Perthforme

Thinking about flying via USA to get the massive baggage allowance who has done this trip and how long does it take compared with the Asia route?

Nicstids

We're going this way in January with Air NZ and are making a holiday of it. I think it's an 11 hour flight to LA - we are then taking a short hop to San Francisco as we don't really fancy staying in LA. Stay there for 5 nights.We then fly on to Auckland (13 hours), stay there for a week and finally to Brissie - about 3.5 hours I think. For 2 adults and a child the fare was £1750 odd so not particularly cheap (!) but I've never been to the States and we decided that it might be the last time we can afford a holiday for a while! As you say, you get 2 x 32kg pieces of luggage each so I think we'll need to go and buy a few big cases

Perthforme

wow it is a bit longer then and more £ ! thanks for the reply

markeh

Nicstids,
I must admit that nex time i/we go to Oz, this will be the prefered route, with a stop over in the USA, allowing the wife to see the grand canion etc.
That way it's more of a holiday as well.

The 32KG limit also sounds soooo good

Bye
Mark

Perthforme

ITS 2 bags of 32kgs each via USA

Bob

Avoid the US if you can, it's a pain in the arse having to deal with immigration and customs, even just for a lay over, unless you plan to break the trip up over a few days.

Bob

depends on the carrier...some have 20kg limit....and double check the hand luggage as some limit the size of the bag as well as the weight.

Perthforme

Know where your at with that been state side once and i got through nazis sorry us customs ok but mate got collared and took 20 mins more than I

Bob

My mate got held for 4 hours when he came over for our wedding, his problem, he'd written the phone number wrong on one of the forms, got the last two digits mixed up in the area code...wrote it correctly else where....lovely fun

Amazulu

True for LAX, but San Francisco (SFO) is usually no problem. You can fly from there direct to Sydney or Auckland.

Elaine M

When I came over to Aus for good last year I brought my mum for the trip and we went via the US with 3 night stopovers in New York, Las Vegas, Hawaii and Sydney on the way to Adelaide.

It was a fantastic trip, especially the Grand Canyon - awesome!

Customs was a bit of a pain (we got "randomly selected" for a check three times between us!) and we had a few problems with the codeshare arrangements.

Cost an arm and a leg (about 5 grand all up for the two of us) and I probably wouldn't recommend it with kids in tow, but we had a great time.

Just remember though that you have to lug those 2x32kg cases around if taking stopovers!

Elaine M

boom_meringue

Don't do it unless you REALLY have to.

I am sat in the lobby of our hotel in LA waiting for the taxi to take us to LAX. We had a 7 hr flight to New York and stayed over for 4 nights then a 5 hour flight to LA with a 2 night stop over. We leave LA at 22:30 tonight and land in Sydney at 06:20 monday morning, we've then got another 5 or 6 hours flight on to Perth.

We screwed up when the shipping people came and didn't ship enough of our clothes so we really needed the luggage allowance, it has been a major nightmare dragging two massively heavy bags through JFK and LAX airports and if I was doind it again I would fly with as little baggage as possible and go via SIngapore or Dubai.

US customs are a pain in the arse and generally as thick as the proverbial pig muck. They tried to charge me 400 USD when we checked in for our internal flight to LA because the domestic luggage allowance is 50 lbs and we are well over, they couldn't understand the concept of an international flight itinery and were a real pain. We found the check in staff totally unhelpful at JFK and I am dreading checking in tonight, unlike checking in at Heathrow where the British Airways check in staff were extremely friendly and helpful even when one of our cases turned out to be 48kg and we needed a major rearrangement of our stuff on the floor of a very busy check in area.

We have also found that we have not enjoyed the experience of the USA very much as we are bored now and just want to get on with starting our new lives in Perth; I guess that the anticipation is getting the better of us and we want to remedy the feeling of being so unsettled as well as being a bit pissed off with having the trots and major sunburn

Anyhoo, that's my two penneth and you can take from it what you wish, I personally would save the money for setting yourself up, our week in the states has cost us about £1500 comprising £400 or so extra on flights (for the two of us, not each), £400 on hotels (lastminute.com rock!) and £500 or so on food and excursions etc. I also had to pay an extra £250 on the travel insurance to cover my laptop which I wouldn't have bothered with if we were not having a stop over.

Steve

edited to add: think carefully about what you wear on your feet to fly, I decided on my heaviest Caterpillar boots which I have had to go through the hassle of taking off at security for both flights so far

TrickyTree

We also went via the US on our way to Oz.
Flew direct to San Fran from London had a couple of nights there before heading to Las Vegas for a couple of nights and LA. Customs through all these airports was OK and we had non of the long delays talked about (think it is just luck of the draw you can be held up in any airport). We certainly preferred the stop over in the US compared to Asia and the larger baggage allowance was a bonus too.
Dont know if I would take this trip on direct with no stopover but if your planning a break inbetween there is plenty to keep you occupied.

TT

marco121068

Personally I have no hesitation in going via the US, especially as you're more than likely get the 2 x 32kg allowance, and I want to stop off at a couple of places en route. Yes US immigration is a pain - but if you've got nothing to hide then you shouldn't have any problems as long as you've followed the instructions correctly.

karenjc

We looked into going the USA route, it was not much more expensive than the Asia route so that was not a problem. The flights were with air New Zealand but the travel agent said that the planes did not have the TV screens and were a little bit older but that they were having them upgraded by October ( but they were behind schedule ). This was not the reason we are more likely to got the Asia route it's just that when i went the USA route i really felt the jet lag, which people have said its to do with the fact that you are going against time it hits you more. So not wanting to put the little ones through this we will probably go via Asia