I recently was in Montréal (QC), Canada, and I strolled about the
Quartier Chinois (China-Town). I saw a couple of travel agencies
advertising, in their windows, Montréal-Tokyo(jp) plane tickets for a
price of around 900. I don't say 900$ because the currency remained
unspecified, though I guess it'll be in CDN$. I didn't have time to
stop and ask.

Now, I only need an answer to either of these:
-- Find a site (legitimate site with published contact information,
not the site you got in your spambox last week that advertises
round-the-world tickets for 9.99$) with web-published prices for
round-trip Montréal-Tokyo plane tickets for around 900-1000$
CDN ?


-- Were those incredibly inexpensive tickets one-way air tickets, or
round-trip ? In other words, could I have walked in there, paid around
900$ + tax, have my round-trip flight, return from it and be
satisfied, or is there a big catch ?


Thanks

---

Clarification of Question by hernick-ga on 22 Jun 2002 15:46 PDT

To clarify, I'm looking for fares in the sub-1000$ CDN range. That's
fares below $650 USD. Must be round-trip.

Hi,

I found a round trip airplane ticket for 1437.63 USD which is not that
fare from what you've mentioned.

To find it I've typed the words Montreal Tokyo airline tickets . Then
I clicked on the link: Cheap airline tickets for domestic airfares or
international ... Then on the link: Montreal Canada. Then I've written
the cities and dates. Then clicked on "do my search now" and finally
on "find flights".

Another search: I went to the site www.expedia.co.uk and asked for
airline tickets with a departure from Montreal and an arrival in Tokyo
and selected dates. Then I clicked on search . After I chose one
airport in Montreal and said all airports for Tokyo, I chose any
airlines. I finally clicked on "search now" and got the price of
1484.09 USD which is close from what I got with my first search.

I highly recommend you to visit the site www.virtualtourist.com It's a
site where you can find a lot of addresses of site to look for
airplane tickets, you can find all kind of useful informations for
your trip and also ask questions to someone who lives where you planed
to go...

Hope all this information does help you!

Sabine-ga.

It is clearly mentionned, in my answer clarification dated 22 Jun 2002
(4 days before the answer), that "I'm looking for fares in the
sub-1000$ CDN range. That's fares below $650 USD. Must be round-trip"

1437.63$ USD isn't ANYWHERE CLOSE ! It's twice the price..

The answer is basically worthless, it's easy for anybody to go on
expedia and get that kind of price.

Two points:

1. There are normal published airfares for about US$1050 available on
a variety of airlines, including Continental, American, Delta, JAL,
and Air Canada. Go to Travelocity's best fare finder (or visit any of
these airlines' web sites).

2. Airlines typically offer consolidator or unpublished airfares to
lower-income travel agencies to induce those passengers to fill up the
seats. This is typical in many lower-income ethnic neighborhoods. (In
many parts of NY, there are such fares advertised for trips to Latin
America.) These consolidator tickets are fine -- but be sure to ask
for detailed information about the airline you're flying, what fare
class you're in, and what the refund or change policies are, because
typically they are more stringent than normal published airfares.

If you have access to a Quebec newspaper or a national Canadian
newspaper (such as the Globe and Mail), check the small ads in the
travel pages.  You'll probably find similar fares.  Last time I flew
internationally I bought consolidator tickets for half the regular
discount fare.  Such consolidator fares typically will be
nonrefundable, and you may have limited flights available, but they
are legitimate.

Oh, and the fares probably won't include taxes, which can add $100 U.S.

Low-season fares can indeed be under C$1000 -- but you don't specify dates.

Take a look at this page, for example:
http://www.jtbi.ca/jtbi_html/html/jtbi-discount.html

Round trip fares start at C$919 ...

Well, from the comments I got pretty much the information I'm looking for. 

Thanks !

You never mentioned *when* you are going to be travelling, which makes
a HUGE difference.  Around late Fall, you might see prices around what
you are asking for.  Also, you can usually get prices like that around
March-April. I usually get airfares around $500USD in March/April from
American Airlines.  Right now, not only do you have Japanese busy
holiday season coming up (August), but you have the World Cup stuff
going on.  You'd be lucky to find cheap tickets.  There are cheap
local places that will give you prices like that, but they usually add
a lot of hidden charges or the seats are either horrible or standby.

I did find prices at $1085 (including Tax) on both COntinental
Airlines and American Airlines.

Go to http://travel.yahoo.com and click on the flights tab at the top.
 Then, type in YUL as departing airport and NRT as the arriving
airport (I declined to search Tokyo Haneda as it is only used for
local Japanese flights).  Then, just say that your dates are flexible
and do a search.  The cheapest tickets shown are in Late October
through early December.

By the way, did you only budget $650 USD for the ticket?  If you
budgeted for a place to stay in Tokyo, don't budget more than $50 USD
a night.  There are several nice ryokans (which are really clean and
comfortable) that you can stay in for around $50 a night.  Just go to
the JNTO webpage  at http://www.jnto.go.jp  They have a list of
welcome inns.  That way, maybe you can allow more money for a plane
ticket.

Also, if you are only going to stay in Tokyo, don't buy the Japan
RailPass.  It's a complete waste of money if you do.  You can buy day
passes for JR lines for 710 Yen a day.  You can also buy a day pass on
the subways for 700 yen a day.