My son is returning in a few weeks from his one year Army tour over in Ramadi, Iraq. We are all glad to have him back of course, but he has expressed an intent to use some of his 30 days leave after his return to take a trip to Australia for a week or two. Sounds like a good idea to me - I'd love to do it if I had the time and money. What suggestions can anyone offer in terms of getting there, and what he might want to do there? I see that Air New Zealand has a deal right now for $798 rt from LAX - that seems reasonable compared to some other fares I looked at. It's not possible to book anything until after he gets back, even then not until his leave is determined. So any tips for buying a ticket with only a week or two notice? He has targeted Sydney as his main destination - but I think he would be open to other suggestions.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Well, Australia requires a sort of e-visa/ETA and some airlines will charge for that and others will not at the time of booking/payment for the trip. It can sometimes be cheaper to do it yourself, but make sure the name on the ticket and the passport are exactly the same or some reservation agents will have issues finding the ETA. Tourist ones are generally good for one-year from issuance. ETAs come back quite quickly, generally less than 24-hours (if not much faster).

Sydney is a great place. What kind of stuff/trips has he liked doing? That may help.

Thanks for the info about ETA, I did not know about that, I'll need to look into it and pass that along to my son.

Outdoor stuff, beach, diving, girls, fast cars. Typical 23 year old guy.

The electronic visa for Australia is A$20, and you can get it on this Web site:
http://www.eta.immi.gov.au/

I got two of them instantly online earlier this year. They don't give you anything on paper - it will just show up in the immigration officer's computer if you've received one.

Since you're going to have such short notice, award travel is always a good option - if you've got the miles. Otherwise, you have to just hope there's some special airfare available. You might also try calling up some consolidators to see if they have anything.

Normally I'd say - last minute travel and likely expensive, so go for award.

However, you may need to be very lucky in this case. Award availability on QF between US and NZ or Australia is very very low - a lot of miles were burned just before QFF recently put up the award costs. NZ doesnt seem to have released much between US and NZ, perhaps due to uncertainties on the new longhaul product which is just starting to roll out.

I've found quite good UA next-day award availability (using UA miles), but I generally do April-May or September-October for the UA flights to Sydney. But you cannot always count on it.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Award travel is unfortunately not an option. What would be the best purchase path? My son mentioned he had heard of some military fare discounts, I'm not sure what he means. He'll be departing from either DFW or DEN.

In my experience with two of them, the more recent being a couple of months ago, 24 seconds is more like it. Probably milliseconds, actually.

Agree with the evaluation but it will be the middle of winter there. It's not like a northern U.S. winter, snow is virtually unheard of in the city, but still not the best time to visit it - especially if he's used to Iraq's summer. He might consider heading north toward Queensland, Cairns, the rain forest, the Barrier Reef ... as suggested, depending on what he wants to do.

I can issue you the ETA for Australia for free. I am a licensed corporate travel consultant and can due them through WorldSpan at no cost. E-mail me if you are interested.

David
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