Trip to New York - July

Lperez on 22/12/2012 - 12:19
Last edited 22/12/2012 - 15:30

Hi all,

We've been invited to a wedding in New York in July… does anyone have any advice on arranging flights?

  • What's a good price to look out for (departing Melbourne)
  • Would there typically be any sales on July fares?

We'd look to go for 2-3 weeks and would visit some other places also… so don't mind flying into one airport and back from a different one, especially if this saves us some money.

Never been to the USA so don't really know what to see/do - a lot of eating will definitely be on the itinerary, and perhaps some wine tasting in CA.

I've found flights MEL -> JFK -> LAX -> MEL for around $1550 per person so far (leaving around 18th July) - seems reasonable to me?

Thanks in advance!

Travel

Comments

  • [Deactivated] on 22/12/2012 - 15:56

    I've found flights MEL -> JFK -> LAX -> MEL for around $1550 per person so far (leaving around 18th July) - seems reasonable to me?

    Could be depending on Airline. June 20th - mid Aug is US summertime holidays so is peak travel time price wise, so the fares can be good. A quick check on a few sites Jul18 - Aug8th gives $1.4K for fares. United or Delta (2 stops) $1.58K AA (1 stop) , which will be Qantas across pacific

    On such a long flight I would consider only Qantas/AA or Virgin/Delta vs United Again with a longer flight other airlines like AirPacific AirNz tend to mean a more tiresome trip, but will depend on prices at that time.. Maybe United have improved but I would still be wary.

    On your itinerary Wine Tasting in CA, would mean a side trip to San Fran for the bigger wine region (Sonoma) there are a few in Southern CA but no where near as much.

    • ftweet on 23/12/2012 - 06:16

      Recently flew United while in the States (4 times in total). Service is okay, though I did hit two delays while flying, one consisting of a 2hr delay, the other a 30min delay. To be fair I flew at larger airports so these things tend to happen as bad as it sounds.

      • [Deactivated] on 23/12/2012 - 08:23

        Good info, but to check, are you talking about domestic flights or was this also a transpacific flight?

  • perez on 22/12/2012 - 18:34

    Thanks for the info, that's great… in that case, we might aim to go up to San Francisco for a few days and do some wine tasting up there.

    Can't wait!

  • battler on 22/12/2012 - 21:40

    flightfox.com … pay a few dollars for people to compete to find best fares for you.

    • honkyb on 29/12/2012 - 12:33

      What's the diff between these people and an agent

      Every time I look for fares I can get them cheaper than the agents

      • [Deactivated] on 30/12/2012 - 03:35

        Every time I look for fares I can get them cheaper than the agents

        Agents still have their use when there are fares you can't book or take full advantage of through an online booking site.

        For example, there's a airfare I use quite regularly that, if you read the fare conditions, allows for unlimited stopovers (up to a maximum permitted mileage) between destinations, but most online travel sites only allow to book up to a maximum of 4 or 5 or 6 legs in a single booking which severely limits the number of stopovers you can take. An agent allows me to take full advantage of the fare, by allowing me to book more than 6 legs.

        There are also cheap fares out there which are simply not available online. http://matrix.itasoftware.com is a useful tool for finding some of these, particularly since Matrix also gives the fare construction codes which you can give to an agent to make it easy for them to replicate the fare you found.

        flightfox.com isn't an agent, but it's connects you to "experts" who might be able to find better options for you — possibly useful for people who are inexperienced at booking fares, or don't know about the full array of booking tricks and tactics you can use to get a better value fare.

  • T Info on 23/12/2012 - 09:17

    Lowest base fare is not necessarily best value, there are on-costs, comfort & convienience, risk factors also. Days of travel, extra days = extra cost on accommodation and burning more days leave. Extra travel time can = extra spending. Comfort ? .. what price is a decent seat worth to you on a 14 hour flight. Non-stop or connecting ? Every connection adds more risk of miss-connection or luggage going astray. Travel insurance … many insurance companies are not covering AA for insolvency for instance. These are all factors and considering the published tariffs of the trans-pacific carriers are almost the same it may be the other factors that decide. However it is likely that there will be a sale between now and then. Its also likely VA will withdraw their metal from the MEL-USA route and leave it to Delta who operate 777-200's rather than the VA 777-300. Qantas operate A380 out of MEL and for most people that is the first choice.

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