Qantas are having a flash sale ending Friday for flights to Hong Kong - only $599. This is the lowest I have ever seen for a non-stop flight to HKG and beats the recent Cathay sale.
Flights are available between 21 April - 17 June and 14 October - 11 November.
It's a good deal - just FYI that QF will charge a minimum $10 booking fee if you pay by debit card or $30 if you pay by credit card. You can get around this by paying with Bpay.
http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/schedule-of-fees/au…
Cathay doesn't impose booking fees.
Or just buy a gift voucher (any amount) and pay the rest on a credit card for no extra fees.
You get to accrue QFF mileage even with sale fare as opposed to Cathay… bonus :)
mmm…i dunno…personally I would rather pay an extra $57 to fly with cathay…
why
i spose Cathay is considered a better airline…
yes this is why, and i found the food is also better on cathay
+1 for their food!
Cathay was voted airline of the year by Skytrax in 2014.. Although the whole voting system is opaque and industry driven (Emirates abstains from these awards for these reasons).
http://www.worldairlineawards.com/Awards/worlds_best_airline…
I think Qantas was voted airline of the year 2014 not released long ago.
In economy they are both pretty much the same. Unless you prefer a daylight flight in each direction.
don't know about Cathay, but i've been on Cathay's regional airline DragonAir and the planes were new (with USB ports, good inflight entertainment etc, so not the same)
Huh? You're comparing apples and oranges. The discussion is comparing Qantas and Cathay, not Qantas and dragonair. But by your logic, comparing Qantas to dragonair is the same as comparing Cathay and Jetstar, right?
In economy they are both pretty much the same. Unless you prefer a daylight flight in each direction.
Actually I need to take that back - Cathay has better IFE, Qantas has a better luggage allowance (30kg vs Cathay 20kg).
Economy on their A380 or upgraded A330 is far superior than CX's equivalent. And then there's the baggage allowance.
QF seats on the A380 and upgraded A330 (which are based on the same recaro seat) have a pitch of 31 inches and width of 17.5 inches.
CX seats are larger at 32 and 18.45 inches respectively.
QF has a larger 11 inch screen while CX uses a 9 inch and both seats have a near identical recline of 25 degrees.
You'd still want Cathay if you're going from Cairns.
Nothing for Perth as usual.
At least Hong Kong airline companies offer their deals to all parts of Australia
maybe they know Perth market happy to pay full price anyway so not in their interest to offer promo
QF doesn't fly PER to HKG (or anywhere else internationally for that matter) any more
Nope, they scrapped it
I had booked this because of a good special, but had to cancel due to circumstances. Turns out Qantas cancelled the whole route shortly after. A travel agent I know told me it caused a whole lot of issues, because heaps of people had booked seats, and they cancelled it without much notice.
This type of behaviour makes me a bit worried to use Qantas for international flights. Given that this is a rock bottom price, it implies they are having problem filling up the flights….
They've just upgauged the flights to A380s.. I don't think it'll get cancelled anytime soon. Maybe downgraded back to 747s at worst (particularly since oil prices are low making 747s economical to run again)
Wasn't there something in the news in the past few weeks about outrage that Qantas wasn't reducing ticket prices even with the cheap fuel? A quick google search turned up this:
http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/qantas-reduces-fuel-…
Is that a reference to the mining boom which ended quite some time ago? It only filled the pockets of a small part of the population, but yes, prices were (and still are) higher than Eastern States, even though the boom is long gone, and the job market is in a shocking state.
na not a reference to anything just my guess of why perth is always excluded
it's true, perth folks hate bargains. I used to live there. That's why they built the world's most expensive wool shed on the most prime waterfront real estate in the city that no one uses. Yes, the one not far from the $10 Bell tower that rings instant disappointment. Actually it doesn't even ring due to red tape.
Yeah, don't talk to people here about the convention/exhibition centre. It's so expensive for people to hold conferences in that many events are now resorting to alternative venues. When they finished it, I was like "what is that? Is it going to stay like that???"
The Bell tower was an election stunt. It made the news for losing $500k a year. It is a "tourism attraction for the sake of a tourism attraction".
Qantas is not too bad, but their entertainment system is pretty pathetic.
You've flown the A330 too much haven't you?
Not that I have a choice when it comes to the model of planes they use.
I was talking about the content of the entertainment system though, not the screen size etc. Don't think the content is related to the plane model?!
Actually it would be related to the entertainment system used on the flight which would be related to the plane model.
Qantas could also freshen up the old bats stewardess's a little.
I know a year or 2 ago, Any flight flown on an A380 would have a "fresher" crew. They're generally the ones who have been employed in the last 5-8 years and are on different salary agreements to most of the other long haul crew.
Now that they're retiring 747s, the oldies may be on the 380s
Choice of days is very restricted. Tried pumping in some dates and it's a struggle to get <$599
Found some easily for late april and may.
This is sooooo cheap and if its the A380 then thats awesome!
Can't find any A380 flights from Sydney to HK during these periods. All 747s.
Probably because there are no more QF A380s flying to HK anymore.
Only during peak period such as Xmas
They still fly A380 to HK, usually Fri/Sat/Sun but maybe not in these periods
I should clarify, there are no more regular A380 services between SYD and HKG anymore. They were pulled from the route back in September to allow for SYD-DFW to be upgraded to A380 services. That being said however, during busy periods like xmas holidays and Chinese New Years QF will operate select services with the A380 to handle increased demand. After March the service will revert back to the now normal B744. No one utilising this sale will find any services operated by an A380 at this stage, or any services after March for that matter.
Do you need to update the title/post to confirm that it's for return flights?
This is so annoying i'm headed there twice in late march
Recently came back with Qantas from melb to hk, the main hot food is terrible. And they charge for seat selection, maybe that's been happening for a while now, unsure. If you don't pay for seat selection, you get put in the most crappiest spot (same area for both legs). Food takes longer to get to you, and ran out of the main i wanted twice..and when asked for more noodles, was told that i had one (which i did) and need to give other patrons a chance to have one. But agreeif you're planning to shop the 30kg luggage is worth taking Qantas as appose to Cathay. Having said all that, excellent price! great post OP
How do you select a seat during the booking stage? It didn't come up for me, i got all the way to the payment screen (+$30 for Amex btw).
*you get put in the most crappiest spot (same area for both legs). *
Thanks goodness both legs are in the same area! I'd hate one of my legs to be somewhere else.
Are you telling us that they wouldn't give you more food before other people had eaten? Those sons of …
Struggling to find this sale price for the dates I'm after. I find the Cathay deal is more less available much great range of dates. Obviously, search and compare. Qantas is good alternative especially if it is cheaper otherwise Cathay has better food, possibly better planes and for those QFF you can still earn points on this oneworld partner airline so not all is lost.
$599 for the dates I want to fly.. yay! Thank you OP
Care to share which dates those were? I can't find any at or even near that price. Must be all sold out. Or perhaps they just had a couple of seats going at that price to get a frenzy going?
May 28 - Jun 4, but all sold out now :)
I was told that the chairs are less comfortable on the cathay flights… is this true? I'm contemplating which airline to go with atm… I personally liked cathay in the past but haven't travelled with them in years.
Thanks OP. Booked two tickets. Avoided Credit card fees too by buying two vouchers and using them during the payment stage. Love avoiding credit card fees!
Thanks again for sharing!
How does this work? Is the voucher instant?
Yes….it is instant. Very easy to use and do. Voucher was emailed within two mins and ready to use.
Hope this helps.
So you buy vouchers in your name with credit cards then use them towards the flights? Nice work around
And you still get status and points?
@ezza: Yep, its just like a standard booking. It IS a nice workaround! Wish I could take the credit for it…..
Just use skidded or statravel to book with no credit card fee. Some dates are cheaper, only $580.
I just booked a HK trip for $1599 return for 2 people 30 April - 7 May on previous deal, and this comes up, can I file a complaint to Qantas and manage to get a refund?
They'll give you a voucher. But they deduct money from the voucher. Then they charge you money if you actually want to use the voucher. And you cannot use the voucher on anything which costs less than the voucher, so you will likely miss out on sales fares, and instead have to pick a fare which costs at least as much as (but most likely much more) than the voucher. And the voucher can only be used for the exact same passengers. So you can't pick a sales fare and add a passenger either, not even if they are an infant.
Yeah, I'm frustrated with Qantas. It cost me 3 times as much to add an infant to a PER-SIN fare purchased with vouchers than to bring an infant from Perth to Europe with Singapore Airlines (through Singapore).
infant? as in 2 and under? Curious to hear more about this
will PM you details as background reading :)
there is your 100
woo thanks! perfect timing..
Any good connections to Europe from here?
…
Great price. Shame that the Aussie dollar has dropped making the trip to Honkers for Yum Cha more expensive. Hotel prices is not cheap there.
If you search on skyscanner.com.au you can find some agent with cheaper fare. I just booked a return tix for $577 with Bestjet (from Skyscanner search)
How can I check if I can upgrade this special price fare to business class with my QFF points?
Easiest way is once you find the dates you want to travel on, ring up Qantas and ask for the booking code this fare will book into. Compare that with the rewards charts and you'll have your answer.
You mean type of fare or booking code? I suppose booking code is issued only after booking.
Sorry I meant fare code or bucket code.
Think you can't upgrade if you buy at the sale price
Just be aware that MEL-HKG and BNE-HKG QF flights will be on unrefurbished A330s until late 2015 at the earliest. The flights to SIN are getting the refurbed A330s first. This means very old seats with very small, grainy IFE in economy. If you are departing from MEL or BNE before, say, October this year I would def be paying slightly more and going with Cathay.
If you are leaving from SYD you will be on a 747 with refurbished economy seats.
I can't seem to find any flights which is $599 or even close during that period and with the flight codes? Has anybody booked this deal?
I agree. I seriously did a double check to make sure they didn't mean to say $599 each way! lol
I wish they would update their deal to say what their new 'from' price is (or which dates) so I wouldn't waste hours trawling through their slow webpages looking for the one day in the whole year that they have brought the price down for!
Anyway, the cheapest departure flight I could find in October (which is shown in Qantas' own price graph as being the cheapest time) is around $420. And the cheapest return I could find was in January at around $400.
Ha, just read this on AFF and was just about to check on OzBargain. Nice work.
~$57+ cheaper than Cathay Pacific