Staggering Flight Costs
This weekend I have been trying to finalise my flight bookings and the problem is the Dubai leg. This is a must do stop over as this is a 3 day exercise to open my new bank account and arrange my crypto off ramp. The plan was to do this part of the trip first and then fly on to the UK to visit my mother who is not well.
I had a price in my head of around R25K ($1.5) and boy was I way out and the cost without going flashy and basic economy was R52K or $3K per ticket. This is astronomically high and is just ridiculous and one of the reasons why I have avoided Emirates flights in the past. Not only is Dubai out of the way as when flying to Europe you are basically flying in a easterly direction away from your destination. A 10 hour direct flight becomes a 19 hour flight with a 4 hour stop over. Why anyone not needing to fly to Dubai uses this airline makes very little financial sense.
The crazy part is I can fly from Johannesburg return to Dubai and the price is R12K ($700) so the additional flight to the UK is where the big money is and is R40K or ($2.3K) for that leg of the trip. Why it is nearly 3.4 x more expensive is the crazy part.
If I book this Dubai trip as one trip and the UK trip later in October flying directly I can fly on a return ticket for as little as R11K ($600) and is a R30K saving ($1.7K) and makes more financial sense. I have no problem sitting in economy if I am saving $85 per hour over the 21 hour combined return flight times.
Airline flights have increased so much since covid and even since last year when I flew to Paris and the UK. At the time we priced Emirates and they were expensive, but not this expensive. What is worrying is if this price inflation of airline tickets continues at this rate then how can we afford to fly in 5 years time.
The Rand Dollar rate has not changed much over the last 12 months and can only imagine once it does start to depreciate how bad things will become. Mt brother in law is flying to the States in December on business and his ticket is R45K ($2.6K). The difference is this is being paid for by his company so this is a tax write off. Going forward this is the answer and why having a good accountant is vital as my entire trip would be paid for or at worst a 40% rate.
My mother will have to wait until October before I can visit which will save me enough to visit her maybe three more times just from these savings. Right now I have no choice and under time pressure to open a Dubai bank account as my UK account closes on the 6th October. Having the off shore bank account up and running this month knowing this has been sorted is what needs to happen first and I cannot justify $3K per ticket besides all the other costs.
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Definitely have to pick your spots when it comes to flights. We try to book way, way in advance.
Not only did airline tickets become more expensive after COVID, but even our local transportation costs increased as well. During the pandemic, the minimum fare was raised, yet it never went back to normal even after restrictions were lifted and full seating capacity was restored.
This happened everywhere and those companies are taking advantage of whatever they can these days. The world is not the same place it was 5 years ago.
On top of that, quality of service has PLUMMETED since the Covid fiasco.
Services disappeared and those that do exist charge a high price so you are screwed.
That IS pretty crazy and amazing the time and cost it is taking because the one account is closing and the unknown amount of people that are possibly having to go through the same or similar things.
Funny I also thought of that how many people are doing exactly what I am doing. The choices for an off shore account are limited if you don't have 100K GBP lying around being the minimum amount/balance for opening an account. Dubai was one of a few options and bringing money back to SA was never an option due to depreciation of the local currency.
Sorry to hear that sir. Come to the US. Domestic flights in the US are at rock bottom prices.
There's a good reason that US flights are at rock bottom prices. Immigration is currently more stringant than North Korea. And I have actually visited North Korea.
We need to kick all the foreigners out. Every last one. My country isn't a jobs program for the third world.
You said come visit as the airfares are low. I gave you the reason why. I wasn't playing politics. Just stating a real world fact based on experience. You then responded with a second reason that the air fairs are low. Not the friendliest place for foreigners.
Hive is an example of there being no borders with cash for all. It works because we are not at each others throats over irrelevant things like nationalism.
Nationalism is the most relevant thing. Visiting is completely different from moving here and living off our welfare system like Somalis and Indians do.
There was no pre-life where we were given choices regarding
None of those things matter on Hive.
I don't care. I protect my tribe. The Jews are trying to exterminate us by flooding our lands with Third World savages.
You care enough to take affront about the reality of the world. There are consequences to any action. At the moment you are displaying quite admirably why visitors would not want to visit. Take a step back and chill. We are all guests here.
This land is mine.
voting your comments here for being a voice of reason, lol
Thanks. That does my vanity and wallet no end of good. :D
Incidentally. You say on your posts that you like conspiracy theories. Try Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. It is the great grand-daddy of conspiracy theories. Eco was a professor at Bologna University in Italy so he had a lifetime of study to draw from. Its first few chapters are a difficult read but it becomes a rabbit hole quite quickly as it draws on real events and real secret societies. I was drawn to it because one of the Universities I went to was on the same grounds as a Templar church. It is bizarre inside. Around the corner is a very big and old Masonic Temple. Again utterly bizarre as it is a monument to secret societies and privilege.
Thank you! I've heard of it but never read it. I'll try to find it.
Well it's on Amazon but I'm sure there is a freebie version of it on the internet. If you buy a copy get a hardback copy as it's a HUGE book and even new softcovers will fall to pieces before you finish. 2nd hand hardback versions are fine.
There is always stuff that we can agree on ....we just have to look .....although a beer makes for good oil.
You're right! Thanks again.
Internal flights are cheap but the flights going to the US are not so cheap. family are flying in December for business conference and is costing them nearly $3K each flying economy class.
Ouch!
Don't be weary, you will make it God willing.
God willing... 😳
This is why we only do Road trips now. I haven’t flown since 2006.
But I have seen every square inch of Ontario, New York, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. 😂 … mostly by water
If I could travel on land/water I would as I am no fan of flying, but where I live we are miles from anywhere stuck at the bottom of Africa.
so beautiful places
Everything you said is true. I don't know that when something becomes more expensive, it has to come with services. But I don't see anything different!😁😤
Price does not improve the service and eventually that becomes the normal price for that service.
Wow, that is a super expensive flight. Is it always that expensive going through Dubai or is it cheaper if you buy far in advance? I remember going to Dubai from Rome in 2019 and it was only a few hundred dollars. I have a flight coming up for my sister's wedding, and I will be going to the US from Vietnam, tickets were about $900 a piece roundtrip. Admittedly, this is quite a good price compared to some of the other flights we could have chosen, but we do go through Taipei, so hopefully nothing happens with China anytime soon. I hope your mother feels better, and that you can find a way to see her without breaking the bank.
The Dubai route from Dubai to London is the expensive part because we are stopping over in Dubai for 4 days sorting out a new bank account and off ramp for crypto. I would fly direct to the UK normally as I hate wasting hours using longer flights. It sucks having to do separate trips, but it makes more financial sense to fly back here from Dubai and travel to the UK next month. My mother has a condition that sees her deteriorating slowly and there is no cure so we know the time lines.
I am sorry to hear about your mother. Hopefully you can at least get everything sorted out nicely with the bank. Sometimes, I am able to find cheaper flights when I make a detour somewhere else on the way, maybe there is another city between Dubai and UK that is less expensive to stop through. It might sound counterintuitive to stop somewhere else to save money, but I have gotten some crazy deals doing this, and it can be a nice excuse to visit a place you hadn't expected to see.
No unfortunately this will not work and is cheaper to fly back to SA and then fly next month direct to the UK.
Damn, that is annoying. Hopefully you won't have to return to Dubai after this trip.
Have you tried flying into Europe, say Paris or AMS and do a short haul flight into UK? I heard previously, UK flights are expensive because of the landing fees and airport taxes. That way you could even fly direct to your local airport if you're far away from London. It's another leg, but could work out a lot cheaper
Thanks. All sorted as I am flying to Dubai and no way around that part as I need to open a Dubai bank account as expats are no longer allowed to have a UK bank account due to Brexit regulations. I will book a second trip next month and will fly Air France so it will save around R60K which is roughly 2.8K GBP.
Damn Brexit!
Yes. This makes sense now why the bank refused to renew my credit card 3 years ago as they knew this time was coming. I only found out on the 27th of last month and have 5 weeks to find another account elsewhere. I can open an expat account with a UK bank, but they want a minimum account holding of 100K GBP. This is why I selected Dubai as it is easy to open an account with out all the games being played.
The flight costs these days are getting more expensive
!BBH
I have not tried Emirates, but I heard that it is quite expensive
Only choice I have flying to Dubai and if there was another airline I would have definitely checked.
It's crazy how expensive tickets are getting. Get well soon, Mom.
Yes sadly once they go up they never seem to come down and many normal people are being priced out of international travel.
Lowering the rewards a bit here, normally I wouldn't on one off posts but seeing the stuff happening with xeldal at the 6 day mark really puts you into a top author for unknown reasons given your content does not really get consumed that much overall. No offense.
No offense taken and was expecting the rewards to be adjusted lol. I have never been in trending before at the top so it was pretty cool to see it happen. I think it is more about consistency covering various topics and many topics on real life happenings occurring in my business life.
not sure what one could do about the xeldal situation though, seems he's always out there looking to make things weird with his curation, lol
Not going to complain as at least it helps my account grow and I am on hive for the long term so no power downs planned besides swapping to HBD and back to hive when we see the end of this cycle.
sure, it's great, it just kind of makes things weird for other authors in terms of fairness
like say if I did this for a handful of other authors with ocdb or something, there would be so many accounts running to upvote them on day 1 just to get higher curation rewards because greed is quite deep here, even when it's accounts like bdvoter keeping a high fee of a free delegation and always dumping it like they're trying to increase their countries gdp