Qantas flights - when best time to buy

GiJo

Hubby and I have now sorted out our itinerary for our trip to Oz next Oct/Nov. We will be flying with Qantas so wondered if anyone out there could tell us the best time to buy our air tickets? Should we wait for a "sale" or buy them as soon as possible in case the price rises? We don't want to wait until "last minute" as our dates are not flexible.

Thanks in advance

GiJo

Bump - anyone please?

welshnige

Personally I would not take the chance with your dates not being flexible. I note that you prefer Qantas air but check out this website for offers to Aus

https://www.austravel.com

Hope that helps

Katykat

is it imperative you fly Qantas? If you book with them, you will more than likely fly BA as they work tandem with each other and i definately wouldn't fly with BA. I have done the journey quite a few times and found the best ones are Singapore and Emirates, then Malaysian. The first 2 also fly from Manchester as well as London. When to book? Well the flights are released around 11 months in advance, so you should be booking now. You will need to pay in full within 1 month of booking, or the price will go up ( they dont tell you this when you book, they wait until you pay your deposit, receive your itinery, and then inform you that the balance should be paid - like NOW .) Not a great difference in where to book, most travel companies offer similar prices, but I usually use TravelBag. I've used TravelMood & Austravel too, no problems with any of them. Some extra info. If you plan on taking any internal flights, DONT book with your travel agent, book online with VirginBlue, or Jet2, both have very easy to understand websites. Its much cheaper this way. The rest, you should research, some trips & hotels are cheaper through travel aagents, some, like day trips around Ularu, Barrier Reef, Surfers, are cheaper to book when you are there. Hope this helps. If you want to ask more, feel free.

dazbyd

... having been to Oz on 6 occasions I deffo would not fly Qantas ... as said above ... you may well end up flying BA as they operate codeshares ... and I would be very very very surprised if you managed to find either to be the cheapest ...

... Cathay Pacific & Singapore Airlines very good ... and on the last two occasions we flew with Emirates via SIN & DUB ... an extra stop but well worth it ... we signed upto Emirates Frequent Flyer Club and on our last return flight got an upgrade to Business Class with the points we had ...

... travelsuprmarket is a great site for flight/hotel/car comparisons

... I have found more and more often of late that booking with the airline via the website is the cheaper option

... hope this helps you a little

tummy_tank

I would agree on above post re: emirates and frequent flyer we up-graded with points too. I got great deal 11 months ahead just as tickets were released> we are off in 4 weeks time to OZ via dubai and singapore on way back can't wait

GiJo

Thanks to everybody who replied.

We're actually looking to book through Austravel and they have recommended Qantas, I think because of our itinerary. We want to fly into Cairns (staying in PD for a few nights), then onto the red centre and then to Sydney from where we'll fly back home.

However we do it, booking early seems the best.

richardw

GiJo wrote:

We want to fly into Cairns

If you want to fly into a certain airport it is worth googling to find that airport website and which airlines fly there and where from. Airport websites are getting very good.

I've done this for you http://www.cairnsport.com.au/airport/international_airport/servicingairlines.htm

Cathay Pacific fly there from Hong Kong, so that's another possibility. I'm not very impressed with this Qantas only advice.

Internal flight airlines in Australia include https://www.virgin-blue.com.au and https://www.jetstar.com.au and https://www.qantas.com.au , I've booked Qantas internal flights on their website and got some Red e deals which were great value.

Some Qantas Internal flights may also have Cathay Pacific codes because they are both part of the https://www.oneworld.com alliance.

If you are going after October half term, demand won't be very high from the UK and so you should be able to get some good prices.

GiJo

Thanks for your suggestions, richardw. Will do some more research.

richardw

The https://www.cathaypacific.co.uk flights from Hong Kong to Cairns do not operate on every day of the week so may not be exactly suitable.

GiJo

Nothing coming up for the day we would want to travel. Thanks anyway.