Air Fare - How Book?
 

From LA I want to fly into Christchurch, NZ, then fly back from either Cairns or Brisbane (or Sydney if I really have to). So far the cheapest quote I got was almost $2,000 per person! <BR><BR>Does anyone have advice on how to book this so it would be considered a &quot;round trip&quot; and therefore be more reasonable? I don't want to pay this much. I would think there could be certain flights to Sydney that stop in NZ (at least Aukland) so for the first leg of my trip I just wouldn't use that part of the ticket.<BR><BR>Advice on how to do this in a reasonably economical way? And the flight is long enough so I didn't really want to be flying back and forth, double tracking my steps if I don't have to.<BR><BR>Thanks as always for your help!<BR>Joni

Qantas has a service from LA to Auckland where you could stop over before going on to Sydney. <BR>I don't think you will get from LA into Christchurch so you will have to look at alternatives as flying within NZ is expensive.

Joni I did this last March. I flew from LA to Auckland for my authorized stopover via Qantas. Then got a OneWorld round trip ticket between Christchurch &amp; Auckland (Boomerang will work if you can't purchase a OneWorld travel ticket, however a OneWorld pass is cheaper). Continued from Auckland to Sydney eventually returning to the USA flying out of Cairns with my authorized open jaw. Qantas allowed me to do this at no cost even through I still had to change planes in Sydney. In essense Cairns become our authorized return flight point vice Sydney. I booked my flights over the telephone through Qantas in their US location which is in Tucson, AZ.<BR>

<BR>Joni,<BR>Sounds like you've got some good advice here. I'll mention that your original plan of not using the second leg of your outbound trip (i.e. the NZ -&gt; SYD flight) is probably not a good idea. If you did that, then you might find that your reservations for your return trip have been cancelled. And you might end up paying the $2000 price or more.<BR>

Joni,<BR> My advice would be first, as the last poster said, DO NOT just skip one leg of your flight, the airline will cancel the rest of your reservation automatically and you will find yourself in a bad position. One way I can see to do the itinerary you want economically is the following:<BR>-Buy a roundtrip flight from LA to Sydney, with a permitted stopover in Auckland (when I flew to Australia on Air New Zealand I was allowed to do this for a slight charge over the regular international ticket, Qantas likely has a similar option). If you are a student (I noticed your email address was from UCSD) or are under 25, you can get a student ticket from STA travel (find the phone # at www.statravel.com) which sometimes has lower prices than regular tickets and much more liberal change/refund policies (but make sure to check both their fare and the regular one in case there's a big regular sale going on). My ticket through them was about $1000 for travel in March.<BR>-Go to www.airnewzealand.co.nz (make sure to go here, not to the USA Air New Zealand website, the prices are different). Book online a roundtrip ticket Auckland to Christchurch as an express fare (a one way ticket was $109NZ, about $60US, round trip is probably a little more).<BR>-Take your international leg from Auckland to Sydney (the 2nd part after your permitted stopover).<BR>-Get the cheapest flights within Australia (i.e. to Cairns and back if that's where you're going). This should be reasonable as well. Check both Boomerang fares and fares on the Qantas Australia website (often within the country they have special sales, like ANZ did in NZ described above).<BR>-Take your return flight from Sydney to LA<BR><BR>I think you should be able to do this all for less than $1500 if you plan it carefully. You'll have to do internal flights within both countries most likely no matter what b/c most international flights to LA only leave from Auckland or Sydney, not Cairns, Brisbane or Christchurch. Good luck, hope this helps!<BR>-Nicole