Travel to USA

[HB7]

Hi all. I'm going to the US at the start of november and I'll be leaving from Melbourne. I'm going to boston through LA and need some help on how to book cheap tickets for domestic travel within America. Any help would be appreciated thanks....

 

[drron]

I watch this site if I am looking at side trips-
Airfare Deals - Cheap Flights - Airfarewatchdog

 

[danielc]

I am also off to the US in November and have found a good starting point to be www.kayak.com. Also you may wish to have a look at www.flyertalk.com/forum which has some interesting posts about MR (mileage run) specials. Good luck on your trip with the excellent exchange rate. Go au$$ie Go !

 

[zan5hin]

I find Cheap flights: compare prices, find airline tickets - Skyscanner Australia to be the most flexible tool at the moment. It allows me to easily search across a whole month or a whole year, as well as being able to search from somewhere to everywhere or somewhere to country X as a way of jumping around the place and comparing prices between for example landing in Shanghai as opposed to Beijing or in your case, JFK vs La Guardia.

You can also register at myAirDeals.com and set up a custom search pattern to notify you of sale fares. I have one setup to cover the Asian budget carriers. I have it come to me as an RSS feed in google reader instead of emails just for convienience.

The best deals of course will come from the low cost carriers, you can join their mailing lists, or if you don't want email spam, the site above might work better. You can check the list of them here: List of low-cost airlines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have flown only on Southwest but have heard good things about Jetblue. With the extra baggage fees these days, these two both have free checked baggage, which is great compared to all our low cost carriers.

Airline baggage fees chart, updated - Airfarewatchdog

 

[HB7]

I just want to say thanks to you guys for your help. Its been fantastic.

Just another question however, in terms of flying Melbourne to LAX, which airline is best for travel out of united, qantas or v australia? I will be traveling economy and i do alot of flying to europe with emirates in general.

Thanks again guys.

 

[straitman]

I just want to say thanks to you guys for your help. Its been fantastic.

Just another question however, in terms of flying Melbourne to LAX, which airline is best for travel out of united, qantas or v australia? I will be traveling economy and i do alot of flying to europe with emirates in general.

Thanks again guys.

That would always be a subjective answer. :shock:

Personally though I would say which ever suited you better (price and timings) out of V Australia and Qantas.

 

[zan5hin]

Oh I thought you already had your MEL-LAX sorted.

Check out Best Flights then: North America - Cheap Flights - Phone Flights Results

I believe V Australia has the best Y product to the US but I have not flown it.... I flew Qantas on a 747 to LAX and on to JFK and took an A380 back home and they both sucked, food was terrible, Y seats on the A380 are an absolute joke. Fat guy fully reclined in front left my mother absolutely squashed in her seat, and I had to jump over her to get to the toilet, super bladder in the window seat held it in for 16 hours.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/tra...-v-australia-economy-class-20090722-dt6k.html

 

[RB]

I can certainly support any recommendation of Jetblue. Used them in May/June & booked the extra space seats via the airline website. BookingBuddy makes for some interesting reading re fares.

 

[danielc]

Agree with previous comments re VA and QF. Personally, I avoid UA as they have no IFE (speaking in economy) in their aging 747-400s. I am booked in QF for Nov MEL-SFO and paid just over $1k AUD for the ticket with an A380 going and 747-400 on the return flight. Another airline that I have used several times and always found to be excellent is Air New Zealand. I just keyed in sample dates of 01/11/10 - 15/11/10 for MEL-SFO and was able to get a flight for $985 on the Air New Zealand web site. You may want to consider them as well. Nice service on modern 777's and the AKL - Calif segment is a little shorter than MEL - Calif so it kinda breaks up the flight segments.

I am considering doing a cross-US trip while I am there, flying from Calif to East Coast and then taking the (Amtrak) train in the opposite directions. Had no trouble finding one-way flights from SF to JFK for around $120 US which is a great price. Even found flights on AA which is good as I belong to QFF.

Good luck with your planning.

 

[MissBurrill]

I can certainly support any recommendation of Jetblue. Used them in May/June & booked the extra space seats via the airline website. BookingBuddy makes for some interesting reading re fares.

I flew Jetblue from Buffalo to DC via New York in June and they were great. My bag was a few pounds overweight and I was ready to split it and pay for a 2nd bag (first one is free) but the check in lady let it through with a suggestion to stop buying things.

Free in flight snacks and wireless in the terminal.

 

[grussellt]

A good place to start is ITA Software . You can't book on this site but it is a good guide to what's on offer.