V-Australia’s cheap one-way tickets, LAX-Sydney or Brisbane, are hard to find

If you’ve heard about the V-Australia one-way sale between Los Angeles and Sydney or Brisbane and wanted to think about booking a trip this year you might already be out of luck. I started testing the sale that started July 20 and when I couldn’t find any of the fares online, I turned to their customer support service by phone. She said that they were nearly gone and though she could look up a specific date, she couldn’t just tell me which dates with the low fares were still available. Instead, she directed me to the website to try again. I couldn’t find the one-way sale fares (did you?) but I did find cheap round-trip fares starting at $349 one-way between Los Angeles and Brisbane.

Deal or no deal? V-Australia put one-way flights between Los Angeles International (LAX) and Sydney (SYD) or Brisbane (BNE) on sale starting at $359, pre-tax. I tested fares online for flights in October on both V-Australia’s sale and Kayak. Departing Saturday, Oct. 17, from LAX-SYD, Kayak returned its lowest fare at $591 with one-stop aboard Air New Zealand. But when I clicked through, it led to a round-trip price despite searching via one-way on Kayak. If clicking through to the Orbitz option, the one-way price was $1,232. The first time I looked on V-Australia, I couldn’t find the fare online choosing random dates both midweek and on the weekend for a variety of dates. When I tried again after calling V-Australia I started from the beginning of the sale and hit the “next week” button over and over until I got to the end of the sale and couldn’t find any of the cheap fares. However, when I tried flying LAX-BNE, I found cheap round-trip fares that started at $349 each way, but no one-way sale fares at all.

Did you get a ticket? Remember that American citizens can enter Australia on a U.S. passport with an Australian visa or Electronic Travel Authority (ETA), if eligible. The cost is 20 dollars Australian, which converts to $16 right now. Your visa allows a visit within Australia for up to three months.

When: On sale until Aug. 4 (or when they’re sold out) for travel July 20 - Nov. 30.

Contact: V-Australia, (800) 444-0260

– Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel & Deal blogger

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 1:18 pm by Jen Leo and is filed under Airline travel, Deals, News, Tips & Advice, Pacific & Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.