Help! I need to get to Australia!
 

Is there anyone who can give a young person any tips about how to get to Australia from London without breaking the (already broken!) bank? My family have moved to Australia (Melbourne and Cairns) and I am still here in London...I need to visit them, but as a young teacher I am always struggling to save the airfare as I have to go during school holidays - peak season!:mad: I always have to travel in July/August. Does booking really early help? I have over 80,000 qantas frequent flyer points too, so qantas is my preferred airline so I can keep building up the points. There HAS to be a trick of the trade that could help me out (changing jobs seems like a good one)!! Someone out there knows what the trick is....HELP!!!;)

Maybe you should try a meta search site like www.kayak.com to find cheap fares. The normal trick for cheap tickets is to be very flexible. No loyalty to any airline, flexible travel dates and the will to have weird connections and long layovers. If you are focused on Qantas you should include other One World carriers in your search but because I think you can earn Qantas miles on those partner airliners.

what about something like this...
you have 80000 QF points, a quick check of the QANTAS site shows LHR-SIN needs 84000 points, browse around and see how far your points will take you... then look around for a cheapie fare from Asia.

of course award flights will be hard to find in peak travel periods too :(

maybe you can ask your employers for some time off and leave just before the peak season dates.

It must be tough having your family so far away, but good to have a free place to stay :)

good luck

OR look into doing an exchange teacher year, I have a lot of teacher friends who have done this, in both directions,

since you are a teacher, give these guys a call and see what they can do for you

http://www.statravel.co.uk/cps/rde/x...l/teachers.htm

Apologies for the oneworld alliance bias. Singapore Air also has some very cheap fares on offer.

If fares stay more than 1500 pounds (current BA and QF quotes seem 2000+) look into the OneWorld Explorer round the world fare. 1350 + taxes. Or try flights to Bangkok and then Jetstar into Australia.

If you are feeling really adventurous, Air Asia X via KUL (Malaysia) may be even cheaper yet.

Let us know what you finally come up with.

Wander happily

Fred

It looks like Etihad has some got deals to Australia.

When I was looking at fares about six months ago, Asiana had some good offers as I recall.

But the advice above is right: be as flexible as you can wrt to dates (and times), consider less obvious airlines (e.g. lots of European airlines will take you to Australia, but of course you need to change planes at their European hub (generally), which is usually only an irritatingly short hop from London), and perhaps be prepared for long waits at airports.

Have you talked to someone like Trailfinders, or looked on their website?

Thank you!
 

Everyone is so helpful and kind...I really appreciate all of your comments and I will look into your suggestions. Thanks again!:D

Try Malaysia Airlines but I think the lowest fares have gone. Eithad would be another one to look out for.

Consider using your points to get to the west coast US and then picking up a cheap US-Australia fight... there is a fare war on right now and you can do LAX-Sydney for as little as $800 or so (GBP600).