Can anyone help? We have been in Australia for 4 years and are planning our second trip back to the UK in 2011. The last time we went with Emirates but now the airfares are so expensive does anyone have any alternatives to suggest? We are 2 adults and 2 young children. I have seen that KLM are much cheaper but do not know how they rate in comparison to Emirates??????
Hoping someone can help.....

Toddle off to Flight Centre and ask them what they have available, they are usually quite good at sourcing the cheapest deals around.

Personally I have Qantas frequent flyer membership and get every 3rd or 4th trip virtually free as my credit card spending goes to help the balance along and I just check on the Qantas site - you can get some surprising bargains on there too especially if you can juggle dates. I always reckon on $2.5k per adult then anything less than that is a bonus. I have 4 adults and 2 kids to buy fares for this year so am anxiously checking the bank balance myself!

Good luck!

Have a look at www.bestflights.com.au - they often have pretty good deals. We have never paid more than $1800 per adult to go back (apart from this year when we're going business).

KLM don't fly to Australia so you'd be on another airline for at least part of the journey.

What time of year do you want to travel?

What about the early bird deals?, I know a few weeks back singapore and BA I think were both advertising around the 1500, which is very cheap from here. However I suspect your like us, not available to travel in feb or nov but more school hols ? ......

I always use Kayak.com to find cheapest fares and then check with the airlines website. Make sure you change the currency to AUD.

I just paid $2k for a flight at Easter with Singapore. Cheapest I found was around $1850 but to get that price I had to use multiple airlines and have a long layover somewhere. Its worth the extra money to me to get as short a flight time as possible with minimum stops.

Good Luck.

I always use Trailfinders. Always come up with a good price

I'm pretty sure the KLM flights are codeshare with Malaysian certainly from Oz so you may find you'll go from KL to Holland either on KLM or MAS and then another flight to the UK.

I usually fly SIA and they seem to be doing deals for a couple of months before departure recently so keep an eye on their specials. A friend got a good deal on Ethihad for Easter recently.

Like others have said shop around for the best price for the period you want to go.