Booking Engines
I bit off subject I know but it would appear the airlines were knew what could / would happen well before we did.
I'm trying to get back to the UK from DXB on Tuesday next! Yeah well one lives in hope
Using the EK booking engine early yesterday - all flights were blocked out for days next week, thought it was a glitch & gave up. BA was also showing prices in the stratosphere (like the ash) & the rest were either zero availability or silly prices right through next week.
Now conclude what I thought was a glitch (or some event I didn't know of) was obviously known about by the airlines well before Joe Public.
Now, checking all the other main players sites (BA, GF, QR, VS etc) everything is zero availability until at least Monday (GF) & eye watering fares thereafter; for pretty obvious reasons.
So I tried KLM & Air France all of which came up with quite sensible fares if I gave my (real) destination as BRS, but very much the same result as LHR if I gave CDG or AMS as my destination. From this it appears changing fares on a website on a point to point basis is relatively easy but (assume) the problems start with connections.
Just for the record the solution to my problem was a one way LoCo Air Arabia to ATH and EZY to LGW about 1/8 of the normal cost (well plus a hotel in ATH)