becsmy

We need to travel to Sydney from the US (NC) next year either in August or December 2015 to visit family. What is the best way to do so affordably? DH has opened 2 cards to get 80k points with AA, so we hope to be able to use them for some of the flights from CLT to LAX or SFO, along with the companion fares. The points are supposed to merge to the AA program next year.

I may open the same cards to get the same points. Any other ideas to make this trip more affordable? We're planning to try and get cheap US flights and pay for the LAX-SYD flights, unless we can think of another way...

Thanks-

Mwenenzi

Airlines that fly USA/Canada to Australia (most from LAX) are
- United [Star Alliance] (LAX SFO – SYD MEL)
- Qantas [OneWorld Alliance] (AS partner) (LAX JFK DFW – SYD BNE MEL)
- Jetstar (HNL)
- Delta [Skyteam Alliance] (VA & AS partner)
- Virgin Australia (DL partner)
- Hawaiian, via Hawaii (AA DL & VA partner)
- Air NZ, via AKL [Star Alliance]
- Fiji Airways, via Fiji (AA & AS partner)
- Air Tahiti Nui (last segments on codeshares) (AA & DL partner)
- Air Canada [Star Alliance]
And others via Asia & Middle East

thadocta

Ummm, a translation would be good, since this is a forum for the area (as opposed to a forum for a specific airlines FF program), a lot of us here would not be familiar with some of your terms. What is DH, for example? What are these cards of which you speak?

Dave

SeriouslyLost

Annnd if you are paying for the US/Oz flights part then airlines in (very general) order of pricing tend to be -

Fiji
Air NZ
Hawaiian
Virgin

Fiji & NZ will often have pricing at or below US$1000 return if you book at the right time, although December is expensive.

tt7

DH = 'dear husband' (or some variation thereof).
Cards - AA-affiliated credit cards usually come with mileage sign-up bonuses.

For the OP (= 'original poster' ), you're likely to find more availability and cheaper fares in August, rather than December. Travel to/from Oz in December/January is peak season, as it's summer here.

Qantas flies to SYD from DFW and LAX. They have fare sales from time to time - you can probably subscribe to some email list to be notified of those. If you're trying to use (AA) miles, award availability on QF can be hard to find, particularly in the premium cabins (though with 5 of you presumably you're intending to fly economy?). At the moment, there is pretty good economy award availability (for 5) DFW-SYD-DFW in August.

You can also buy miles from AA, though that may not be particularly cost-effective for economy tickets. However, AA appears to currently have (through January 2, 2015) one of its bonus buymiles campaigns - 80,000 miles (+ a 45,000 mile bonus) will currently cost you $2,360 (probably plus some taxes) -- so the 375,000 miles (37,500 each way x 2 x 5) you need for 5 roundtrip economy tickets US-Oz would cost you about $6,500+, or about $1,300 per person. The only caveats are that you would have to use multiple accounts to buy the miles you need (80,000 + bonus max for any one person) and, of course, the availability of award seats once you have the miles available ....
https://buymiles.aa.com/en/buygift?c=AAC_MPG_EN,US_BUY

Anna Phor

Racking up points to pay for domestic flights makes sense. We live in DC and have family in Perth so we have similar types of journeys. The other thing you can do with your points is book hotel rooms (so e.g. if you have to overnight in LA to break up the journey, you can save on hotel rooms).

Don't go at Christmas. You'll save a bunch.

Flatlander MDW

I watched this fare a lot last year and (as mentioned) December was significantly more expensive and difficult to find decent fares than August.

Definitely price it both ways but at least from ORD, the difference between ORD - SYD and LAX or SFO - SYD was only about $250. In my mind that is not worth using miles plus if you are not on the same reservation/airline and you miss your connection it gets more troublesome. However, maybe from CLT - LAX it would be worth it.

In general it seems LAX-SYD is one of the more static fares out there. Too much demand, too little supply I suspect.

number_6

The cheapest fares are on the chinese carriers (china southern and china eastern are often particularly cheap) but also have the worst routings (e.g. 16 hour overnight layover, etc.). So you get what you pay for and have to add in all the costs (meals, hotel, your time and of course the insurance cost if separate tickets). Might be cheaper flying trans-atlantic to Oz from NC as there is more competition/capacity and less demand via Europe.

bensyd

When you look at the pricing, especially in the premium cabins, you can see how they win market share. You can pretty much fly to Europe in J, on a flat bed, on CZ for a small premium over Y+ on QF/BA/CX. The food is atrocious and the service is sloppy but nevertheless for many punters it's a pretty compeling proposition.

becsmy

Thank you for the replies!

We are still looking at all of the options. July/Aug seems to be the easiest option. Or we are also looking at going for 2 weeks over Thanksgiving but that means kids miss more school.
The problem I'm running into is the CLT-DFW flights that we want to get with points. We have just enough AA and US Airways points - we should be able to use them to book on AA, correct?

Flatlander MDW

I'm not sure if this helps you from CLT but I've just noticed that Emirates is offering < $1500 fares from ORD in November. Routing requires extra time and a night in Dubai but it's nice to see something below $1800 for a change.

Barcky

This sounds like you're planning to book two tickets for each person; first CLT-LAX/SFO then LAX/SFO-SYD. Why not a round trip ticket for CLT-SYD connecting through DFW? The price for a single round trip ticket looks to be less than what two separate tickets would cost you.

Unless you're planning a stopover on the West Coast there are significant reasons not to do this on two separate tickets. If there is a problem (weather or maintenance delay, cancellation, oversold etc) on your first flight that causes you to miss your trans Pacific flight on a different ticket you may be in a world of hurt. Same potential problem on the return. Good reason to buy trip insurance that covers an unexpected trip interruption.