Introduction:

It's time to compare some of the fares available online again for the 3 top online travel agents, Expedia.com , Travelocity.com and Orbitz. We searched all 3 sites and found the best round trip coach fares for 3 popular routes to Sydney, Australia.We searched for fares from Los Angeles to Sydney, London to Sydney and Tokyo to Sydney. All searches were conducted on October 15, 2001 and prices may have changed since then. We also picked two random travel dates which are December 8-22, 2001 and February 12-26, 2002.

What We Found:

All fare search results can be seen below and they vary a lot. This really reinforces the need to shop around and do a lot of research. Remember that a savings of $200 (US) translates into a lot of Australian dollars right now because of the favorable exchange rate. The other important point to note is that you may be able to drastically reduce your fare by travelling later rather than sooner. Compare the December fares from London to the February fares. You may even want to plan to travel further into 2002.

A Word of Caution:

When you research your fares, please make sure that you check if certain conditions apply or not. Some flights may require certain stop overs and others may not.

Auctions:

If these prices are too much for you and you are on a strict budget, you may want to try one of the travel auction sites. One such site is SkyAuction.com . Our research on October 15, 2001 showed that there were some good deals. For example, the current bid on a Los Angeles to Sydney round trip ticket was $866!

Name Your Own Price:

The final choice that you have is to name your own price and company that controls this market is priceline.com

We have not used this service but it is very popular and may be worth looking at, especially if you are absolutely fixed to a certain budget and only willing to pay a certain amount for a fare.