Australia, New Zealand & the South Pacific - Connection time in Sydney

Looking for advice

We will be flying into Sydney 06Feb arriving at 7:25 PM via Hawaiian Airlines. Hopefully everything will be on time. We will be catching a flight to Brisbane the same night and we can either fly Qantas or Jetstar. The latest Qantas flight leaves @ 9:05 and the latest Jetstar flight leaves @ 9:30. My wife is Australian so we will get to go thru the citizens immigration line.

Anyone think there will be a problem with 1.5 - 2 hours in between those flights?

Thanks
Tracy

I'll move this to our Travel->Australia forum for some well-informed discussion and assistance. Ocn Vw 1K, CoMod, TBuzz

Looking for advice

We will be flying into Sydney 06Feb arriving at 7:25 PM via Hawaiian Airlines. Hopefully everything will be on time. We will be catching a flight to Brisbane the same night and we can either fly Qantas or Jetstar. The latest Qantas flight leaves @ 9:05 and the latest Jetstar flight leaves @ 9:30. My wife is Australian so we will get to go thru the citizens immigration line.

Anyone think there will be a problem with 1.5 - 2 hours in between those flights?

Thanks
Tracy

Tracy,

First thing I'd do is check with Hawaiian Airlines if it's possible to check your baggage all the way to Brisbane with Qantas. It could be tight as you need to do customs & immigration then re check through security and get a bus to the far side of the airfield to the domestic terminal. I'm not sure how often the buses run at that time of evening so can't help much.

As you mentioned the other option is with Jetstar. Bare in mind Jetstar is a LCC and you definately can't check your baggage through. They are also extremely ruthless that checkin closes 30 min before departure. No exceptions at all.

If you need more help then you could probably get some more useful info at the Australian Frequent Flyer web site from some of the more knowledgeable experts there.

2 hours should easily be enough. At that time of the night there wont be much happening at the airport. You can either take the train or a cab to the domestic airport. I would say you would be off the plane and out the door within 30 mins.....

Presumably these are separate tickets, in which case be aware that the risk is yours if you mis-connect. Most Jetstar tickets become worthless 30 minutes before departure time (if you cannot check in at the JQ counter by then, you must buy a new ticket for travel on a later flight). Most QF tickets will allow a change to a later flight (either for free or for a small fee, it depends on your specific fare code). More importantly HA will interline with QF but not with JQ. However check the schedule on your dates (for Jan 2007 it is below the minimum connection time, so you cannot interline to that flight). Contact HA to find out if they will check your bags through for the QF flight you want to take.

The good news is that HA has little delay into SYD (88% ontime arrival record, with 12 minutes average delay). Clearing immigration/customs will take 30 minutes, and transfer to the domestic terminal is another 30 minutes that time of night (buses/trains don't run frequently), so with the average 12 minute delay in arrival you would make the QF flight. A bit more delay and it is tight for making it.

The HA flight stats can be found here: http://www.flightstats.com/go/FlightStatus/flightStatusByFlight.do?id=79491648&airlineCode=HA&flightNumber=451&departureDate=2007-01-02

Thanks for all the replies.

I will call HA and check on checking the luggage all the way thru w/QF.

We do recognize that the risk is all ours with delayed flights by booking seperately, but it was much cheaper to do it this way.

And my wife corrected me, the option other that QF is Virgin Blue, not Jetstar.

Tracy

...
And my wife corrected me, the option other that QF is Virgin Blue, not Jetstar.Good luck. For your purposes Jetstar and Virgin Blue operate identically, so it makes absolutely no difference. Too bad there isn't a slightly later flight, you're in the tantalizing cusp that it is do-able, but only when all goes well. Your primary risks are HA being late, and the agricultural inspection being delayed (or worse yet, something found in your luggage). The immigration part is generally a lot faster than the agricultural inspection.

Seems risky to me.

If you take the train between the two terminals, you will pay AUD4.70 each. Trains could easily be 20 minutes apart.

The AUD5 bus seems to run about once in a blue moon and stops entirely at 8pm.

Your best option might be to pay approx AUD15-20 to take a taxi. The airport web site says it costs AUD8-12. That was definitely NOT our experience.

On separate tickets the connection is risky - doable if everything goes right but doesn't take much to miss. If it isnt too late I'd fly SYD-BNE the next day and spend the night in Sydney.

Just a little follow-up

I checked with HA as suggested and they will check our bags thru to Qantas. they also said that they have a minimum connection time of 1 hour 15 minutes. We decided to give this a try. I checked with Qantas and they said they preferred a 2 hour connection window.

I see online that we can check in on-line for Qantas. I'm thining of checking in for our flight before we leave Hawaii and then printing our boarding passes so that we have them when we land. Maybe that will help our connection time.

Thanks for all the input
Tracy