Premium Economy to Australia

Troytempest

My self and Mrs Tempest are planning a 10 week trip down under, departing mid November.

We have been several times before and always travelled in Economy. As we are now a bit older we would like more space and have seen a fare of about £2600 per person with Singapore airlines. Qantas seems to be a bit more!

Our route would be London / Singapore/Melbourne out and then Perth/London back.

Any views on whether it is better to wait for a sale or grab it before it goes.

Murphy_The_Cat

Have a google about "positioning flights" and flying ex-eu.  With some flexability and effort searching, you'll be able to do the trip in Business Class for £2600 (on a random date Mid Nov - late Jan PE is coming out at £1400 flying from CPH on Singapore).

Google Flights is your friend !

lady1964

Murphy_The_Cat said:

Have a google about "positioning flights" and flying ex-eu.  With some flexability and effort searching, you'll be able to do the trip in Business Class for £2600 (on a random date Mid Nov - late Jan PE is coming out at £1400 flying from CPH on Singapore).

Google Flights is your friend !

This. We’ve done ex-eu twice to Australia, once on Qatar and the other on SIA, both have a great biz class product and we got excellent fares out of Stockholm and Helsinki having flown BA to get to both cities.

zagfles

Another option if you don't want to spend 24 hours in an economy seat is to book flights with a long layover eg 8-10 hours at Singapore and book the transit hotel. Transit hotel is great, quiet private rooms with no windows and you book by the hour so can do a daytime booking. Ideal if you arrive SIN early morning eg around 7am which is about midnight UK time when you'll be ready for bed. Also your luggage is checked through and you're airside all the time so no need to collect and recheckin and go through immigration/passport control etc.

Adds a few hours to the journey but nowhere near as much as going via Stockholm or somewhere. The problem with going ex-EU is you have to get there, usually on a different flight booking so if your "positioning flight" is delayed you might miss your main flight and it won't be the airline's responsibility. So I think what most people do is stay overnight, so you need to collect bags, go through immigration, travel to your hotel, back again in the morning, re-checkin, security again, then do the same on return. Plus even in BC you'll be sleeping in a "sky dorm" with shared facilities rather than a private ensuite hotel room with your own shower, toilet etc.

Looking on SIA you can do LHR-MEL/PER-LHR with long layovers for £844, plus transit hotel (maybe £80 or so each way) compared to £2600 plus positioning flights plus perhaps hotel in Stockholm etc (which will probably be more expensive than the transit hotel, Scandinavia is expensive!). So between the two of you paying about £4k more for (IMO) a worse experience with far more hassle. Might be worth it if you want to see Stockholm on the way, nice city, worth seeing if you've not been, allow a few days and a lot of money!

Bicycleman22

The difference in price for economy and premium economy is a lot more  than I would expect it to be, although of course this might be worth it to you. I doubt the economy will fare come down at all from £800, this really is an amazing price with Singapore Airlines. I would imagine this will rise significantly over the summer. I am not sure about the premium economy price but I guess an awful lot of boomers will be looking to go to Australia next  winter to see relatives so I guess this is the reason for the abnormally high price difference. I agree with zagflies about repositioning flights and would not do this without at least 24 hours transit time....... I too would do the transit hotel and economy but I am a budget flyer and can cope with economy class. I guess the question for me would be do you really get that much more comfort with P. E. ?  

Murphy_The_Cat

I like playing this game.   If I was going to play the game of 24 hour purgatory on a plane, a quality airline like SIA would be my choice (for clarity, I'm 6ft 3" tall and 17st, so the 34" seat pitch on SIA helps enormously).

OP how about this for an option ?

LHR-Zurich in Economy, 1hr 45 layover, Zurich to Singapore Prem Economy on Swiss, 4hr layover in Singapore, SIN to MEL on SIA economy.

& the same configuration on the return trip.

No REAL positioning flight, as all booked on 1 through ticket, direct with the airline.

£1049 each, booked via SWISS

Murphy_The_Cat

Bicycleman22 said:

. I guess the question for me would be do you really get that much more comfort with P. E. ?  

Earlier this year I flew LHR-DFW on AA, with extra leg room, economy seats. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience.  I returned in PE and whilst is was better, it was certainly nearer OK than good. I've previously done the same trip in BIZ and that was the difference between night and day and that is on AA, not a particularly highly regarded airline.

For a trip to the far side of the world, I'd be looking for as much comfort as possible - but a lot depnds if you can see past cost and look at value.

Troytempest

Thanks everyone - very helpful.