I need to get 2 seniors (60+) from Prague (Czech Republic) over to Brisbane (Australia).. What are the best and or cheapest options? I should also mention that they speak VERY little english.. will that be a big problem?
Wanting to leave PRG 30/11/07 and return 21/01/07 (+/- days needed to get a cheaper price..).
Any help would be greatly appriciated as I/we have never done this before.
^

Maybe a FT will make a MR on the date, who is situated in PRG and can help ?

LH has a Lufthansa Guide Service. It costs 45 EUR per person, but I don�t know, if it is available at Brisbane.

Here is the link:
http://www.lufthansa.com/online/port...nodeid=1953222

The best option will be to have the seniors on one ticket for the whole journey so they can check bags all the way through, get boarding passes for all segments when they check-in at PRG, and don't have to worry about misconnecting flights on separate tickets.

Note that is may not be the cheapest option, but it will have the fewest hassles.

One final suggestion would be to write out key words in Czech (or whatever they are most comfortable with) and in English (like "transit", "transfer," "gate" "boarding" etc.) which may be helpful if they have trouble on their connections.

I fly Sydney to Prague quite a lot. Sydney is only a 1 hour flight from Brtisbane, and most international flights from Europe will go via SYD.

Austrian Airlines is a fast option to Sydney. Usually a short flight to Vienna, then a good connection for a flight to Malaysia, then Sydney. However, I think that Austrian is leaving the Australia market, and may be gone altogether by then.

BA has 3 or 4 flights a day to London. Then a QF/BA flight to probably Bangkok or Singapore. There may be a direct flight from here to Brisbane, rather than via Sydney, which would be ideal. However, they would need to change terminals at London, and that is not a pleasant experience.

Also look at Cathay. They will do a code-share on BA from Prague to London. Then to HKG. There may be a direct flight to Brisbane also, I am not sure. But again, LHR terminal change nightmares.

Finnair fly Prague to Helsinki to Bangkok. This will avoid LHR. I am told that Helsinki is a very easy airport, but have not experienced it myself. They do Qantas codeshares to Australia, so they may fly direct to Brisbane from Bangkok.

Can't think of any more options right now, but I am sure there are many. If there is any advice I can give, try to avoid LHR, particularly if it involves a change of terminals, and especially if they are travelling economy class.

OS will stop their service in March 2007 to SYD and MEL. So this will not be really an option.

I didn't realise it was so soon. And they only just got flat-beds in Business. I'm finding it tricky to get from Sydney to Prague nowadays without travelling via LHR.

OK, so they don't speak English well. Do they speak any other languages (besides, I'm assuming, Czech)? If so, perhaps try to transit an airport in a country which speaks that language.

If not...While it would likely not be the most comfortable of trips, they could do PRG-SVO-BKK-BNE with PRG-SVO and SVO-BKK on Aeroflot. At least Russian is a Slavic language so possibly a little easier to navigate SVO for someone who doesn't speak anything but Czech? (Then again, anyone who would voluntarily transit SVO probably needs their head examined..)

From reviewing some information online, I do not think there is ANY way to do this trip without at least 2 changes of planes.

Thanks to all for your replies. I am not happy to hear that OS aren't going to bve flying anymore because that is what I did on my last trip. The transfer from Vienna to the Czech Republic is an easy 2 hour drive. I will have a look at what people in here suggested, but I have been told that it is still too soon and have been told not to book until around the end of march.

Thank you

Actually, I do have one more idea. I visited Prague last year and actually flew in/out of Frankfurt, with the FRA-PRG by train. It is possible to take a train into a station which is directly on the grounds of FRA airport (routing from PRG will be something like Prague - Dresden - Frankfurt Flughafen Fernbf; you can buy the train tix online at Deutsche Bahn) and this would enable them to fly out of FRA on a one-stop itinerary (possible to connect in a variety of places, but most likely SIN, BKK or HKG).

I was able to navigate FRA airport quite easily despite speaking basically no German, so hopefully they would find it similarly easy to navigate, and it avoids one change of planes.