Flying to AUs next March, need expertise

Hi All

We are booked on 2 cruises starting next March, one around the coast of Australia and the other to/from New Zealand. I am trying to find a 'sweet spot' in flights and airfares. We are in Albuquerque and I would like to avoid the LA airport if I can. I know New Zealand Air flies from HOU to Auckland, non-stop. This appeals to me because it avoids LA and is non-stop to Auckland. And, I can buy 'skycouch' seats. But, both cruises depart from Sydney, so that is our ultimate destination and departure port.

I am hoping some of you more experienced fliers can help me work this out. My perfect flight would be ABQ to HOU to Auckland, then on to SYD. I have read varying reviews of the NZ Air skycouch seats (and I understand what this is) but I really don't want to go thru LA and would be willing to pay more to avoid that. The research I have done so far has been difficult--all flights want to send us thru LA. When I specify HOU, I get a mixed bag of flights, many of which go thru LA :(

Can anyone give me any tips on how to search, or maybe which airlines I could use to 1) avoid LA 2) get a lie flat or skycouch equivalent seat (need more room than economy plus or whatever name is used by each airline and 3) goes thru HOU. Or a way to go thru LA that s relatively pain-free??;) I hate the idea of flying west when I really want to go south (and west).

I know I'm not being as clear as you all need so please post what additional info you need to help me.

Thanks for any assistance, my apologies in advance for leaving out important things for you to know!

ML

PS: I've searched FlyerTalk forums and couldn't find anything to help but maybe I'm not searching for the right things? And, DH thinks we could try and get a credit card from the 'right' airline to help with this, but I don't know which one that might be.

Well, your dates would probably help :).

To search for flights without a LAX connection, go to this site: https://matrix.itasoftware.com, and click on 'Advanced routing codes' below the search boxes; then, when the second boxes appear, input ~LAX.

That said, I ran a search for ABQ-SYD, and I can't get it to give me that NZ flight option. What I am getting is ABQ-DFW on AA, connecting to the non-stop QF flight to SYD. Also coming up are options on UA via SFO. Of course, if you want better than steerage seats, you should be looking at Premium Economy on either QF or NZ; the NZ product in particular is supposed to be superb.

One problem might be that you're using HOU for Houston. That is the code for Hobby airport. The international flights are out of IAH - Bush Intercontinental. If you were planning to fly into Hobby on Southwest you would still need to get all the way across town to Bush. I think the Qantas nonstop to Sydney out of DFW would be a better (easier) deal. Have no idea on $$$.

Last April we flew home to Canada from Sydney.

We found it much easier on out aging bodies to do a stopover in Hawaii. Booked the two tickets separately with different airlines. Worked out to be less expensive than flying home in one go. We enjoyed the brief layover.

One problem might be that you're using HOU for Houston. That is the code for Hobby airport. The international flights are out of IAH - Bush Intercontinental. If you were planning to fly into Hobby on Southwest you would still need to get all the way across town to Bush. I think the Qantas nonstop to Sydney out of DFW would be a better (easier) deal. Have no idea on $$$.

There is usually a way to have the software select flights from *any* airport in a city (e.g., JFK, La Guardia, or Newark for NYC).

Enter the city name by spelling it out, *not* using the 3-letter airport code.

Usually, the drop down menu will offer several selections as you start (some not being where you want at all), but among them should be something like "all <city> airports".

If you select that, you should get, in the Houston example, both IAH and HOU if there is reasonable routing possible from more than one.

Importantly, you *won't* miss an area airport that way :)

Hi: I'm from southern NM and fly out of El Paso. What we did flying to Auckland and back from Sydney:

ELP to LAX. Stayed overnight at Embassy Suites by the airport -- has it's own shuttle. Next morning we went to Manhatten Beach. We extended our hotel stay until 5 pm and so had a nap and shower before we left on our evening flight.

LAX to Auckland on Air New Zealand. We were in very narrow bulkhead seats. I took an Ambien and slept all the way. We really enjoyed our three days pre-cruise in Auckland.

Post cruise was Sydney to LAX with a plane change in Auckland. Again we were on Air NZ but in premium economy --total bliss. I could select the return premium economy seats for $200 extra each when I made the booking.

Stayed overnight again near LAX and flew back to ELP the next morning. We were still horribly jet lagged.....

Reviews of Air NZ's "skycouch" are very mixed. Basically you have to buy 2 seats and then pay a premium - around half the cost or a little more of a third seat - to be put in a row that configures into the "couch." Only one person can lie down at a time (with his/her head on the second passenger's lap) unless you buy four seats and pay the premium twice, i.e. each for their own row. And of course the person sitting ends up with the same legroom (or lack of) that you get in ordinary economy, and if people in the row in front recline their chairs (which they certainly will do on that long a flight) then both the sitter and the sleeper will have a devil of a time getting out to use the loo.

By which point the numbers are getting pretty close to a real "premium economy" seat - one with actual legroom and more butt space - without all the hassle. (Note this is NOT something like "economy plus" or "main cabin extra" on US airlines; those are just coach seats with a couple inches more legroom.)

Your dates aren't yet bookable, so I haven't done the precise math, but Qantas has a very good premium economy product on their DFW-SYD A380s. My hunch is that it would end up price-competitive with ANZ's couches, but in all likelihood you'd end up feeling better getting off the Qantas plane. You'd also end up in Sydney, which is where you're going anyway, right?

I'll also mention two other things, both of which might be off the table, but I'll mention them anyway.

First, is that both premium economy and business class fares to Asia and Australia/NZ are, for the time being, considerably cheaper if you fly in and out of Canadian, rather than US cities. For example, flying out of Vancouver BC, premium economy on Cathay Pacific, one of the world's best airlines, costs almost the same to Sydney (via Hong Kong) as flying (non-skycoach) economy on Air NZ from Houston to Auckland. The additional cost of getting to Vancouver from ABQ would probably be comparable to the cost of getting to Sydney from Auckland. Flight time would be longer of course, but the break in Hong Kong might be a good one for leg-stretching.

Second, are you traveling overseas anywhere else between now and next March? How about trips planned for the year that starts next March? There's an off-chance you might be able to piggy-back the Australia/NZ trip on a business-class round-the-world ticket or something similar that would end up cheaper than two separate tickets. It's a rather complicated subject but one that might be of interest to long-term planners like most cruisers happen to be.

My perfect flight would be ABQ to HOU to Auckland, then on to SYD. I have read varying reviews of the NZ Air skycouch seats (and I understand what this is) but I really don't want to go thru LA and would be willing to pay more to avoid that. The research I have done so far has been difficult--all flights want to send us thru LA.

Even if you are tied to Star Alliance airlines, UA's SFO-SYD flight (as Twickenham mentions) is worth looking at if it might cut out one flight.

And finally, I don't know why you are so against connecting at LAX. If you were to do this on AA and QF, then it could be another very straightforward two-flight itinerary. With the new connecting airside tunnel between T4 and TBIT, as I understand it you wouldn't need to re-clear security when making this connection.

Wow, you guys are great, thanks for all your input. I'll try and answer the questions as well as I can, and see if that helps:

Yes, I do know that the actual Houston airport is Bush (IAH), I was just abbreviating Houston by using Hobby. We just flew in and out of Hobby for a cruise out of Houston and that has been on my brain. No way for you to all know that of course :)

I am not precisely sure of the dates we will depart/return. The first cruise will depart Sydney on Mar 13 and return to Sydney on Mar 25. Then we stay 3 days in Sydney, and board a cruise around NZ on Mar 28, returning to Sydney on April 10. We are travelling with another couple, who will fly AA because they have points. I would like to avoid AA if I can. And I know we want to go at least 2 days early, but I would prefer 3 or 4. That pre-cruise stay would give us some time to see part of Sydney and adjust to the time change, and do some more during the 3 days between cruises. We will probably add a few days at the end of the 2nd cruise. For the time and cost involved, I want to see as much as we can and staying a few extra days makes sense to me. But, I'm retired and our friends aren't, so we need to be mindful of their time. We are using a timeshare they have for our days in Sydney.

I have never had a good experience at LAX. And they are in a constant state of construction. Returning to the Houston airport after our cruise, I spoke to a guy who was from the LA area and he agreed the airport is still no fun. We would have to hike across the airport to get from whichever terminal we land it to the international terminal, and if i recall, that might involve taking a shuttle bus, and still have a fairly lengthy hike. I would rather not waste a night in LA before boarding a plane But it is an option. Plus, as I tried to explain, I just have a basic dislike of having to fly horizontally west to go end up going really south. Just a personal quirk that I can deal with if I have to ;)

I wouldn't mind Dallas or Houston, which are shorter flights for us to get to. And I expect we will be waiting until 5 pm or so to even board, so we could comfortably fly that morning to either of those airports and just catch the flight to Sydney.

I would like to try using Qantas or Air New Zealand, and I am wary of the skycouch. I don't know if Air NZ has other Premium Economy seats that would be better. Of course, in a perfect world, we would get premium economy lie flat seats on Qantas or maybe Air NZ. I am prepared to pay some kind of premium to be comfortable on the flights but if it approaches Business class cost, that is too much for us.

We won't be flying overseas before we take this trip, so the option to piggy-back flights won't work, although it is an idea I never considered. We are unlikely to make long stopovers either way, for the reasons I noted above.

I may be over-constraining the problem, but I can always entertain other options once I have the benefit of your advice :)

Does any of the above help you to give me some guidance? Good idea to check matrix/ITA. I always forget about that. And I completely agree that a 2 flight itinerary beats a 3 flight one and that is preferred.

So, my bottom line is I can be flexible on the dates, can spend a little more money for us (DH and I) to be comfortable, avoid LAX or Star Alliance airlines, but want to find a good compromise.

Thanks, already very helpful and maybe now that I gave you more info, you can share you experience with me better.

ML

PS: All of this makes we wish we had transporters, like in Star Trek :-)

You know that Air New Zealand is Star Alliance?

If you take Star Alliance and LAX out of the equation, Qantas from DFW is about your only choice, although I think Qantas is about to resume service out of SFO.

Air New Zealand also flies non-stop to AKL out of SFO. We did that from LAX last October and really enjoyed it. The key is to travel on their 777-300s that have pod seats in PE. They do not lay flat but the do recline 30 degrees and by using a carry on case and the little bean bag pillow they provide you can get a good night's sleep. We were going on to MEL to start the land portion of our trip and were able to get pods all the way through. Our cruise ended in AKL so it was easy to fly back the same way. The seats are nice, much much better than a SkyCouch, the food is the same as what is served in Biz class and the service was beyond anything we have ever experienced on any US carrier. Yes, it involves an extra connection in AKL but for us, it was well worth it. If you can go IAH-AKL-SYD I would go for it. Oh, we also earned our UA miles for each segment.

ABQ-LAX-SYD is over 1000 miles less flying than ABQ-DFW-SYD, and almost 1400 miles less than ABQ-IAH-AKL-SYD. LAX is MUCH easier than before; you fly AA to LAX and either walk or take an "airside" shuttle bus (depending on whether your flight parks at AA's main terminal or its "Eagles' Nest") straight to the Bradley International Terminal - no need to go "landside" and play security rugby.

Air New Zealand also flies non-stop to AKL out of SFO. We did that from LAX last October and really enjoyed it. The key is to travel on their 777-300s that have pod seats in PE. They do not lay flat but the do recline 30 degrees and by using a carry on case and the little bean bag pillow they provide you can get a good night's sleep. We were going on to MEL to start the land portion of our trip and were able to get pods all the way through. Our cruise ended in AKL so it was easy to fly back the same way. The seats are nice, much much better than a SkyCouch, the food is the same as what is served in Biz class and the service was beyond anything we have ever experienced on any US carrier. Yes, it involves an extra connection in AKL but for us, it was well worth it. If you can go IAH-AKL-SYD I would go for it. Oh, we also earned our UA miles for each segment.

As mentioned above, Air New Zealand is Star Alliance, like United. OP wishes to avoid Star Alliance.

You know that Air New Zealand is Star Alliance?

 

If you take Star Alliance and LAX out of the equation, Qantas from DFW is about your only choice, although I think Qantas is about to resume service out of SFO.

Actually, no i didn't know that. After i retired and stopped travelling so much, I lost track of which airline partnered with which.

I may have to reconsider LAX, based on Gardyloo's information. But I would like to try Qantas, I have read a lot of good things about them.

thx

ML

Air New Zealand also flies non-stop to AKL out of SFO. We did that from LAX last October and really enjoyed it. The key is to travel on their 777-300s that have pod seats in PE. They do not lay flat but the do recline 30 degrees and by using a carry on case and the little bean bag pillow they provide you can get a good night's sleep. We were going on to MEL to start the land portion of our trip and were able to get pods all the way through. Our cruise ended in AKL so it was easy to fly back the same way. The seats are nice, much much better than a SkyCouch, the food is the same as what is served in Biz class and the service was beyond anything we have ever experienced on any US carrier. Yes, it involves an extra connection in AKL but for us, it was well worth it. If you can go IAH-AKL-SYD I would go for it. Oh, we also earned our UA miles for each segment.

I knew I had read about this somewhere previously but was having no luck finding this.

Thank you for this--I'll check it out.

ML

ABQ-LAX-SYD is over 1000 miles less flying than ABQ-DFW-SYD, and almost 1400 miles less than ABQ-IAH-AKL-SYD. LAX is MUCH easier than before; you fly AA to LAX and either walk or take an "airside" shuttle bus (depending on whether your flight parks at AA's main terminal or its "Eagles' Nest") straight to the Bradley International Terminal - no need to go "landside" and play security rugby.

 

I didn't realize this, so this helps a lot. You may have all convinced me to consider LAX, but I think I will let the availability of PE sort of lie flat seats determine what we do.

It sounds like I can only do this on Qantas, and only certain metal--is that right? And I will probably have to take AA out of Albuquerque, which does not thrill me but I guess I have to compromise somewhere.

I think we should be able to book right about now, at least for the flight to Sydney. Would you all recommend that I wait until I can book both legs or just book the flight out and in a month, book the return flight? Not sure if there is a benefit anymore to booking RT (or even one-way for that matter).

Thanks again everyone for all your help, I really appreciate it. if you have any other tips or suggestions, I will gladly take them.

ML

I have never had a good experience at LAX. And they are in a constant state of construction. Returning to the Houston airport after our cruise, I spoke to a guy who was from the LA area and he agreed the airport is still no fun. We would have to hike across the airport to get from whichever terminal we land it to the international terminal, and if i recall, that might involve taking a shuttle bus, and still have a fairly lengthy hike. I would rather not waste a night in LA before boarding a plane But it is an option. Plus, as I tried to explain, I just have a basic dislike of having to fly horizontally west to go end up going really south. Just a personal quirk that I can deal with if I have to ;)

ABQ-LAX-SYD is over 1000 miles less flying than ABQ-DFW-SYD, and almost 1400 miles less than ABQ-IAH-AKL-SYD. LAX is MUCH easier than before; you fly AA to LAX and either walk or take an "airside" shuttle bus (depending on whether your flight parks at AA's main terminal or its "Eagles' Nest") straight to the Bradley International Terminal - no need to go "landside" and play security rugby.

 

But the new connector means that T4 and the TBIT could almost be treated as the same terminal, seeing as you don't have to exit to landside.

As a rule of thumb, every extra 500 miles travelled is an extra hour of actual flying time. Every connection will generally eat up about a further 2 hours. That's one of the reasons why LAX-SYD remains the thickest route to SYD, despite the increasing number of alternative options.

For a pictorial representation of why LAX is the shorter route by far, and remembering that the Earth is a sphere not a flat surface, here's ABQ-LAX-SYD (8,165 miles); and here's ABQ-DFW-SYD (9,146 miles). These are the Great Circle routes - the red lines show the shortest distance between the two points.

If you have the time/money, can I make a suggestion. Sydney is a lovely place, fantastic waterfront etc, but there is far less to see and do there than, say London or Paris.

So when you finally return to Sydney, why not fly up to Uluru/Ayres Rock. You would only need to stay 2 nights if time is tight, but 3 would be better. Having traveled all the way to OZ, it would be a shame to miss out on one of the wonders of the world.l

If you have the time/money, can I make a suggestion. Sydney is a lovely place, fantastic waterfront etc, but there is far less to see and do there than, say London or Paris.

So when you finally return to Sydney, why not fly up to Uluru/Ayres Rock. You would only need to stay 2 nights if time is tight, but 3 would be better. Having traveled all the way to OZ, it would be a shame to miss out on one of the wonders of the world.l

While I agree "The Rock" is a great visit, I can't agree that there is little to see or do around Sydney.

 

We are travelling with another couple, who will fly AA because they have points.....For the time and cost involved, I want to see as much as we can and staying a few extra days makes sense to me. But, I'm retired and our friends aren't, so we need to be mindful of their time.

 

Of course, in a perfect world, we would get premium economy lie flat seats on Qantas or maybe Air NZ.

 

Is there some reason why your friends can't leave after hte 2nd cruise and you stay on a few days? Do you need to fly home on the same day for some reason? :confused:

As for lie flat seats in premium economy, double check that. I could be wrong, but I'm not aware of any airline that has true lie flat seats in premium economy. Usually they are just in business class. Premium economy will recline more than regular economy, but it won't be anything like business class lie flat seats.

While I agree "The Rock" is a great visit, I can't agree that there is little to see or do around Sydney.

I probably didn't explain myself as well as I should have done. Given the choice between 7 days in Sydney, or 5 days in Sydney and 2 at the rock, I would go for the latter option, unless I was sure I would be returning to Oz in the future.

You might want to consider which aircraft you are flying on. LAX to Sydney and DFW to Sydney on Qantas you can fly the A380 - a great aircraft! Also consider travelling from DFW or LAX to Brisbane or Melbourne as alternatives (usually on 747s).

If you would like some serious flight advice you could ask on AustralianFrequentFlyers (google it). Good luck and welcome to Aus!

Qantas A380 economy seat -

Premium economy -

Business class -

http://www.airnewzealand.com/777-300-premium-economy#premiumeconomy

The food was lovely and the service impeccable.

Hi everyone

I have to say thank you yet again--the recent posts have been very informative.

Globaliser--thanks again for your help. You have helped me in the past as well, and are always right on point. Love the pictorial routes, thanks for that too.

I have received many great ideas of what to do in and around Sydney (including from GUT2407, thx) so we now have more planned than we can squeeze in. Another flight anywhere is probably not going to happen, although I have read great reviews of The Rock.

waterbug (Meg)--No we don't have to fly home with our friends that was just an unnecessary detail I added while typing. I do understand we won't get true lie flats but something close (see next note) would be quite nice.

Gardyloo--you've heard the old saying a picture is worth 1000 words--yours did that. Love the look of those Qantas PE seats. I may have to put getting those seats as the top priority and fly thru wherever to get them. Very informative.

Alaskanb--thank you for the link. Gives me more to consider.

Later today I am going to start checking out potential flights from ABQ to SYD. I know it is too soon for the return trip. Not to keep beating a dead horse, but does anyone have any ideas on waiting to book the RT flight, or booking the flight to SYD now, and the return flight next month? I think I have read there really isn't discount for booking RT anymore, and if I book the flight to SYD right now, I would have the best chance of getting PE seats. Although probably not the lowest cost over the next year. I am willing to take that chance.

Thank you all, so nice to have this resource to ask instead of stumbling around without any help.

ML