A friend has a conference in Perth over a weekend in October.
I'm looking to get cheap flights for the 2 of us from Melbourne.
Any suggestions? (eg weekly sales etc which I am not very familiar with who has weekly domestic sales)
One restriction: I'm avoiding Jetstar (too many bad stories from friends and friends of friends)
Thank you :)
We're saving QANTAS points for overseas flights but I hadn't looked into using the Velocity points.
Thanks :) That explains why hotel prices are higher (yep, the conference is on during the school holidays)
I'd reconsider your ban on Jetstar - we don't have a lot of domestic airlines in Australia and if you were looking for a cheap deal your only real option is Jetstar or Tiger. Airlines are pretty inconsistent with their sales, either use points as mentioned before or create an alert with iwantthatflight to keep an eye on pricing.
Well, my friend had a bad experience herself. She paid extra to fly on a time much better suited to her.
After she was there, Jetstar bumped her onto the late (and cheaper) flight. No refund for the extra she'd paid AND CHARGED HER EXTRA! They claimed she was changing which flight she was on, even though it was them doing it (and not what she wanted)
After trying to deal with them, they eventually offered vouchers for $50 off another flight. This isn't what she'd wanted and she later found out, Jetstar would charger her a fee for using those vouchers too! :S
So … that's one reason we're put off Jetstar :P
People we know had Jetstar flights cancelled on them and they had the choice of getting home a day late or paying extra with another airline to get home in time.
There were other stories too. We know it's not everyone but, we aren't prepared to take a gamble with Jetstar (it's also only about 5% cheaper or $20).
Completely understand, they can be pretty horrible sticklers for policies even when they've made the mistake and don't want to admit it. Still - I say give them a go if they have a sale on and you find they're 50% cheaper. I agree that $20 isn't enough of a difference to roll the dice.
We gave them their go and they were terrible :P
We brought it to their attention and they were just as bad.
No more goes for them from us and our friends
get someone to buy them for you using OzB classifieds.
I'm sure there are travel credits from cards people want to use
Both Virgin and Qantas has periodical sales, sign up to their newsletters and find out for discount fairs?
Check on webjet or flightcenter website, pick the cheapest flight, then book directly to avoid booking fees?
Or use skyscanner?
You are going for a event, you can't be too greedy, closer it get, flight prices always go up in Aus.
Usually Non-stop flights are expensive. What you should do is finding out flight that has transfer route, and finding a cheap airline.
Thanks everyone. Got a few ideas to try now.
There is also one hack that you can use to get relatively cheap price. Clear your cache and then search for the ticket of your destination.
Or search incognito mode
Yes Incognito can work, but its not full proof as cache is saved on incognito mode as well to some extent.
can you extrapolate on this a bit? Is it because a website views you as a first time customer? or because you've had the same route/price saved on your cache show it shows you the old price?
It is mainly because of Same route is saved on your cache.
Do you have any points with Qantas or Virgin? You can try and see if you can use those to get award seats.
Also, depends on when in October. There are school holidays till 8th October; so no chance of cheap tickets in that period. After that, there are likely to be sales in late August or early September for the period just after school holidays.