How to avoid getting ripped off in Oz

[Pug1]

Hi all,
we want to go to India next year and I priced one way business class on Cathay Pacific's own web site, Sydney to Chennai and Delhi to Sydney. The former was AUD$4200 pp and the latter about AUD$1500pp. What a rip off for us Aussies. Any advice as to how to avoid this rip off? Is the only way to get a trustworthy travel agent in India?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Hi all,
we want to go to India next year and I priced one way business class on Cathay Pacific's own web site, Sydney to Chennai and Delhi to Sydney. The former was AUD$4200 pp and the latter about AUD$1500pp. What a rip off for us Aussies. Any advice as to how to avoid this rip off? Is the only way to get a trustworthy travel agent in India?

Airfares are priced depending on what the market will bear.

Flights from australia, with high wages, and high costs, are going to be expensive.

Airfare prices are dictated by the departure point. So even if you found a really good agent in India, the fare would still be the same AUD4200 for departures from Australia.

If you are flying to India regularly, and want to avoid Australian pricing you'd need to buy a cheap one way ticket to india (or use miles) and then buy round-trip tickets India-Australia-India. Fly here, stay, and use the return portion to get you back, and then buy another return ex India.

Most people don't buy one way international tickets because they are not competitively priced. You'll note while the one way ex Australia is $4200, a return in 'just' $6600.

But still in your case it would work out cheaper to buy two one ways given the strength of the Aussie dollar against the rupee. (bearing in mind 6 years ago there were only 30 rupee to the AUD, so your one way back from India would have been around $2500, not $1400 it is today).

 

[Mattg]

This is not a new trend. QF airfares to South Africa ex Australia are often double the price of those ex South Africa (as just one of many examples).

 

[Sprucegoose]

This is not a new trend. QF airfares to South Africa ex Australia are often double the price of those ex South Africa (as just one of many examples).

Yes and the examples hold for almost all destinations.

It's the Australia tax

 

[juddles]

Yes and the examples hold for almost all destinations.

It's the Australia tax

Not fair to call it that. The same dynamic exists in other región-región routes.