Stop in the UK to cut your Europe-Asia flight costs down by 50%

The way that airlines determine flight prices is a mystery never to be understood by man.  Why was it $1000 cheaper for us to backtrack from Greece to the UK prior to heading to Taiwan?  Most likely this is due to London being a major transit hub. This part is somewhat logical, but if we were to purchase these same tickets, routing through London, via expedia.ca as Canadians it would also be $1000 more expensive than purchasing the ticket through the UK expedia, and this part confounds me

To make matters worse, a phone call to a major travel agency was met with the response that they cannot assist us with the purchase of a “UK-based” ticket, because they are a Canadian travel agency.  When I told them, I can simply go to the UK Expedia and purchase it myself I was told that they cannot help, and that I should go ahead and use Expedia.

Confused yet?  Thank goodness for Google Flights and its ability to cut through the airline games to secure us the best price on our tickets. (No this was not sponsored by Google, our blog isn’t that important.)  From our experience booking flights for this trip, Google flights, combined with diligence, is the single best way to save substantial amounts of money on your flights. Using expedia or other travel agency sites will not suffice, as Google aggregates their results across different countries’ travel sites as well as fares advertised directly by airlines.  

Great Google Flights Features

• “Explore Map” lets you explore the cost of travel to various destinations from your current location
• Tracked Prices – We used this religiously to monitor various flight combinations prior to booking

Missing Features

• When you’re flying all over the world, planning multi-city flights and looking for the cheapest options, a “reverse explore” feature would be handy.  By this, I mean the ability to enter in your destination and explore all the flight prices from various starting locations. I did this manually myself, and if you’re planning a multi-city journey, you will likely need to do this too.
  • Let’s consider the Asia portion of our trip.  We wanted to visit Taipei, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing, but didn’t have a strong preference in terms of order.  We quickly realize that Beijing is the most expensive leg of the journey, so the question is – should we fly from Taipei → Beijing, Tokyo → Beijing, Hong Kong → Beijing.  When you add different flight date options, this can become a lengthy search. For now, I haven’t found a better tool than Google flights, and some elbow grease.
• Another useful feature would be the ability to add multiple destinations without a defined order or travel dates, and then be provided with the lowest cost options
• Price Predictions – Some other travel sites offer this.  Based on historical data, an estimate as to whether the flight price will increase/decrease and how quickly.

TLDR

So if you want to save 50% or more on your flights to Asia from Europe, you should look at routing through London, and leverage Google Flights to find the best options.

The one perk, is that you can extend your stay in London for a few days and give the city a quick tour like we did.  Debbie and I had fun eating our way through London, but I won’t go into detail, as I don’t think we covered any particularly unique sites during this leg.  Some comments in the pics about where we visited.

Steak at La Fiesta in London.

Some fish and chips

One week before the wedding

Great breakfast near our flat in Brixton

Respect

The epic empty flight from Europe to Asia, full row for each passenger