Flights
Getting to Australia from North America or Europe is long and expensive, especially if you are trying to go to Australia during their summer holiday season and the height of our winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Here is the advice we have about getting to Australia.
Award Tickets
Many people save for years, just with the intention of using their frequent flyer miles to go to Australia, but only to be disapointed when it comes time to use the miles.
For us, I traveled every week for 5 years between Denver and LA so I had over 700,000 miles when we went to book our trip. For most airlines then open the seats on their flights between 330-365 days before the flight. The first day our ticket was to be available I went online to book our trip and was able to book a Saver seat from Denver to Sydeny, but the return ticket was outside of the available range. I then waited the three weeks until our return ticket was available, but then there was no availability for the outbound ticket with Saver points. So it is practically impossible to book your ticket with Saver points because one leg of your trip will not be available. Here are couple of strategies around this:
- Book Multiple Tickets-If you have enough miles in your account, you book the outbound flight you want and another inbound flight. When the inbound flight you want becomes available book that and then call the airline to have them put it together in the correct itinerary. (Be sure to check with your airline about their policies about returning miles)
- Book Non-Saver Tickets-This is what we decided to do because of wanting to sit business class for our honeymoon. It hurts to burn 440,000 miles, but we were able to pick the exact flights and get the exact seats we wanted. The airline we used was charging $20,000 a seat for the same tickets, so we looked at as getting $40,000 worth of value.
- Book in Economy and Upgrade with Miles-Another option that maximizes your miles is to book an economy ticket and use your miles to upgrade your ticket. The amount is usually less than a Saver ticket for the full duration. One thing to keep in mind when booking your ticket is make sure that you buy an upgradeable ticket. Often, if you purchase the lowest fare ticket, airlines do not let you upgrade your seats. The cost of an upgradeable ticket is usually about $50-100 extra per ticket.
If you have any question about how to best utilize your miles, feel free to e-mail us at:
Paying for Your Flight
If you do not have the luxury of a huge bank of frequent flyer miles, one of the best tools I have found for buying tickets is kayak.com. This site searches multiple sites for you at one time and allows you to change the dimesions easily to see the impacts. Another thing to look at is the cost of buying a Quantas ticket that includes your inter-Australia transfers. Unfortunately, tickets to Australia are never too cheap, so it is unlikely you will find a ticket for under $1000. If you do, jump on that ticket as fast as you can.
Australia Air Pass
Australia like the United States is extremely spread out. It takes a long time to travel between the major cities even on an airplane (Sydney to Perth is over a 5-hour flight). Both VirginBlue and Quantas offer Air Passes to non-Australian citizens. You have to book the airpass before you arrive in Australia, but they allow for changes with no fees if you make the changes through their websites. We booked a VirginBlue Airpass and got a total of six flight for two people for about $750. The catch is they are fanatical about the weight of the luggage, so make sure to pack light or pay through the nose.
There are links to both VirginBlue and Quantas airpasses on the Links page.
