1

I would not bother stressing about taxes and that, just check flights and how much they are, possibly more expensive due to having very few flight share options as well as higher taxes. Have you checked skyscanner.net ? I just looked at the end of June and found £747, but all the best options coming up require 2 stops. KLM quite often come up as a cheaper option. Flights are unlikely to get cheaper from now until June. Especially the end of June as this is the summer holiday period. I would advise booking the Dublin flight as soon as possible as prices will only rise and even just direct flights from London are more expensive than that.

2

UK airport and fare taxes are not that high! It's probably nothing to do with the taxes, more to do with that the airlines charge what people will pay, and when there is no competition on a route the price will be higher.

3

Doesn't the booking website you are using show you a breakdown of the fare as fare and taxes? Most do.

4

look at flying with Etihad or Emirates airlines from Dublin
or look at Manchester with above airlines
and fly Belfast to Manchester.
use .....SKYSCANNER.NET / for quotes.

5

Possibly high because you're trying to get it all on a through ticket from Belfast.

Try booking the Belfast leg separately and incorporating some of the suggestions above. Malaysian will often do the same price from Heathrow as Amsterdam so try a few different dates via Heathrow for comparison. Otherwise Dublin is probably a better starting point as it's more of a hub airport than Belfast.

You should be able to get a good bus fare to Dublin airport for your group if you book well ahead.

6

It's nothing to do with the air taxes, and everything to do with the fact that basically nobody really cares about someone flying from Belfast to Malaysia (because Belfast doesn't rate highly in the big scheme of things in the aviation world), so they'll charge you top dollar to make the effort to get you there. Also, short haul flights can get cancelled, so if you missed your long haul connection as a result, it would be quite an expense to the airline to put you up and feed you until the next long haul flight becomes available. Also, did you search for a quote out of Belfast City, or Belfast International?

Booking the flight independently (e.g. a seperate leg to a major hub, then a return out of there to Malaysia) is an option, but make sure you have a decent layover at the hub; if your flight ex Belfast to say Heathrow is delayed by 2 hrs causing you to miss your connection to Malaysia - if you have non transferrable flights for Malaysia you just lost them - although airlines can be quite nice about it usually.

To be honest, I'd hoof it down to Dublin and fly out of there with KLM, Lufthansa, Etihad, Emirates or BA. It's only a 1:40 drive, just round the corner...

7

I fly to the far east often from UK.

I use Kayak , and always my fares are in the 4 hundreds. And i fly usually with Etihad.

One trick i use sometimes in search the multrip function. If you do a flight say originating in Barcelona , Madrid , Vienna , Budapest , Warsaw etc to where you want to go then return back to UK they can be very cheap. Ive just booked Vienna-BKK-London ticket for £409 with Etihad airways. If i had done straight London roundtrip it was £670 , got myself a £30 London-Vienna ticket and im £230 in front and chose to have a night in Vienna

8

MANDRANDERSON,
Please give us an update ?

9

Phone the Malaysian sales and ticketing office in London and they'll be able to tell you which element of the trip is the issue and if you are flexible a day or so they'll probably be able to work around the issue and get you a similar fare.
I phoned them recently to get a fare to Sydney at Christmas because they hadn't released their dates for Jan 14 it ended up being heaps cheaper than Singapore who were the next best and then they sorted me with a side trip to Myanmar for 80 quid inc taxes from KL.

Don't get me wrong I used skyscanner to get to the best fares... just don't be afraid to go old school if the internet isn't telling you what you need to know.