Air New Zealand Air Points - Best time to buy

I am planning on going for 5 months to Sydney for school and stopping in New Zealand for a month. I am from the Vancouver/Seattle area.

However, my trip is from January to early July 2009. From what I have heard, booking earlier is better for this time of year. When I called AirNZ, they were only booking until March 2009, meaning I would have to wait until August to book my flights.

Is the best course of action just to wait until August, or is there some other way I can get a decent priced ticket that far in advance to the region?

You can either buy one-way tickets (may not be cheap), or buy a flexible fare and pick a dummy return date and change it later (also not cheap), or buy a regular fare with a dummy return date and pay the change fee to change it later.

The latter is possibly the cheapest option, but depends on the fares available ex-YVR/SEA.

Don't forget to check out circle pacific fares. These allow you to visit asia on the way there or back.

You can either buy one-way tickets (may not be cheap), or buy a flexible fare and pick a dummy return date and change it later (also not cheap), or buy a regular fare with a dummy return date and pay the change fee to change it later..

Thanks for the advice. I know some student fares can be pretty flexible. I'll look into that.

Circle Pacific I want to do, but I can't get flights intra-Australia with Star Alliance.

Cheers.