Transit options...
 

Hi everyone,

I'm traveling between MEL and ICN then on to SFO this December and I've booked myself on KE's SYD-ICN, BNE-ICN and NAN-ICN flights as options (I haven't paid for them yet - I have two weeks I think to make up my mind). Since KE won't let me book a multi-city for a Skyteam ticket, I'm stuck with transiting one of those cities (SYD/BNE/NAN) - I checked AKL-ICN as well but couldn't find any Skypass tickets.

My question is, since they're all morning departures, my options are flying out of MEL on a red-eye or getting to those cities the night before and overnighting there. What are the best options? Thanks in advance.

1) SYD/BNE - flight is about $100 on Virgin/$140 on Qantas + $100+ hotel stay. I've got luggage so Jetstar or Tiger aren't really an option.
2) NAN - flight is about $300 but it's a redeye so no overnighting required. I can transit Fiji visa-free.

Sounds that you will be travelling on separate tickets. To reduce risk of missing the KE flight, I'd do SYD or BNE (there are lots more flights from MEL & I would not take the last flight up either).

Yes I'll be traveling on separate tickets. That was my instinct too, but the one time I tried this with OZ/AS in Seattle nothing went wrong. I guess I shouldn't take the risk though with the one daily flight to NAN :)

Thanks.

I travel on separate tickets a lot. Most of the time it works out. When it doesn't it can get really messy and expensive. Assuming the schedule permits, a small cost is worth it to me for peace of mind - although it doesn't seem it actually costs more in your case. The other advantage of doing SYD or BNE is you get to sleep in a real bed instead of a poor sleep on the NAN redeye.

Yeah I decided to use my OZ miles for that leg instead, so it's a 10AM departure instead of 9AM (yay for an extra hour of sleep) :) I got a voucher from QF too so my hotel stay won't cost as much as I expected as well.