kafka001

We would like to fly from Sydney to New York then on to Paris, returning from Rome. What is the best (i.e. cheapest) way of booking? Round-the-world, multiple destinations? Could we book Sydney to New York then back from Rome and book the New York to Paris flight from an American site (assuming that New York to Paris is cheaper when booked from an American site than from an Australian one). We would only want to spend about a week in New York and I have found that booking all the flights from Australia adds about $3000 to the total airfare.

DonTopaz

You could indeed book this as separate tickets. However, a good deal for you might be a round-the-world fare on the OneWorld alliance called the Global Explorer. If your trip originates in Sydney, this fare lets you travel up to 26,000 miles for AU$2963 (US$2742), plus fees/taxes. You would fly on QANTAS from SYD to JFK, American from JFK to CDG, British from Paris to Rome (via London), and Cathay Pacific from Rome to Sydney (via Hong Kong). You'd purchase the ticket through QANTAS.

mrwunrfl

You have a lot of options to try. I would start at a travel agent site and use NYC for New York.

I would start with a search for a multi-city ticket without the stopover in New York and then add NYC to see the difference in price.

I just did a check on Qantas. First search for an open-jaw (multi-city) ticket SYD to Paris (CDG) and Rome (FCO) to SYD and got a price of AUD 2007.

That was for November 5 to November 19, just to get an idea of a price that didn't include NYC.

Next search I added JFK-CDG on the 12th, and searched for a ticket SYD-JFK-CDG, FCO-SYD. Price is AUD 2927 (slightly better than the rtw price)

The result actually shows flying to New York (LGA) and from Newark (EWR). That is, it did an NYC search and not just JFK. EWR-CDG is a BA number but a nonstop operated by Open Skies.

Next option would be a multi-city search SYD-NYC, FCO-SYD. Then a one-way search for NYC-CDG, which was your idea, but I think that second, one-way, ticket will drive up the price to be higher than the open-jaw-with-stopover price.

Rastaguytoday

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've read, LGA does not allow flights in or out to be longer than 1500 miles.

mrwunrfl

That might be the case.

What I didn't mention was that the routing is via DFW. IIRC, it was QF for SYD-DFW and then AA for DFW-LGA.

FCO-SYD is via Dubai, I didn't notice which carrier did the FCO-DBX segment.

mrwunrfl

It just surprised me that using "New York (JFK)" produces results for EWR/LGA/JFK, which was what I really wanted, NYC not just JFK.

NeoPatrick

The only flights LGA allows over 1500 miles are flights to and from Denver which is a little over 1600 miles. They also allow flights longer than 1500 miles on Saturdays -- but I'm not sure how many of those there are.

Improviser

There is no 'best' way kafka. On any given day you might find one better than another but the next day the opposite might be true. Dynamic pricing means that trying to find the cheapest airline ticket is like trying to predict the cheapest day to fill up the fuel tank on your car.

Looking for the cheapest airline ticket is a common goal. What you have to realize is you can only look for what is cheapest TODAY. Tomorrow is literally a whole new ball game.

So sure, compare one way against another if you want and see which is better today but then book it and forget about it.