RTW Advice

[Honeymoon Helpline]

Hi guys

HELP!!

We are going on our honeymoon and also moving to London in July (flexible) but we have to be back to NZ for a wedding in December. We currently live in Melbourne.

Our draft itinerary is:

Melbourne
Depart when flights are available (July-Aug)

Asia stopover (Singapore preferred)
Stopover for 6 - 7 days (including flight time)

London (base)
Arrive 8 days after departure from Melbourne approx.

Potential stopover/through destination

Potential stopover/through destination


Auckland
Must be in Auckland by 19 December but will spend Christmas in South Island

Melbourne
Return any time after Boxing Day for a week or so or back to London

We have spied this bestflights deal which works quite well destination wise (other than it is compulsory to go through Hong Kong c.f. Singapore) but the fare ends up being almost 3k after taxes ($650), compulsory land fare ($200) and one add-on stopover ($150 per stop). Airfare by itself is $1899. All flights are with Air NZ.
We would rather spend our $ on the honeymoon than flying - we are basic economy flyers and usually fly Virgin - but the AirNZ deal finishes tomorrow and seems to be far ahead of anything else we have seen before taxes given that we are flying in peak season.

Should we book or have we not looked hard enough? If we should take it, who should we sign up with for FF? Do we have a choice?

Thanks in advance!

Oh one more thing. We will need to go back to London in Jan so we will be effectively repeating the trip then.

The Newlyweds

 

[Kiwi Flyer]

Congratulations Honeymoon Helpline and welcome to AFF

A$1899 is over NZ$2000. For that price you should be able to get a NZ-Europe return fare from NZ (which includes stopovers in asia and on some airlines also in australia), but only on sale. There are quite a few airlines offering cheap fares between NZ and europe. And you'd need to add on Mel-NZ as separate ticket.

If you check out zuji.co.nz will give an idea of fares available.

With your dates you may have a dilemna. For the return from europe to NZ before christmas, availability of the most discounted booking classes will go over the next few months. However there is no guarantee the best sale fares will released now.

 

[Honeymoon Helpline]

Thanks Kiwi-flyer. I'm a kiwi flyer too

We are doing a fair bit of domestic and international travel over the next few months so hopefully we can pick up some tips and tricks to repay the favour to the members here.

 

[wiz]

Keep in mind that the airlines currently release their new fare-types for 07/08 around the January - March time of year (normal international fares that is). This means that some airlines will not have released their pricing schedules for post 31 March '07 travel dates (except any Earlybird specials), and therefore the airline may not come up as an option when looking for fares on travel websites / agencies etc. (The airliners' "'year" runs from 1 April - 31 March, and the airlines wait until the end of this period before releasing the next year's fares)...

So, it might pay to wait a few more weeks when there will be more options from other airlines appearing. However it does sounds like your agent is using an "Earlybird" fare (ie: the compulsory land component fee), which are temporary fare specials that the airlines release before their normal pricing comes out. These fares can be okay, as long as you have something useful to spend the compulsory land component on, and as long as you will not be changing any flights after ticketing (highly restrictive fares).

My recommendation would be to purchase a MEL - LON return fare (ie: not RTW), and just choose the airline that stops over in the city of your choice (eg: SQ in SIN). Then as Kiwi Flyer mentioned, lock in the MEL - NZ fare in December ASAP. New Zealand fares, as I understand, work more commonly like domestic fare rules, in that you can book them for travel up to 11 months in advance, and usually the earlier the better. So you can do this part now (as long as you have definite dates), and then when you book your international ticket, link the return flight to Australia with your departing NZ flight.

Repeat process as necessary.