jcasale

We are beginning to plan a trip to Australia and New Zealand from Chicago in June 2006. Any thoughts on the best way to put together a flight package? We will need the international flights and would love to stick with American/Quantas since we have lots of miles with American. We will need some in country flights from Sydney to Cairns and maybe Darwin. And then we need to get to New Zealand. Will we need to come back to Australia to fly home? Are there operators who can get us a good rate on all of these flights? Just the one from ORD to Sydney and back (if we did it that way) would be about $1500 per person! Yikes!

lizF

I for one have no idea where ORD is so cannot comment.

ElendilPickle

The poster said they will be flying from Chicago, so I'm guessing ORD is O'Hare Airport.

I always wonder about those airport codes, too, and I notice a number of people use them on Fodor's.

At least I've figured that AKL = Auckland and SYD = Sydney!

Lee Ann

Neil_Oz

Most of the IATA codes are reasonably mnemonic, but ORD doesn't give much of a clue, does it? Canada's, which all start with 'Y', are the least decipherable - would you believe YYZ for Toronto?

jcasale

Yes, ORD is Chicago. Sorry about that. I have figured out that Qantas flies everywhere we need to get, but cannot for the life of me figure out how to find a far or book a trip that has so many legs to it. Any tips on how to go about this?

margo_oz

Well...now that we know where ORD is - can we use the Irish expression - If I was going there, I wouldn't start from here?

The Qantas websites are quite easy to use. You have a choice of their boomerang fare, which covers multiple legs and may be convenient. The reports are that it is cheaper to book a point to point fare, and book other legs separately. You can actually fly Qantas out of NZ (Auckland, anyway!) to LA. (that's AKL to LAX, you know!)

You may need to do a bit of a calculation on value.

Within OZ, look at VirginBlue or jetstar, as well as Qantas, unless gaining FF points is essential.

It seems you can no longer fly from Cairns to NZ, except via Brisbane - but that may open up NZ - you can fly in the S Island and leave via Auckland.

Advice - get on the mail list list for all relevant airlines, and look for special prices. Certainly this is worthwhile in OZ.

Prices direct Chicago to Sydney - dunno (ORD-SYD )

oliverandharry

This may be heresy, but have you considered a travel agent? If you don't want to spent time online doing it yourself, it can be inexpensive in the long run if you are working on lots of legs - and particularly if you are specific on when you have to leave, arrive, etc. That said, I'm a fan of Air New Zealand and Virgin Blue. I only fly ANZ going overseas from LAX. Quantas planes, especially in-country, are smaller and uncomfortable. Easily navigable websites and as others have mentioned, you can sign up for emails to learn about the deals. $1500 from Chicago to SYD in winter sounds like a pretty good deal to me - it's 1105 from LAX in that time period.

Barbara_in_CT

I did a round-trip including both Australia and New Zealand in June (2005) on United/Air New Zealand using United frequent flyer points. I booked our Australian domestic flights separately, using Virgin Blue on two legs and Jet Star on one. I'm sure that American will work with you to do something similar on the ORD to SYD route with a stopover on the way home in Aukland or Christchurch.

Once you have your timeline and flights booked, your trip will become less daunting. Don't forget to search this forum for great tips.

yiddishkopf

O Hare Airport has the designation ORD because its original name was Orchard Airport. It was renamed after WWII after a pilot named Butch OHare.

pb_and_j

I recently did a trip to Fiji/NZ/Australia with in-country flights in both NZ and Oz. The ONLY site I found I could enter in all our legs (and not have it crash) was Orbitz. It did NOT give good rates, but it was good to learn what flights were available on what days.
I took my itinerary and emailed a travel agent. I booked the flights only and was pretty happy with the rates ($2000 per person for 7 flights, no backtracking, roundtrip from LAX in June/July). I included a layover in southern California on the way out and back so I booked my flights to LAX on my own, which is easy to do.
I booked through swainaustralia.com
I think they work with AirNZ more than Quantas but you might want to contact them to at least find out competitive rates.

lizF

I think that if you did some research you would find that Qantas planes ( note it is spelt without the U ) have more room in them than the other domestic airlines i.e. Jetstar you cannot even recline the seats! Virgin Blue have about 20 odd extra seats in a 737 so that has to add up to less room per person.
They are also as large as or larger seating wise than Air NZ.
How do I know this for sure when comparing NZ with Qantas? It was printed in a magazine recently with the seating sizes and leg room. Perhaps those who think differently had an older aircraft which could have been different. Anyway I always go Qantas as at least they have a 100% safety record and that beats anything else.

lizF

PS The other great thing about Qantas is that they are making mega profits and are therefore not on the verge of bankruptsy therefore when you buy a ticket in advance you know that the airline will still be around to take you where you want to go.

jcasale

Thanks for all of the great hints. I had seen swain on an internet search at one point, I may try them after I have figured out the various legs. I suspect it will become a lot less daunting once we have that nailed down. Our trip this past summer to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana seemed like an impossibility until I started working with a travel agent who could put together the various flights and connections.

wally34949

I booked my international flights together. LAX to Auckland, Auckland to Melbourne, and Sydney back to LAX. I then booked the smaller domestic flights later when I was more sure of my dates. I added Orlando to LAX and Melbourne to Sydney (one way).

I would recommend checking prices on www.itasoftware.com as they will even tell you the fare code. Remember you can only book 11 months in advance on the Internet, but if you call Qantas, they should let you book 12 months in advance.

carolbookaholic

Check out planning your trip using Qantas Vacations. We booked our within Australia flights/hotels/some tours with them directly. They have Australia "experts" on hand to assist and I found them helpful. We used FF points for our flights to Australia but used Qantas Vacations for almost everything else. 1-800- 641-8772 Their website is www.qantasvacations.com

They also have a good brochure that I got ahead of time to help me decide on some places to visit, hotels they offered etc. I cross checked everthing with info from the internet travel forums as well before making final booking. We leave on 29th Sept!!!
Good luck & happy planning...

Wherenow

If you're using Qantas on frequent flyer points, I cannot stress enough - "book early" and if they say there are no seats, repeatedly call back. After two or three "no's" we found seats for the dates we wanted.

In Australia, we're using Virgin Blue and Jetstar. Try the Happy Hour Fares on Virgin Blue. Overall, fares are really pretty cheap....we picked up a $49AUS fare from Sydney to Melbourne and a $99AUS fare from Melbourne to Gold Coast...using the Happy Hr promotions on their website.

Tassietwister

We have paid for a relative to visit with us from Chicago and paid US$1200 from Chicago to Sydney with early Sept departure (shoulder season). You will find June is about the cheapest time to fly to Australia as it is our winter but maybe you need to wait closer to the time for discunted tickets.

We found the cheapest way was to go to the websites for the airlines, in this case United for ORD/LAX leg and then Qantas for LAX/SYD. The Sydney leg was $899 but it requires a midweek departure. There is one day a week that seems way cheaper than the rest, cannot recall if it is Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. For this same trip we had a quote from a travel agent for $1500 so a few hours playing around on websites saved $300 dollars! We also saw a great deal on travelzoo but were too slow to grab it.

For internal flights within Australia we booked through Virgin Blue for Tasmania and Far North Queensland. Once again to get the cheapest fares we had to play around with dates focusing on mid week or early morning departures. Total per pax for Tasmania return and Cairns return was about AUD$450.

All flights were purchased between 6 and 10 weeks prior to departure. However one can never know what may happen to cause prcies to fluctuate between now and early next year.

Geckolips

Did you have to go to baggage claim between airline flights and recheck your bag on the next airline? Sounds like a hassle if so.

Gardyloo

Qantas frequently offer "discover Australia" fare packages (or something similar sounding) that provide inexpensive intra-Oz flights; not sure about trans-Tasman, but worth checking out. Use Qantas.com, not an Orbitz etc., who likely will not know about it.

One routing to consider is ORD-HNL-SYD, riding the AA nonstop to Honolulu, overnighting, then continuing on Qantas' flight to Sydney. The stop in HNL (5 hrs time change from ORD, 4 more to SYD) really helps reset clocks, plus the HNL-SYD flight is in daylight, which (at least for us) is a godsend on such long segments, vs. the overnighters from LAX (or next spring, SFO.)

Qantas offer nonstops from Auckland to LAX, BTW.

You might even consider a round-the-world ticket. Highly complex, with rules not for the faint of heart, but fabulous value, plus you'll end up with a bunch of AA points, status, etc. I've put a description of some of the programs on my RTW blog/website, http://home.comcast.net/~gardyloo

Gardyloo

For instance, http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34687547