Canterbury fair fare research.

[mrsbrown]

1. Travel on 1 Feb is MUCH cheaper than travel in January.
2. Staying later doesn't make much difference to fares.
3. Taxes etc make a big difference to the overall cost, so you have to look further than just the quotes for fares.
4. These fares are for 2 adults and 1 infant
5. The infant cops ALL the tax charges, so isn't as cheap as I expected.
6. We would need a passport for Rose.
7. Virgin has that "sporting equipment" allowance, which increases how much stuff you can take.

Fares:

Jetstar - $795.52
Qantas - $1673.12
Virgin - $937.50
Air New Zealand - $1,141.56

Are there other airlines I could be looking at?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think I'll be heading to CF this year. I really want to go to NZ, and as by birthday is Feb 12, I think this can be construed as an ideal bday gift to (non-sca) hubby, who would of course, meet me over there for a while AFTER the event.

[pseudicide.livejournal.com]

Note to self, log in, THEN comment.

Sigh.

[vonstrassburg.livejournal.com]

Jetstar and Air NZ have the disadvantage that (baggage limits being 20kg to NZ) if you carry 21kg they will charge you for the excess. Air NZ is $12/kg, Jetstar is $7/kg PLUS a $100 excess fee, so to carry 21kg on Jetstar costs you $107. Plus Jetstar have a tendency to do stupid things at the gate like weigh your hand luggage and charge you excess on that (over 7kg). Virgin may or may not cut you a bit more slack on the day depending on how they feel. Qantas you will get away with a lot more going over, but less coming back (their ground staff in Christchurch are actually Air NZ staff who couldn't care less about Qantas passengers).

The main disadvantage that Jetstar have over the other three is that they suck. No, really, they do. Their groundstaff and flight staff are universally rude and their terminals are a disgrace (well, Avalon and Proserpine anyway).

Air NZ have a $120 fee for changing your flights once booked. Jetstar is a bit less, about $50. Not sure what Virgin charge but I know they don't let you change the return portion of a flight once you've used the forwards portion (they make you buy a new ticket).

Most of the airlines start their January sales on Boxing day. So if you do want to travel in January it may be cheaper to wait before you book.

Emirates and Thai Airlines fly to Auckland but I don't think that either of them fly to Christchurch. I've heard good things about Emirates but I've never flown them.

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

We usually use Virgin, due to being cheaper than Qantas and AirNZ. Tried Jetstar once, but their online bookings system wanted passport details over an unsecured link, which offended our online security sensibilities, so we forked out the extra hundred or so and went Virgin.

We tend to fly from sydney on the Virgin evening redeyes to Chch and return on the early morning redeyes from ChCh, and have a habit of turning up as early as possible if we can, as I find you're far less likely to get hit with the excess baggage fees then. When we're over baggage limit, it's usually 5 or so kgs, and haven't been charged yet in the past three years, and have never had our carryon weighed (this is good for my habit of carrying bags of rocks).

Only hassle with Virgin is their occasional habit of re-scheduling you through Brisbane for arcane reasons. We did that once, and next time they did that we complained and they changed it for free.

[auntyyolly.livejournal.com]

Blame Del that I'm reading this ... We've found in recent years that there seems to be a raft of cheaper flights about three months out. Before that, everything seems quite expensive, but then suddenly better deals appear.

For NZ, we've religiously used Virgin (boom, tish) when we can after our first super-excess hits from Qantas. The sports gear allowance is vey helpful, but it does need to actually be sports gear in that bag. They do accept SCA gear (Western martial arts as J describes it) and have always been quite good about a little bit of overage (a couple of kilos). They also had reasonable rates the last time we were a lot over, but do check.

Flights are not flash, but the seats are comfy and they're pretty reliable. Del is completely right about Jetstar. Do not be swayed by any of their arguments to the contrary, they're rubbish.

Emirates are great, but don't go to Chch as far as I know.

[(Anonymous)]

To/from Festival, we've flown Virgin once and Jetstar once. Virgin managed to get all our baggage wet at Sydney somehow. Seriously wet. And cost me an hour of mucking about because I foolishly called my rattan stick a sword. But the sports baggage allowance thing worked fine.

Jetstar - no complaints, except they've already re-scheduled one set of our November Crown flights. Fairly helpful in sorting it out though.

But otherwise, they're both airlines, and a three hour flight is a three hour flight.

Unless it's routed through Brisbane :)

B