Want to fly for less? Who doesn’t? Here’s how to find the cheapest flights to Sydney Australia.
It may take a bit of time and searching to get the cheapest international flights,but it’s not hard to do.
How to Get the Cheapest Flights to Sydney
Book early
The budget airline model, also followed by full service airlines for their special deals, is to release a limited number of seats at each price point. Once the cheapest flights to Sydney are gone, they’re gone for good.
The next lowest price then applies until it too is sold out. And so it goes on. The closer to the date of the flight, the less chance you have of finding the cheapest flights. They’ve long been taken by smart travellers.
Avoid peak seasons
For Australia, the highest of high season starts a few weeks before Christmas and goes until a few weeks after new year. And try to avoid school holidays as well, prices always go up then, too.
Use airline rewards cards
They work. Get one that’s widely accepted like and use it for everything you buy. Those reward points will add up to air miles which you can use to pay for all or part of your trip to Sydney Australia (There’s a trick to this if you don’t have enough points for the whole journey – I’ll go through that further down the page).
Try for a card with no annual fee and, if you can’t, don’t get more than one as the rewards program charges can quickly outweigh the air miles value. The idea is to minimise your costs of using the card and maximise your earning of air miles.
For this to be really valuable you have to pay your card balance in full each month. If you’re paying interest on an outstanding amount then air miles are only an illusory benefit. But if you manage to avoid interest payments, then you really can travel for just the airport fees and taxes..
I’ve been around the world three or four times, taken numerous domestic and international return trips and flown around Australia business class all on air miles. But you have to use the system and not let it use you.
Be flexible
with your travel arrangements. A few days either side of your target date can give you a wide range of prices, often with substantial savings. Equally, leaving from a less busy airport can save you hundreds.
Check airline schedules
Not every airline flies every route every day. Some very attractively priced airlines fly into Sydney only once or twice a week. Don’t miss them by being too narrow in your search criteria.
Cheap Tickets Travel Tips
Avoid points plus pay tickets
When you use your airline miles to pay for your ticket you will be charged a certain number of points per mile, depending on the category you fall into. You can work out how much value the airline offers you per point by simply looking at their equivalent fare in money and dividing the total by the number of points you use to pay for it.
If you don’t have enough points for the whole flight and you put these same points towards a points plus pay ticket you will be amazed at how little value your points will be given – hardly anything!
Your fare will be calculated using the money value as the base and giving your points the same value as if you were using them to buy a new toaster from their rewards shop. So don’t do it. There’s a better way.
Split your tickets
Simply split your journey into two tickets. Let’s say you are coming from Europe to Australia and you don’t have enough points to cover the whole distance. Check whether you have enough points to go from Europe to Singapore. Or Kuala Lumpur or Hong Kong. Then use your points to get a return ticket for that part of the journey.
Then buy a second return ticket from Singapore, or wherever, to Sydney. Never forget that you need to buy a return ticket to get the cheapest flights with full service airlines – that’s why I don’t recommend using a full service airline to go all one way and points to go all the other. That’s not cost effective. If you use a budget airline you’ll get no extra benefit from buying a return ticket but there’s still usually less to pay in total.
Alternatively, use your favourite budget airline to get as far south-east as possible and take a full service airline from there to Sydney return.
I’ve recently used exactly this strategy for a really cheap flight from Sydney to Spain and back. I went Air Asia from Sydney to KL and back, and various OneWorld airlines (Qantas, Emirates, BA) from there to Spain and back, with a one week stop-off in Rome, all for minimal points and very little money. It worked wonderfully well. Points plus pay would have been almost twice the price and used the same number of points.
Just be aware of airport taxes if you use two tickets. You will pay these twice. Use through tickets to avoid this if you can (see details below).
Stopover to sleep
Australia is a long way to come for most people. Quality sleep is one reason why business class travellers pay twice as much for their tickets. Stopovers can give you the same benefit for much less money. As well as letting your body start adjusting to a new time zone, you sleep in a real bed instead of an airline seat. So consider buying the cheapest flights to Sydney but breaking your journey half way, sleeping properly and lazing around for a day before carrying on. Your body will thank you for it.
Find that Dirt Cheap Airline Ticket
These are some of the websites I use to find the cheapest flights to Sydney. Most are good on direct flights, but poor on indirect connections, so also look for shorter flights going in your general direction that you might be able to string together. For example, if one flight comes into KL and another leaves from Singapore, it’s just a short, cheap hop from one to the other with constant flights, trains and buses going between them.
For the best laid out and widest range of cheap tickets to Sydney start with skyscanner.net.
If you want to find out who flies where then try lowcost.com.. It’s really good on this.
Another site that tells you who flies where, but for Asia only, is asia-budget-airlines.com . Key in Sydney and it will show an index, by country, of airlines that fly into Sydney (from Asia and the middle East only).
For a different range of cheap flights visit webjet.com.
Budget Airlines
For my money, the best budget airline in the asian pacific region, hands down, is Air Asia. I find it every bit as good as the mid-priced full service airlines.
As with all budget airlines, if you’re flying Air Asia make sure you check the additional taxes and charges shown in the side columns. They’re one of the better budget airlines at showing all costs up front, you’re unlikely to have any surprises when you come to pay.
See if you can get through tickets – flights where you book a single ticket from your departure point to Australia using two flights – one to go into and one to go out of Air Asia’s Kuala Lumpur hub. You can even stopover in Kuala Lumpur for a day and it is all treated as one flight.
Essentially this means you won’t be charged arrival and departure fees and taxes at the hub. But if you buy two separate tickets, one into the hub and one out again, you pay full Malaysian fees and taxes even if there’s only an hour or two between your flights in and out. And fees and taxes can make a world of difference in the cheapest flights to Sydney.
Airline Luggage Regulations
Don’t forget all the lugage regulations involved in flying. Don’t get caught with having to pay excess baggage fees.
Save on Getting into Sydney
Once you arrive you can avoid paying the high airport access fees levied on every traveller taking the train to or from the airport. Here’s how you save money on arrival.