How to find the cheapest flights to Australia

[vetprob]

I'm looking for help from seasoned travellers who know the market well please.

London to Melbourne as cheaply as possible, are there certain days of the week that are cheaper than others? I realise times of year and school holidays affect prices but are there any other tips that might help us?

Thanks!

Skyscanner and look across the whole month.

Thanks is there an easy way to do this or do I need to check each day separately?

Also how can I see the range of flight options rather than just 'best' or 'cheapest', I'd like to look at some in between options if possible.

I did wonder if Skyscanner was the best website. I guess it checks every airline?

I think it’s more about airlines than days. New Year’s Eve is cheap. I’ve done that a few times.

We flew to Perth on Christmas Day …that was loads cheaper

We use Google Flights. Literally type Google flights into Google. Generally book about 10 months in advance. Obviously seasons, school holidays affect prices. Enjoy Melboune my DS lives there.

We use skyscanner to check prices and routing then if we find a few that are broadly when we want to travel, give or take a few days, we then look at the individual airline. I think it’s more difficult if you have a set day you want to travel.

Also, it you have some flexibility, it might be worth looking at ex EU, that is flying from an airport outside the EU, but obviously you have to factor in the cost and time of getting to another country, For example, we’ve flown to Stockholm then to Australia, saved loads of money but booked on seperate airlines so there can be a risk as they’re not through tickets, unless you book using airlines within the same alliance.

PM me if you’d like more details of how we’ve done that before and how we’re doing it for our next trip.

I'm in Melbourne and often going the other way.

For cheapest possible flights look for airlines that are lesser known/less reputable, China Eastern and Turkish are 2 I can think of. Or routes that have more than one stopover. Skyscanner will pick all of this up.

Scoot, Jetstar and Air Asia run very cheap flights to/from SE Asia, you can try to pair with a good deal the rest of the way on another airline.

No, you just look at the whole month as a range.

What do you mean by "best"? You can add various criteria through the search facility.

@GetOffTheRoof see attached pic. Sometimes I'm happy to look at longer flight times and cheaper, but not quite as long and cheap as the cheapest option given!

I just wondered how to access the in between info.

Maybe it works better on a PC?

Thanks everyone for all the advice!

@Femalefootyfan I'm in the UK so already ex-EU, is that what you mean?

The cheapest flights often require longer layovers and you need to balance this out. I once flew 44 hours Sydney to Edinburgh (3 stops) and it definitely wasn’t worth the few hundred quid I saved.

Christmas is a peak time but the rest of the year I don’t really think you see cheaper months or periods. It’s just a lot more expensive than it used to be. I used to pay around £800 a ticket economy and now it’s around £1500. That’s just what you pay sadly.

kayak and Skyscanner are good resources. Apparently you can fly from Europe for cheaper but it just adds extra time.

No, sorry, what ex EU means is you fly to a country outside of the Euro zone, say Sweden for example, so one that doesn’t use the £ or the € as its currency, and ‘start’ your trip from there. You book and pay for your flights in the local currency (after doing a currency conversion to check the price against the £).
The timing can be crucial though if you don’t intend to stay overnight at your ex EU destination as you’d need to build in enough time for a flight to land, collect your bags, re check in etc.

Reading this back, makes it sound more complicated than it is in practice.

What I’m trying to explain (badly) what we’ve done in the past is this:
fly LGW to Oslo mid afternoon on a Monday
stay in a cheap airport hotel overnight
fly to Sydney from Oslo on Tuesday

Then route home the same as the outbound, minus the hotel overnight in Oslo if you land early morning and get an afternoon flight BACK to the UK

Paid for the LGW to Oslo return in £ (flown BA for example)
Paid for the Helsinki to Sydney return flight in Norwegian krone

The general rule of doing this is the amount of money you can save on APD as it’s much less from outside the UK. However, if you’re time restricted then it’s not always ideal as you’re adding additional travel time. We usually fly business to Australia so this way of going about things has saved us hundreds of £, I’m not sure how much you could potentially save if flying economy or premium economy.

Happy for you to PM me if it’s still unclear.

Thank you so much @Femalefootyfan it does make sense.

I would love to do this actually, if we had the time. Perfect excuse to explore another city closer to home!

Frankfurt is also a much cheaper place to fly out of than London.
I will only fly with Singapore Airlines (get anxiety about other airlines after some bad flights over the years that I can't be bothered to deal with right now) to Australia. And we can fly Premium Economy from Frankfurt for not a ridiculous amount more than economy from Heathrow. Obviously also have the additional local flight to pay for, but we save a few thousand flying from Europe a few hundred for that flight doesn't register.

Good to know thank you @PinkCherryPie