London to Seoul flights

Looking for flights from London to Seoul in November - there are direct flights for £765 ... or single stoppers for just over £300 ... so one stop it is!

All the cheapest flights are with Chinese airlines - which overfly Russia - which can be both a moral and a practical problem.

But if you want to to avoid overflying Russia - the price jumps from around £300 to closer to £600

So I guess that I'll just have to put up with overlying Russia!

At least with the current Visa Free transit policy in China, it should be easy to connect in any of the main airports

There are three main Chinese carriers with good connections from London to Seoul, and whilst you can book using an Online Travel Agent, it's usually better to buy directly with the airline, so let's look at each of them.

Air China has the best website - starting with a good price matrix - and with prices that do actual stay the same after you click through!

The flight selection page is pretty good, with plenty of sort and filter options - including whether you want to fly via PEK or TFU

And then once you've chosen your flights - you get a good summary screen

Next up is China Southern - which starts off with an unimpressive date / price matrix

But then makes up for it with a good flight selection page - including bar graphs above each date to highlight the cheapest options

China Southern quotes the full return price on the outbound selection - and then offers the inbound flights with a "price difference" - which I quite like

With just a handful of flights via PKX and CAN - China Southern has the smallest choice of the three big airlines

And finally we have China Eastern with the strangest website of the big three - which starts off with a warning not to throw objects into the engines!

The pricing matrix isn't overly helpful - you have to click on each option and load the flights in order to generate a price - which sort of defeats the whole idea of a price / date matrix!

And to get a final price for your selected flights you have to enter all your booking details - so you will probably want to make up names / phone numbers / email addresses

And then in my case the price turned out to be quite a bit lower than the price matrix claimed!

So whilst China Eastern has the largest number of flights and the lowest prices - I would probably book them via an Online Travel Agent rather than directly!

New Zealand for Christmas

A friend is looking for flights to New Zealand for Christmas - travelling out around 16th December, and getting back by 6th January.

He wants to stop in Sydney for a few days on the way out, and stop in Melbourne for a few days on the way back.

For these type of multi city itineraries, I tend to start with Kayak or Skyscanner

And the results are pretty eye watering, as you might expect ... despite being 3 stops on the first leg ... and that's without checking if these are consolidated tickets

The cheapest routing with less than three stops is also 10 hours shorter journey time on the first leg

Another option is to split up the trip into a London - Australia trip, and an Australia - NZ trip

So looking at the SYD - CHC - MEL ... it's close to £500

Or booked separately as two singles the cheapest flights would cost even more [£231 + £277] 

Then looking at the London - Australia routings ... a LON - SYD and MEL - LON open jaw routing is coming in under £1,200

Departing London on Sunday 17th December would save £100 off this price

Departing Melbourne on Thursday 4th January would be the same price

And finally, another option is a simple London - Sydney return (with an extra single from Melbourne to Sydney) - more expensive than the open jaw

or a simple London - Melbourne return (with an extra single from Sydney to Melbourne) - again more expensive than the open jaw

Another benefit from booking one open jaw ticket is that on entering New Zealand, you can show a return flight out of the country - although that may not be of concern depending on passport requirements!

So my advice is to book the China Southern flights directly on the airline website now [after booking travel insurance!] ... and then keep an eye on the Australia - CHC flights  ... and book them if a deal pops up, or if they don't seem to be changing

Although before doing anything, it's probably worth calling up a couple of bricks and mortar travel agents to see if they have any deals

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