stupidhead

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.

Kiwi Flyer

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).

stupidhead

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.

Kiwi Flyer

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.

stupidhead

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.