[Expon]

Has anyone ever noticed that it is cheaper to book flights from the Canadian or American Qantas site than it is to book from the Australian site? I found flights to be around $500 cheaper return to Vancouver all year round. Only problem is on the international sites I cannot book a return flight originating in oz. Is there a work around for this? surely it costs the same to fly to oz as it does to return.

Ex

[serfty]

Originally Posted by Expon

... Is there a work around for this? surely it costs the same to fly to oz as it does to return. ...

Not really; fares are set depending upon the Point of Origin (PoO) / Point of Sale (PoS).

For example it normally much less expensive to book QF online SIN-Oz-SIN than Oz-SIN-OZ, even if the same flights/booking classes are used.

What can be done is called "Nesting" and only works when you need to travel to a destination region several times.

Consider the following: Say you need to visit SIN three times from PER. Buy a PER-SIN-PER round trip for your first and last sectors. Call this T1 and the sectors S1 & S2. Then buy two SIN-PER-SIN round trips; call these T2 & T3.

Then travel:

T1-S1 PER-SIN
T2-S1 SIN-PER
T2-S2 PER-SIN
T3-S1 SIN-PER
T3-S2 PER-SIN
T1-S2 SIN-PER

Just be REALLY careful with your dates of travel.

[JohnK]

Originally Posted by Expon

Has anyone ever noticed that it is cheaper to book flights from the Canadian or American Qantas site than it is to book from the Australian site? I found flights to be around $500 cheaper return to Vancouver all year round.

I have noticed this using the Singapore QF website and have been saving a fair amount of money on my trips.

Originally Posted by Expon

Only problem is on the international sites I cannot book a return flight originating in oz. Is there a work around for this? surely it costs the same to fly to oz as it does to return.

One work around is to pay for a one-way airfare or even use FF points to get there first and to be able to plan your trips in advance and purchase return airfares back to Australia.

[Therma]

It is worth looking around. A NW flight from MNL to SFO via Japan is USD 2200 (business) when booked from Northworst Phils website, but if you book it from Singapore website it is SGD 3800 (USD 2794). Similarly Asiana if booked from Singapore is SGD 4800, and USD 2700 directly from Asiana Manila office - and they advised me to try travel agent in MNL as it would be significantly cheaper! And to add to the indignity, you pay almost 10K SGD for SIN -SFO on SQ ex Singapore but from MNL (extra sector and linking to the same flights) it is USD 5200!