Crazy Expensive Xmas Direct fares to Japan

[lovestotravel]

It's one of many highly visible and strong signs that Australians are spending more and more, in spite of an apparent cost-of-living crisis.

Australia is becoming a two tier economy - Those than can travel and those than cannot.

 

[hwy]

Australia is becoming a two tier economy - Those than can travel and those than cannot.

Still seems more and more flights going to Bali from Aust every day. Kids dont save for a house. They travel for today.

 

[Forg]

Still seems more and more flights going to Bali from Aust every day. Kids dont save for a house. They travel for today.

They pay a lot more than train fare to travel to 1980’s Kings Cross …

 

[Himeno]

2022 first year Japan let tourists in (I believe they opened in October 2022). Airfares skyrocketed to 4000+ RTN in economy. Everyone in Australia wants to goto Japan during the Summer (here) Holidays.

Japan reopened their border in Oct 2022, but required people entering be part of a tour group for the first few months of the reopening. I think they removed that requirement in Mar 2023.

However overall Japan demand has softened - you can now routinely find sale prices for below $1000 AUD RTN across all 3 airlines which was not a thing before the latter half of 2025 at all. You just need to look at offpeak times such as May, June, July (yuck weather), Mid October - Early December.

The overall demand for Japan travel has still been increasing. Most recent numbers are 3.2 million inbound travellers for Sep. 13.7% up on last year. 31.6 million for 2025 thru Sep. Prior records were 31.8 million for total 2019 and 36.8 for total 2024. Not sure how much of that overall demand is to/from Australia.

As for the Chinese carriers, unfortunately due to the political tensions I imagine the airlines themselves are currently going to be massively scaling back their ops which probably resulted in less availability.

The mainland Chinese airlines have been told to cut Japan flying by 40% through March 2026. That may be extended. The last time something like this happened with China (to Korea), it took 3 years to resolve.

If you're dead set on going to Japan around this period in time, I can suggest to you to see what you can find into South East Asia at a reasonable price and then a separate ticket over. Some thing like Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Hanoi etc. Also there may be random award tickets to go interesting routes like via Hawaii or Fiji (or even mainland US), India, if you don't mind a bit of extra travel time.

As the JL / NH prices, those are probably Flexible Y (or close to) those booking classes and on any given day, they are more expensive than Business class tickets normally. It's a weird thing with their tickets and how they price them. It also gives you a bunch of premium things that don't come with regular Y tickets like lounge access.

I paid ~$7k for non stop J flights on QF for Jan 2024 in early Dec 2023. Other trips to Japan in 2024/25 were via HKG or SIN for much less. Current trip (positioning for DONE3) was Y outbound (last Aug) and J back (next Mar) on JL (MEL-NRT).

Australian trips to Japan Sep 2025 (graph is monthly since April 2025, bars are % change vs same month last year)