Reply to Help, how to book air tickets? on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 00:25:58 GMT

floppy — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 00:25:58 GMT

How to book depends on which airline you are traveling on. For LCC, it’s fairly straightforward. For FSC like SQ, MI, MH, it can be a little complicated.

For LCC, tickets are priced on either a origin-destination or per sector basis. Notwithstanding, you would most likely need to make 4 transactions (using KUL as an eg):
1. Father + girl : SIN-KUL x2
2. Father : KUL-SIN
3. Mother : SIN-KUL
4. Mother + girl : KUL-SIN x2
You don’t make much savings from booking a return trip on a LCC. I would advocate mixing and matching carriers eg AK, TR, 3K to serve your needs.

For FSC: tickets are usually priced on a O-D basis. You would most likely need to do one of the following, depending on the type of tickets you have bought:

Method A
1. Father + girl : SIN-KUL-SIN x2
2. Mother : SIN-KUL-SIN
Call airline or online change girl’s KUL-SIN sector to match mom’s return itinerary . May have to incur additional charges for the change. Mom can buy the no change allowed ticket if you want to save money.

Method B (if buying higher fare type)
1. Father + Mother + Child : SIN-KUL-SIN x 3
Call airline or online change to your heart’s content

Method C (if buying those tickets with no date change allowed)
1. Father : SIN-KUL-SIN
2. Daughter : SIN-KUL-SIN
3. Mother : SIN-KUL-SIN
Airline system will recognize girl as an unaccompanied minor (only works if she has passed her 5th birthday). Have to call airline to tag the reference or ticket to that of dad’s for SIN-KUL so that airline will group them together / assign seat next to one another. After getting to KUL, you can call airline to tag the return sector to the mom’s return itinerary.

Reply to Help, how to book air tickets? on Mon, 25 Feb 2019 23:49:22 GMT

sharonkhoo — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 23:49:22 GMT

Are you booking a budget airline? If you are, I think you may not save on booking return tickets, so booking 4 singles shouldn’t cost you more. If there are savings booking return tickets, then I think you should call the airline (whichever you are most likely to book with), and ask what your best options are since yours is a special case. Ideally, you probably want to book returns for the adults as that will be cheaper, but have the child only accompany the adult on 1 leg of each ticket. I have no idea if that can be arranged, but it’s worth asking.