Flight Prices December/January

[SnowWhite09]

Hi Everyone,

Did anyone go to Disneyworld in December/January just gone and if so who did you fly with and what flight prices were you able to get? I'm just trying to get some idea of what it may cost us.

Thanks very much in advance!

 

[Ms. Shuttergirl]

I'd be interested to hear about this also. But most especially, I'm interested to know when you bought your tickets for December? Was it March/April or later in the year?

 

[ColinA]

March last year we bought Qantas economy for two leaving on December 14th. Sydney Dallas Orlando, return via LA Aulani and home to Sydney.

Via Honolulu was dearer than direct home from LA but breaks the flight up.

Cost $7,300, the prices went up after we bought.

Did not find the prices were much cheaper for the Christmas period on other airlines, using Qantas/AA allowed us to get a business class upgrade on points and the flight times worked well. Loved the new Dallas route.

Waiting now for the AA flights to be released and would expect the flight to be approx 1500 to 2 thousand dearer this year.

If you can go late Nov or early Dec I think the prices are much cheaper.

 

[Sugarglider]

In years past I have found the price goes up after the first week of December (on Qantas). Last year I flew in Nov and bought the airfare in May. I have noticed that Qantas have not announced discount fares for US past June at the moment. (I think they recently had something to Sept - but it is gone now)
I have found the SYD-MCO-SYD fare is roughly the same whether flying through DFW or LAX. On my next trip I will probably fly through LAX because the connection timings are better and I can get into MCO 3 or 4 hours earlier than if flying through DFW.

 

[ColinA]

In years past I have found the price goes up after the first week of December (on Qantas). Last year I flew in Nov and bought the airfare in May. I have noticed that Qantas have not announced discount fares for US past June at the moment. (I think they recently had something to Sept - but it is gone now)
I have found the SYD-MCO-SYD fare is roughly the same whether flying through DFW or LAX. On my next trip I will probably fly through LAX because the connection timings are better and I can get into MCO 3 or 4 hours earlier than if flying through DFW.

I just do not trust the connections through LA to MCO, have seen plenty of people over the years miss the connection or the Qantas earlier flight gets cancelled. Dallas was just so much better to deal with than LA and there are plenty of flights to MCO around that time.

 

[SnowWhite09]

Thanks for your advice everyone!

Has anyone flown with VAustralia and then Delta through LAX? How was it?

 

[Sugarglider]

I've flown Delta LAX-MCO-LAX and it was the same as flying AA. do you have a specific concern? It was on time, had a good connection to my qantas flight, I was travelling with carry on only and had no probs on board. I liked the cheese snack. the plane was the same. the price, the boarding, the flying time - same same same - for me. there will be someone with a different experience

 

[Ms. Shuttergirl]

We've flown with Delta on our last 2 US trips, both internationally and domestically throughout the US. We have been impressed with them each and every time, around 9 flights......except one!

Our flight from NYC to Orlando last year was delayed and then there was a problem with the plane and we had to scramble to get ourselves on another flight. It was a total sh!t fight, and then fight was delayed due to fog (in Sept) which was not their fault of cause.

The other 9 flights were on time, I was impressed with the planes, the service and the food.

 

[Andona]

I just do not trust the connections through LA to MCO, have seen plenty of people over the years miss the connection or the Qantas earlier flight gets cancelled. Dallas was just so much better to deal with than LA and there are plenty of flights to MCO around that time.

Very interested to hear this! We havent booked anything yet but, unless V Australia or delta come out with some awesome sale fares, we will probably be flying QANTAS to Miami. I've been tending towards the flight via LAX, mainly because I infinitely prefer the A380 to the 747 BUT if the connections are much more reliable though Dallas then that may swing our choices.

We've never had tight connections in LAX before but this trip we probably would.

Colin, I have read that the 747s on the Dallas route are the newer/refurbished ones. Is that what you had? We had one of the older 747s last year on our trip home from Heathrow and it was such a shocker after the A380 flight we had on the outbound trip.

Andona

 

[aussietravellers]

BUT if the connections are much more reliable though Dallas then that may swing our choices.

Ah DFW is one of the worst airports in the USA for flight delays and cancellations. It's rated in the top 5 worst, actually in one report I read a year ago, the only one worse was O'Hare. But most have it lower in the top 5 worst. I believe it has improved on the last couple of years. LAX doesn't come close to DFW in the ratings.

So LAX would be a more reliable choice.

 

[ColinA]

Very interested to hear this! We havent booked anything yet but, unless V Australia or delta come out with some awesome sale fares, we will probably be flying QANTAS to Miami. I've been tending towards the flight via LAX, mainly because I infinitely prefer the A380 to the 747 BUT if the connections are much more reliable though Dallas then that may swing our choices.

We've never had tight connections in LAX before but this trip we probably would.

Colin, I have read that the 747s on the Dallas route are the newer/refurbished ones. Is that what you had? We had one of the older 747s last year on our trip home from Heathrow and it was such a shocker after the A380 flight we had on the outbound trip.

Andona

The plane was the newer 747. Personally I prefer the 747 to the A380, I think the A380 is maybe overrated but that is only my opinion, the A380's seem to flex more and for someone who gets motion sickness that is important. At least the 747's make it!

Dallas is a better hub if you are using AA to connect, from memory there were three flights to MCO after the trip from Sydney, LAX there is only the one direct flight and I hate the idea of stopping in the middle.

We actually selected the later flight out of Dallas to MCO, from memory it was 3 hrs and 40 minutes, Originally it was around 3 hours but the flight was changed. Next time we will allow less because customs and immigration was much quicker than LAX. We did not mind the wait as it makes for less stress and time for something to eat as the food on AA is not really digestible if you want to buy it!

This is what suits us, for others it will be different.

 

[Andona]

Ah DFW is one of the worst airports in the USA for flight delays and cancellations. It's rated in the top 5 worst, actually in one report I read a year ago, the only one worse was O'Hare. But most have it lower in the top 5 worst. I believe it has improved on the last couple of years. LAX doesn't come close to DFW in the ratings.

So LAX would be a more reliable choice.

Aussie, I'd love to read the source for these ratings? Could you point me in the right direction?

I've taken a look at Avoid Flight Delays ( http://www.avoiddelays.com/worst-offenders/most-delayed-arrival-airports.asp#) and they rate LAX as worse for delayed arrivals ( AFD does rate DFW as worse for delayed departures but that is less of a problem for us, it wouldn't cause us to miss a connection)

Flightstats.com rates LAX as worse than DFW for "On Time Performance rating" but I think that doesn't differentiate between arrivals and departures. I

What I'd really love to find is some stats about average times taken to get through immigration/customs at each of them - can't find it on Flight stats but it's bound to be out there somewhere If I could combine that with the available info about the on-time performance of the specific flights then I'd be very happy! ( I was a statistics major and when it comes to holiday planning I'm borderline OCD - you might have guessed that )

I guess there's no guarantees with any airport, we'll just do what we've done in the past and give ourselves a substantial layover.

Colin, thanks for the reminder about additional connections. I'll have to check to see how many additional flights there are going on to Miami from both airports, if one of them has more connections to MIA I'd definitely be taking that into consideration. We've been lucky so far, no considerable delays, but it's bound to happen one of these days!

Andona

 

[ColinA]

Ah DFW is one of the worst airports in the USA for flight delays and cancellations. It's rated in the top 5 worst, actually in one report I read a year ago, the only one worse was O'Hare. But most have it lower in the top 5 worst. I believe it has improved on the last couple of years. LAX doesn't come close to DFW in the ratings.

So LAX would be a more reliable choice.

Dallas does have it's problems with lightning but it is ranked best in customer service for large airports.

 

[Figment2101]

Dallas does have it's problems with lightning but it is ranked best in customer service for large airports.

I agree Colin. IMO LAX would have to one of the worst in the world.

 

[aussietravellers]

Dallas does have it's problems with lightning but it is ranked best in customer service for large airports.

I liked DFW airport and it was the first time I have seen a tornado shelter in an airport, when we saw that we went what the

But due to it's history we do try to avoid it if we can. Also on one occasion we almost had a massive problem with DFW. We got to LAX off our flight from Australia, to connect with our AA flight from LAX to DFW (which we had checked in for, our luggage had gone off to and we had boarding passes), as I went to the AA desk to check on our DFW to MCO flight (don't know why I did that, my esp must have been in overdrive ). I learned that our DFW to MCO flight was cancelled, there was NO other flight for 5 days from DFW to MCO, not one seat There were massive problems with planes nation wide and due to delays and back ups all onward flights were full, thank goodness we were flying first class and had amazing service at LAX from the AA staff trying to get us to MCO. We would have been stuck there. Luckily the AA woman said to us that we can't get on the flight to DFW so we had 3 check in people finding us a route to MCO, ended up on a flight to JFK that night and a JFK to MCO (on Delta as AA was full for days out of JFK). Our grand total travel time from when we left our house to arriving at AKL..... 42 hours

So for our next trip I did a little research and I'm not saying we won't fly through there as we would happily, but we prefer not to. If we can get a direct flight, then we will.

Aussie, I'd love to read the source for these ratings? Could you point me in the right direction?

Andona it has improved over the years, as when I did my research it was in 2009 and it seemed to be bad that year (for flight delays and cancellations, not for being a bad airport in the form of bad facilities, service etc). But it was still ranked on a worst list last year. It's not a bad airport, it's clean, its got ok shops, the AA lounge is ok. I would happily fly through DFW, but if we can get a direct flight from LAX to MCO rather than stop in DFW then we will, direct flights are always better in my book.

If the direct flight is delayed at LAX, well then you get to MCO later. If your LAX flight to DFW is delayed, then you will miss your onward flight to MCO and have that extra hassle of getting on another flight. Organising another flight can be done of course, but there will be a lot of other people trying to do the same thing, who knows what time you will then get to MCO.

We just prefer as direct a route as possible to help avoid travel dramas, which we have had plenty of over the years

******************/airlines-airport-in-minneapolis/website-compiles-world-s-worst-airports-list
http://www.examiner .com/airlines-airport-in-minneapolis/website-compiles-world-s-worst-airports-list

just copy and paste that and remove the space between the r and the .com
the address above will not appear for some reason.


http://travel.yahoo.com/p-interests-29376377

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/DFW-Airport-Makes-Worst-Delay-List-Again-52453352.html

http://airnation.net/2012/01/01/dfw-worst-airport-business-travelers/

 

[ame]

We flew VA to LAX DEC/Jan just past and paid $2400 p/adult, tickets bought 10 months out. The prices only went up.

We flew VA to LAX Dec/Jac 09/10 when there was a glut of seats and paid under $1000 each We bought those in Sep 09 when the world ecomony wasn't happy and interest rates were going up.

If flying VA, it's worth noting that they now fly into the Delta terminal at LAX so that after clearing customs and collecting your bag, you just recheck it as soon as you walk out. Not sure if there's a way you don't have to clear secuurity again? but we were flying Alaska air so had to walk across the terminals. But Delta is in the same one, so easy peasy.

 

[ColinA]

Current prices off the internet for a friend traveling to WDW leaving Sydney on 21st December 2012 and leaving 2nd Jan 2013. Prices are for two adults economy.

Qantas Sydney LA MCO LA Sydney $8,999

Qantas Sydney LA/DFW MCO LA Honolulu Sydney $8,790

V Aust Sydney LA MCO LA Brisbane Sydney $7,655

United Sydney LA MCO LA Sydney $7,487.00

Delta Sydney LA MCO LA Sydney $6,957

 

[ColinA]

Not sure if there's a way you don't have to clear secuurity again? but we were flying Alaska air so had to walk across the terminals. But Delta is in the same one, so easy peasy.

Still need to check through security again.

 

[jessiegirl84]

We flew from Brisbane on the 7 December 2011, to LA with AirNZ, that ticket was $1900 return. So we just added on the internal flights. So I think from memory it was about $400 one way from LA to Orlando. I remember the internal flights being quite expensive. But my sister used to be a travel agent and said it can be quite pricey during December/January especially flying from Australi.

 

[ColinA]

Flying Air NZ return from Sydney to LA on 7th December $2,216

Leaving 21st December $2,677

Air NZ flights go through Auckland both ways. 1 free bag, $115 extra bag

Flying from Brisbane return is approx another $100


Flying Qantas return from Sydney to LA, direct flight on 7th December $2,204 sale fare, upgrade not allowed.

Leaving 21st December $3382 no sale fares, this is Red e-Deal and Flight Upgrade Awards are eligible. Checked bags 2 pieces

Prices seem to have increased this year. Interesting to compare.