What are the best websites for finding flights to Australia?
Australia cheap flights websites
There are hundreds of websites out there that allow travellers to compare flight prices. In fact, it could be argued that there are too many of these sites, and that it all becomes a bit of a confusing maze. So which are the best/ most useful?
Well, obviously, the site you’re on now should prove a handy starting point. But beyond Australiaflightbargains.com, I would pick out three other sites as being the most useful for finding cheap flights from the UK to Australia. And these are as follows:
Travelzoo UK
For a first stop, Travelzoo is excellent. It sends out a weekly Top 20 travel deals e-mail, which will occasionally have some Australian bargains on it. However, the more interesting part of the site is a little hidden away. Up in the top left corner is a section labelled ‘Cheap flights’. Click on the ‘world’ link underneath it, and it lists great deals for flights outside of Europe. A fair few of these tend to be flights to Australia.
The great thing about Travelzoo is that it only picks out the really eye-catching deals. It also lists the dates those deals are available on. Travelzoo staff test the availability before putting the deals online, rather than just taking airlines’ word for it.
If you’re wanting to find the absolute best deals, then Cheapflights is usually the winner. Simply put in where you want to fly from and where you want to fly to, and the site will bring up a list of great deals.
A lot of these deals won’t show up on other sites, because Cheapflights gets fare quotes from all manner of obscure travel agencies. Sometimes these travel agencies have eye-popping special offers that need to be booked by phone.
The cheapest prices will almost invariably show up at Cheapflights, but there is a problem with the site. Many of the deals quoted are for very specific dates, and those dates aren’t listed on the site. It can be something of a needle in a haystack task finding the absolute bargain that is advertised.
It can often be a case of phoning up the travel agency, asking about the promoted fare, only to find out that those fares have sold out already.
This is annoying, but it’s still worth using Cheapflights – when the deals do come off, they’re almost certainly the cheapest available.
Try searching with Cheapflights here:
Kayak UK
There are a few metasearch engines (sites that check prices across a series of other sites, including those of the airlines) out there, but I find Kayak to be consistently the best.
The basics are similar to those of similar sites – put your departure and destination airports in, with dates of travel, then click to see what deals it brings up.
Kayak’s main strength is that it culls all the deals from the airlines, as well as those from booking sites such as Ebookers or Opodo. But there are other advantages too:
- It’s possible to be flexible with dates; you can ask Kayak to find prices from three days either side of the entered dates. This catches a lot of flights you may have missed out on due to being too specific.
- It’s possible to sign up for a fare alert. This allows you to receive a regular e-mail showing fares for your chosen flight. Essentially, you can monitor how the fares change over time – and new sales will be flagged up.
- Perhaps even better still is Kayak Buzz. This feature tracks flights that other users have found; you can see when the cheapest ones have been detected, and use the same details for your own flight.
UPDATE: Comparison of prices from five major flight metasearch engines.
Return to Australia Cheap Flights Guide
