GinnyJo

I will be buying flights for my husband and myself from Tampa to Auckland, New Zealand, for a cruise in mid February 2017. Our return flight will be out of Sydney in mid March, 2017.

What strategy do you suggest in looking for the most reasonably-priced flights? We have miles on American but probably not enough to cover both of us, and I understand there are few AA awards available to NZ/Australia.

Thanks!

Gardyloo

AA mileage seats to NZ/Australia aren't super hard to score in economy; if you want to ride in business class it's another story.

You could also purchase miles at around 2.5c apiece - sometimes they're on sale; just do the math and see if it works, taking into account that you can't always get the precise flights and dates you want.

That's the peak demand period for travel to/from Oz/NZ owing to summer holidays down under. I'd certainly wait a while before booking as prices are often not all that low when the booking window opens (11 months.) The airlines don't want to risk their own costs going up (e.g. fuel) in the meantime so they let you pay for their hedge, if you get my meaning. Monitor the situation using ITA - matrix.itasoftware.com/ - and if and when you see something that looks okay, pull the trigger.

A quick question, are you traveling overseas anywhere else between now and next February? There might be some possibilities of leveraging a cheaper fare to NZ or Australia if your year's travels started somewhere else.

GinnyJo

Thanks, Gardyloo. I don't have any other unbooked travel plans before then.

If I were booking award tickets on AA, does it make a difference if I book one-way tickets, or would a multi-city award ticket be better? Since I'll be leaving Sydney about a month after we fly to Auckland, I didn't know if I should be looking for one-way to Auckland and grab it as soon as it's available? ...or wait for a month and try for multi city.

Gardyloo

All AA awards are one way only, so book them when they're available.

If you can't get return tickets or the days don't work, you can cancel the reservation and reinstate your miles for a fee - something like $150.

Don't despair if something doesn't open right away. Mileage seats become available throughout the eleven month booking window, depending on how the airlines' computers decide the "revenue" booking process is going. They never sleep.

GinnyJo

I continue to do research on this and will follow your advice to hold off pulling the trigger too soon.

If AA awards don't work, I am Ok with buying tickets on any airline which offers a good price. Do you agree that I'm more likely to find a sale price on a round trip vs a multi city? If so, I could use an AA award ticket to get me one-way from Sydney to Auckland either at the beginning of the vacation or at the end. (The AA awards one way SYD to AKL are only 10K or 17K miles and seem pretty available.)

Do you think it’s more probable I’ll find a great price to Sydney than to Auckland?

And although I originate in Tampa or Orlando, I can always use very flexible southwest miles to get to LAX or SFO, if that’s where the sale flight originates.

Any thoughts? Thanks for your ongoing expertise!

Geordie

There are plenty of flights from Auckland to Sydney on airlines such as LAN Chile, Emirates, jetstar, Qantas, air nz, virgin, China airlines

Personally I use consolidators for the best prices especially for multi cities, maybe look at flight centre or Webjet which I think also operate in the us, I always speak to a sales person for the available options

Gardyloo

Well, I looked around a little and here's what I'd do.

Right now, round trips from MCO or TPA to AKL and back from SYD are running around $2600, but comparable itineraries from the west coast are only a couple of hundred dollars cheaper. I suspect both will probably go down in a few months, but as I said above you're talking about peak demand time for that part of the world, so I wouldn't be optimistic that they'll go down very much.

Now the exception to that would be to go up to New York and ride Emirates for around $1400 (out of JFK.) Now that's certainly cheaper, but you pay the price of a much longer trip - both in miles and hours - as you have to lay over in Dubai in both directions, and Emirates' coach is pretty cramped.

Then I looked at some premium economy alternatives. Note here I'm talking about "real" premium economy and not the "economy plus" offerings from US airlines, which is basically a few extra inches of knee room but otherwise no different from coach.

Right now you could get premium economy seats on Cathay Pacific, a terrific airline, from Chicago to Auckland, back from Sydney (both via Hong Kong) for around the same price as the economy tickets (around $2600) I mentioned above.

Here are a couple of reviews of Cathay's PE experience, for what it's worth -

http://landlopers.com/2014/06/09/cat...remium-economy
http://www.moretimetotravel.com/what...emium-economy/

That's a pretty good price for an excellent product, which I'd consider seriously. You could probably stop over in Hong Kong in one direction or the other at minimal extra cost. You'd use your Southwest points to get to Chicago (prices are similar for Cathay flights from JFK, LAX, Toronto or SFO) but you'd need to be sure you have enough time to make the connection, since Southwest doesn't cooperate with any other airlines on through tickets.

laurie_ann

Just a note if flying Southwest to Chicago to connect to international flight, the airport for arrival in Chicago on Southwest will be Midway, not O'Hare. It is certainly possible to shuttle between the two airports but they are not that close.

GinnyJo

Thanks, Gardyloo -- I'll look into this in detail. I am completely unfamiliar with non-US airlines so I very much appreciate this info.

Although the cruise starts in AKL on Feb 17, as we delve more into planning we are now favoring going to Sydney first, around Feb 8-10, to recover from jet lag and see some of Australia. We'd then fly one way SYD to AKL 2 days in advance of the cruise.

Do you think the prices are better for a straight roundtrip to SYD (from wherever in the US) than they would be for a multi city?

If there was a great advantage to purchase R/T AKL, then we’d start the vacation in AKL and tour Sydney at the end, and head back to AKL to fly back to the states.


Thanks Georgi; I am a newbie to travel in this part of the world.

Good point, Laurie_ann about Chicago airports; used to live there so I'm familiar with it and also familiar with the infamous winter weather

wally34949

Fiji Airways flies from LAX to Nadi and on to Auckland and Sydney. I flew them a couple of times. You may want to do an overnight in Los Angeles.

Also Emirates out of Orlando flies to Dubai and have a partnership with Qantas. During high season, I have spoken to many people who have flown east including myself who flew with British Airways. The ticket was $2,000 during the Christmas New Year's holiday. I got a lot of FF miles so do sign up.