Cheap Australia Flights.

One thing you have to realise when you’re flying to Australia, even cheap Australia flights aren’t cheap and your flights to Australia may well cost you more than anything else on the rest of your trip.

Australia is a very long way from almost everywhere and because flights to Australia can be so expensive you need to find the cheapest cheap Australia flights you can.

How do you do that?

Well, it depends where you’re coming from and where in Australia you want to fly to.

How long you intend to stay in Australia and what you want to do here, where you want to go and so on will also have a bearing on how you find your cheap Australia flights.

To start, the cheapest flights to Australia almost always land in Sydney or Melbourne and these two cities offer the greatest flexibility for the traveller.

Unless you intend to stay within a reasonable distance of your airport of arrival you’re probably better off booking your cheap flight to Australia as a one way trip because the cost of getting back to either of these cities from elsewhere in Australia can be very expensive and quite costly in terms of time as well.

Australian domestic flights can be expensive just because Australia is an enormous place and the distances between centres can be mind-boggling.

That said don’t just assume that cheap flights to Sydney or Melbourne are your best option when you’re looking for cheap Australia flights.

If you intend to just stay locally then return flights to Australia are the way to go and that is probably also true if you intend to visit just New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, (although the northern parts of Queensland are still a very long way from either Sydney or Melbourne).

If you want to go just to Queensland then a cheap flight to Brisbane would be your logical choice and you can get good cheap domestic flights to anywhere in Queensland from there.

If you’re going to the west then obviously a cheap flight to Perth will be the way to go.

When to get your cheap Australia flights.

Our summer is the main tourist season in the southern parts of Australia and this is the time when it is most difficult to get cheap Australia flights.

(Our summer by the way is October to February).

As with most other parts of the world the Christmas and New Year period is incredibly busy and you’ll be very hard pressed to find any cheap Australia flights then.

If you must fly at this time of the year make sure you book very early or you’ll more than likely miss out or end up paying way too much for your seats.

You stand a much better chance of getting cheap Australia flights at other times during the year although in the hotter northern parts of the country, i.e. Tropical North Queensland and The Northern Territory, the tourist season tends to be during the cooler winter months and your chances for cheap flights into Darwin, Cairns and Townsville are a little less at that time of year.

What airlines to choose for your cheap Australia flights?

Qantas is the national airline of Australia and as such has the most options and packages when it comes to cheap flights to Australia.

They also have arrangements with a number of other airlines that will see you travelling part of the trip on one carrier and the balance on Qantas.

As far as choice and flexibility are concerned, Qantas beats the competition hands down.

In the eyes of the flying public Qantas’ reputation has taken something of a hit of recent times.

A recent small survey by Choice consumer magazine has shown that Australian travellers aren't all that impressed with Qantas' service anymore.

Only 63% of Australian travellers are satisfied with the value they got for their money, which led to the not very flattering nickname "Flying Kangarude".

I’ve only ever flown Qantas on a “short” leg from Brisbane to Hong Kong and I found nothing to complain about.

I guess it all depends on the crew you get on the day.

Qantas was rated number two airline in the world by Skytrax in 2005 and 2006 and I can’t imagine that things will have changed that much in the last two or three years.

For my money you can’t beat JAL, Cathay Pacific and Royal Brunei for flights to and from Australia with Royal Brunei being by far the best when it comes to cheap flights from Australia.

Royal Brunei, who fly from both Frankfurt and London to many destinations in Asia as well as Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin and Perth, are not a low budget, low service airline.

The service is excellent, they have a four star rating at Skytrax, the same as Qantas, British Airways, Lufthansa and many other big names.

How they can offer such cheap Australian flights I have no idea except maybe it’s that they fly slightly older aircraft.

One of the drawbacks is that they don't fly every day of the week and they sell out quickly.

Also they don’t serve alcohol at all on the flights and you can’t buy it at Bandar airport (that might matter to some, since we are talking about awfully long flights and usually several hours stopover) however they don’t stop you taking your own grog and consuming it whenever you please.

The other thing is that Bandar airport is tiny, the last time I was there I had an eight hour stopover and with only one “restaurant” of sorts and five shops to browse I was very glad of that thick book I took with me.

For all of that Royal Brunei is always my first choice when visiting my family in London.

Booking Cheap Australia Flights.

A question I have often pondered is “should I book my cheap Australia flights on-line or should I go to the travel agent?”

If you know where you want to go, when and how you want to travel and what you want to do when you get here then with a little investigation you can do it all on-line with a minimum of fuss and no inconvenience.

If however you are coming over here for only a few weeks, are restricted in arrival and departure dates, and don't know Australia at all, then you are probably better off getting help from an experienced Australia travel agent.

Go through all the dates that are available to you and look at your options as far as travel dates are concerned and you may find that by travelling to Australia a few days earlier or a week later you can save a good deal on your cheap Australia flight.

Experiment with arrival and departure ports as well if you can.

Often you’ll find that you’ll save considerable dollars if you fly first to one of our major ports and then fly on a cheap domestic airline like Jetstar or Virgin Blue to wherever you want to go in Oz.

This doesn’t always work of course, as I said earlier you must do your homework before you make your booking.

Good luck with your search for cheap Australia flights and.....enjpy,

John.

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