So electric about finally going to Japan, for months I have been researching "A.C.T. of travel"; Accommodation, Communication and Transport.
Will get to A and C in later posts perhaps, but what was really remarkable how much money I saved in T, Transport. like BD200 (U$500) in the Air ticket alone!
The basic idea is that we have awesome air carriers here in the GCC, Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad. And the optimum situation is when aggressive companies eager for growth are adjacent to each other; COMPETITION!
So I found out that traveling by Qatar Airways from Dubai DXB, is way cheaper than flying Emirates from Dubai AND flying Qatar from Doha DOH. Stop here and think about it, taking a Qatar Airways flight from DXB-> DOH + DOH->TYO is cheaper than DOH->TYO alone! mind boggling!
(TYO is the Airport code for TOKYO, BOTH Narita NRT and Haneda HND, so if you dial in TYO you can search for flights to both airports at the same time ;) )
To an extent the other way around works too, Taking Emirates from DOH->DXB->TYO is cheaper than Qatar from DOH->TYO alone, and DXB->TYO!!
And the best part? all the combinations above are cheaper than BAH->TYO! ^____^
let me give an example with numbers, although note that this was between January and April 2014 to travel at the end of June 2014, but still valid to an extent till now (will update with new numbers soon).
BAH->NRT $1540 (quite an absurd number)
DOH->NRT $778 on Emirates
DXB->HND $809 on Qatar
Actually I took a DOH->KIX, KIX is Osaka's international airport because my meetings start there and it was $762! I wanted to delay activating my rail pass, by landing at Osaka instead of Tokyo then taking the train to Osaka, but will leave the details to another post as I saved another awesome some with the Railpass!
In fact, in mid march Emirates DOH->NRT was down to $666 once! Thats less than HALF the ticket from Bahrain .. O_o!
Of course you would need to go to DXB or DOH from BAH and thats like this:
To Doha:
BAH-> DOH is $124 on British Airways
BAH-> DOH can be as low as $140 with Qatar if they have an offer goin on
To Dubai:
BAH->DXB is $200 on Emirates
BAH->DXB is $135-160 on FlyDubai
*In the case of FlyDubai you need to take a 5 minute/AED40/US11 Taxi from -now renovated- Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 where Qatar fly's.
I never knew about this, but I stumbled upon it when I used SeatGuru.com, I went there to lookup which aircraft/airline combination had best seats that suggested "near by airports"
I knew when I was supposed to be there, so I gave in a window of prior dates that I might travel on (you know the +/- 3 days you may choose when looking online),
In an nutshell, Use SkyScanner and a Japan Railway Pass, stay tuned about the latter
