bag). This would add £15 per person, rather than £30 and would bring total cost of flying to range of £92-£103 per person (depending on prices at time of booking).

3) Tell everyone to be very careful with what they pack and make sure it is within the size restrictions of easyjet hand luggage. The only way I can see option being workable is if we bring along two big bags to use for everyone’s football kit and check these in. It might be pushing it though, to fit everything you want into hand luggage and buying extra check in at the airport (if they say hand luggage is too big/too heavy) costs double at £60 per bag. This option would only add £60 to the total bill and would bring cost of flying up to around £82-93 per person.

So on flights; Birmingham is a longer journey, with the added complication of catching a connection, at a cost of approximately £155. Luton is a direct flight, taking half the time at a cost of £77-£88 with no baggage (other than hand luggage), but more realistically somewhere between £107-£118 if we check in a piece of luggage each. So even at its most expensive Luton could be 40-50 pounds cheaper to fly from. My opinion is that flying from Luton with the extra £30 for a bag each (option 1 of the 3 above) is the best, least complicated and most fool-hardy option. No chance of missing connection, no chance of extra charges, everyone knows what they’re taking and personally responsible for whether or not it fits within the weight restrictions for luggage etc.

To Summarise, the following key points are things I regard as essential;

·        Everyone complete spreadsheet re: dates.

·        Everyone suggest a preferred holiday length.

Then we can set about:

·         Checking options for flights within appropriate week, for appropriate length of time. I will compare prices again and post options to all attending.

·         Confirming that exact dates for departure/return are suitable and reach a general consensus on which flight deal is better.

·         Book flights.

·         Once this is done, we will have an exact date for the holiday and we will have made sure that we got the flights before prices rise too much. We can then set about searching for cheapest accommodation deals to suit our exact dates.

If you could, AT THE VERY LEAST, respond to the message with an indication of your preferred trip length (anything from 4-7 days has been mentioned) then that would be fantastic, I was going to create a poll for this but I don’t think you can as the page is an “event” and not a “group”. If you want to voice any thoughts on which flight options look best at the minute that might also help, but remember prices could be completely different if it takes too long to reach a firm agreement on a date.

Once again, sorry for the length of this message but if we want this to happen then the sooner we pick a date and book flights the better. If we take too long cost will increase, simple as that really.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I look forward to you input. (Sort of).

Yours in We Hate Ben-ship,

John Warren