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Hi
I am starting to look at prices for a trip from UK (Scotland based) to Auckland in Feb (possibly next year – maybe the year after) – but just looking at pricing just now. The bulk of my Avios have gone on a trip to Chile so looking to pay cash i think.
Does anyone know roughly what sort of prices to expect to pay in Business? Look to be 5-6k out of the UK and 4k ish out of Norway (on Qatar).
Is that as good as they get in the post covid world i wonder. I saw some cracking prices 4-5 years ago but i fear they won’t be back in a hurry. Is it worth going via Oz, Singapore, Los Angeles or the likes?
Are you going to visit family or just for general tourism? Prices are indeed ridiculous so I guess my question would be can you just wait a few years for airline capacity to settle down a bit more and then see what prices are like. Havibg been there in 2018 for a short work trip, I have to admit I was rather baffled by the fuss over visiting it.
I travel to Aus, not NZ but yes that’s typical ballpark. The days of Scandi Qatar flights for £1200-£1700 are well and truly gone. Our last visit, the cost difference econ vs Biz for the family was the price of a small hatchback. I decided we’d suck it up “down’t’back” and Mrs S could have a new car 🤣
Knocking a bit off with weird routings is still possible so by all means have a play with Google flights. It will of course depend on your personal £/hr inconvenience premium. I travel with family so mine is nonexistent…Was helping a reader with an Oz trip last week – virtually impossible to get below £4500 even with an ex EU start.
Those 180,000 Avios Qatar redemptions look very appealing.
Now the Easter rush is over it looks to be slightly easier to get as far as SYD with avios – would the price of buying the extra that you need be worth it against the cash price? This might also work with QR, which has a 50% bonus on.
Now the Easter rush is over it looks to be slightly easier to get as far as SYD with avios – would the price of buying the extra that you need be worth it against the cash price? This might also work with QR, which has a 50% bonus on.
Seasons are inversed so middle of the year should have some relatively cheaper availability aa it’s their winter.
If not pushed for time, I’d stop off in SEAsia both ways – makes flights less
daunting, whatever the class! Plenty of flights from, say, SIN or Indonesia to Aus&NZThe ex-DUB ~£1k fares with star alliance last year saved my parents an absolute fortune to Australia (thanks again Rhys for those!)
Otherwise I think avios is king to aus/nz for the foreseeable. £4k via Scandinavia is still ludicrous money.
Depends if you are stuck with flying OneWorld as SAS plus Singapore Airlines on SK tickets are coming in around £3,250 from Oslo in February 2024. These could be credited to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club as well. Prices when looking have been changing fairly rapidly over the last hour or so as noticed one set for about £2,850 from MXP which jumped quite significantly on going to look at it in more detail.
There are still better QR deals, particularly on double open jaws from the Nordic countries and Brisbane and Adelaide are usually considerably cheaper gateways than SYD/MEL. You just need to play around a bit on the QR site to find the magic combos as it varies all the time.
Forgive my ignorance, but what’s ‘Double Open Jaw’?
Forgive my ignorance, but what’s ‘Double Open Jaw’?
In the context of QR, there are 4 open destinations with DOH as the main point, is my guess.
Double open jaw is where all your airports are different but the journey falls within the relevant rules, e.g. –
Outbound, London – New York. Inbound, Boston – Paris.
Double open jaw is where all your airports are different but the journey falls within the relevant rules, e.g. –
Outbound, London – New York. Inbound, Boston – Paris.
Indeed! I booked (via DOH) ARN-ADL / BNE-CPH which saved £1000 vs any return or single open jaw combinations from northern Europe and makes for a more interesting trip.
Double open jaw is where all your airports are different but the journey falls within the relevant rules, e.g. –
Outbound, London – New York. Inbound, Boston – Paris.
Indeed! I booked (via DOH) ARN-ADL / BNE-CPH which saved £1000 vs any return or single open jaw combinations from northern Europe and makes for a more interesting trip.
Yes, I made similar saving after heeding @JDB’s sage advice, flying OSL-DOH-BNE later this week, returning BNE-DOH-MXP. Don’t ask me why such a multi-city itinerary yielded the saving that it did. I set aside a couple of hours a week devoted to research on itamatrix and google flights from June to August last year and was initially horrified at J class prices given legendary tales of fares quoted above.
My spreadsheet records that I monitored BNE, MEL, PER and SYD as destinations and BHX, BRS, EDI, LON, MAN as UK origins (never got below £11k for two pax return on QR) and AMS, BRU, CPH, DUB, OSL as primary EU origins (never got below £6.9k on conventional same-city return fare). Some secondary EU origins came in slightly lower, as low as £6.3k return from SOF or £6.6k return from BEG, but either with punishingly inconvenient schedules or layover times or any savings wiped out by relocation flight costs.
I eventually booked my final itinerary with decent connection times on QR for £6.8k in August last year because i) I have good experience of QR J, ii) it will secure me BAEC Silver status for another year (with cash relocation flights on BA) and iii) family 50th birthday celebrations only come around once in a lifetime. I have only occasionally viewed fare prices on the same route since then because once I commit to paying, I also commit to not having any regrets even if I miss out on a better subsequent deal, but looks like I made the right choice at the time, even with the odd Qatar special deal or discount offer since then.
I believe that there may be cheaper options available if you seek lesser known alternatives like Korean Air or Vietnam Airlines or Eva Air, sometimes from one of their more significant EU destinations like Paris CDG for Vietnam Airlines. Just got to view it as a project and play around and research as many options as possible.
Good luck with your quest !
Thanks very much for the info – it is for a holiday so i might be as well delaying. I will go and have a play on google flights to see what i can find.
The other is BA Amex 241 from “the regions”. Much much better availability than from LHR – even though you are on the same aircraft (apart from the Region-LHR flight!)
And if it is a holiday, there is a 3,000 euro fare on Flyertalk Premium Fares section – usually from Milan, Rome or Barcelona to AKL. Some of it sometimes is on Lufthansa J which is dire!
But it also allows stopovers, so I thought about two nights in NY and then some time in Japan on the way back.
If not pushed for time, I’d stop off in SEAsia both ways – makes flights less
daunting, whatever the class! Plenty of flights from, say, SIN or Indonesia to Aus&NZ+1
QF has recently massively increased capacity to Rome. So I suspect their airline pals (not just the OneWorld ones) will be putting their own codes on the new QF flights to Rome and selling some of those seats cheaper in seasons when demand is less. QF has named a new CEO but I doubt they’ll change their habit of only bending their very high pricing under cover of other airlines’ codeshares, for a while.
See Rob’s article entitled “Qatar resumes direct Auckland Flights” today on the main HfP website directly related to this topic.
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