Moosette

Hey there,

Just nipping across from the French section of this expat forum...

Given that many of you must have made the trip home from time to time or had family/friends come out to visit you, I'm wondering if any of you lovely people have any pearls of wisdom to offer me regarding where to look for the best deals when purchasing flights to NZ from Europe/UK. I'm intending to go to NZ for four to six weeks or so in the (European) summer or autumn of this year and I really need to keep the travel costs down as much as possible. I'm in my early 20s, currently living and working in France, and have practically nothing by way of savings. Obviously the trip to NZ will be a rather wonderful holiday, but that is not the only reason why I want to go. There is in fact a little romantic story here (which is terribly exciting/nerve-wracking for me but probably totally uninteresting to anybody else, so don't worry, I won't bore you with the details!) and thus I will be visiting a particular person as much as his beautiful country. Hence why I don't mind going to the South Island in winter: if you like somewhere in the winter, you should like it at anytime of the year, right?

Anyway, back to the point: does anyone have any tips re finding reasonably-priced flights? I've searched for flights with various price-comparing websites, but I'm wondering if I'm missing a trick or two. I keep coming up with quotes for between £1,100-£1,400 but I was hoping for something a bit cheaper since it will be the NZ winter. Are the best fares generally found in travel agents or online? And have you found that it works out cheaper to book from NZ or from the UK/Europe? Although I refuse to accept the very generous offer made by the other principal character in this little story to pay for part or all of my fares, I think I could stretch to letting him book them from his end if it would save me a bit of money.

Thanks for your help.

Persephone

Can't help you with the flights apart from shop around but I'm interested in the romantic story! Without going into details, I maybe possibly/ was / am in a similar situation. Could be completely different of course...

Now applying for residency in NZ

And I'm an old cynic!! PM if you wish

welshwales

The cheapest we found at the mo is air nz own web site. we looked at all sorts of places, even flying out to frankfurt or amsterdam first then flying on from there with other carriers but air new zealand were the cheapest.

banshigirl

Go on, tell us the full story. Please?

On the other note, have you tried looking at coming across to England and then flying out?

Just thought it might be a bit cheaper?

BEVS

My first thought is that you should fly Europe autumn time to avoid paying peak rates , if you can wait that long

Flights from NZ to Europe and UK are expensive . Their $$ price is not much different from the ££ price.

Unless you see a great offer in a travel agents window, I would say the best deals are on-line. You have a much better chance of getting a great flight deal from your end.

Singapore Air is coming in at £822.70 for a return tx. This would be a Sept departure.

If you are under 25 , you may want to try this Student & Young People Cheap Flights. Phone number Tel: 01782 715215

MOSO

We went out in February and found that Flight Centre were the cheapest.
www.flightcentre.co.uk

They have an office in our local town and it turned out to be worth going in as the agent spent time scanning all the various options so that we eventually flew Virgin to San Francisco and then Air New Zealand the rest of the way there and back. It turned out for 4 of us to be £700 cheaper than we could find online. We also left Heathrow on Saturday morning whereas the more expensive flights were leaving on the Friday night.

It may also be worth booking as early as you can to get the cheapest available economy flights. We booked in Oct for Feb, friends who left it till Jan to fly out in March paid £1000 more than we did for4 tickets.

Good luck - shop around as much as possible.

brussels_sprout

From Paris CDG, It just has to be Air Tahiti Nui with a one night subsidised stopover in Papeete ! Best airline i have ever used, everyone gets presented with a Gardenia flower, great food. They are usually competitively priced too, particularly if you have a stopover , normally stopovers cost you !

urbanproject

True, however, that's when a lot of people from Europe come to the Southern hemisphere, being long summer holidays for people who have kids

I'd be inclined to agree with Bevs for travel in September-ish, if you're a bit flexible with your departure time. Best deals can definitely be done online as you're cutting the middle man, however some travel agents have price beating policies where you could get pretty good deals. We got a really good deal from Singapore Air when we came to NZ so they might be worth a look?

Good luck with everything

Jen

ps: I'm also quite nosey about the romantic thing too, me being French and my partner being a kiwi...always a good mix

Stoof

we've flown singapore and air nz previously with v good prices - would always recommend singapore, but never found anyone that wouldn't!

anyway, what i was really going to say was we found flights for oct/nov a couple of nights ago with malaysian airlines flying through KL from heathrow, no stopover but including taxes etc, return flight was £580ish.... certainly less than £600 all in...

really sorry i can't remember which site we found it on! might be worth a good trawl though!

good luck

newkiwi

ive used expedia or travelocity
there is a nz equivalent, something like zuji.co.nz

The best bet is to try different dates around the time you want to go, sometimes flights on certain days are several $100 or more cheaper for no real apparent reason.

Also, avoid school and university holidays during the winter, the flights will be more expensive during those times. Flights from london are generally cheaper than from the continent, not sure if youre looking at flights from paris or from london. may be worth looking intop a cheap flight to london and taking the main flight from there.

good luck, its going to be a fair chunk of money whichever way you cut it...

but then again, what price can you place on love

Moosette

Thank you very much for all of the replies. You have given me some very useful tips which will undoubtedly save me a lot of money! Everybody was definitely correct to point out that the European autumn is the cheapest time to travel: I'm getting back much cheaper prices now for departures between mid/late August and mid-November. Let's hope that work commitments won't scupper any chances I might have of taking some time out around that time of year...

Thanks to those who recommended particular flight-searching websites/companies and airlines; I will definitely take a serious look at them. For anybody else who might be in a similar situation to me, other sites which have been recommended to me since I submitted the original post include www.trailfinders.com , www.austravel.com , www.traveljungle.co.uk , www.travelmood.com , www.airline-network.co.uk , and of course STA travel (for young people/students). I haven't yet had a chance to trawl through any of them in detail, but apparently they have yielded some good results for some people.

Stoof, that's quite a bargain you found there! Great to know that deals like that exist. You've given me some hope!

Thanks once again to everyone. I am so impressed with how thoughtful and generous people are with their advice on this forum. If I discover anything useful, I shall be sure to post it back on here so that others might benefit from it too.

Moosette

P.S. For those who were interested in my little story, without going into much detail (or I'd be sitting here writing well into the middle of next week) suffice it to say that it is a classic case of terrible, terrible timing: that is to say, two people being close friends for several years but only realising there might be more to the relationship when they're about to be separated indefinitely by a distance of 12500 miles... One short week was all the time we had to, errm, explore the hitherto uncharted territory, so to speak... And neither of us can get over it.

I really don't feel comfortable posting any more than this on a public forum. At the same time, I am kind of curious to hear from anybody who might have been in a similar situation (Sue R?) so I think PMs are the way forward if anybody has anything to add!

newkiwi

If youre keen on exploring your new relationship and potential life in Nz, an easy way to get into NZ is on a working holiday visa, that allows you a full year living and working in NZ. obviously you may want to see how the holiday goes first, but something to keep in the back of your mind if your so inclined.

urbanproject

Definitely agree French citizens can get a 1 year Working Holiday to NZ and it's really easy with the paperwork. The visa usually comes in about 5 working days.

ps: Moosette, I sent you a PM

NZBee

ooooh! I love these stories!!! Something similar happened to me! We are now engaged living in Auckland!!

urbanproject

Looks like there are a few of us in the similar situation then