Lap Seat Baby April 2, 2009

We are going!  We don’t know how long we’ll be away, which means we don’t know when we will be back.  We do know when and how we are leaving.

Flight Research

I flew Qantas Airlines on my last visit to Australia in 2004.  Naturally, that’s the first place I looked.  When I flew years ago, my ticket cost $990 round trip.  As I was surfing through the website, most tickets were about $1200 one-way!!   Discouraged I began surfing through other less known international airlines.  I don’t know about you, but I feel uncomfortable going with foreign (unheard of, not international) airlines.

Without any luck, I joined the Qantas flight alert program and put off the task for another day.  Well about a month later, I received an advertisement that Qantas was introducing a new airliner, and tickets were intensely discounted for the promotion.  The Catch: There were specific departure dates.  Luckily, the departure dates fell right in the range of when we were hoping to leave!  So we were able to purchase our tickets for $900/person roundtrip.

Lap Seat Baby

I’ve listed the lap seat regulations for Quantas.

*Infants who do not occupy a separate seat are carried for 10% of the adult fare.

*Each infant under 2 years old must be accompanied by an adult.

*A child over 2 years old must occupy a separate seat.

*All children must have their own tickets whether occupying a seat or sitting on a lap.

The airline also offers bassinets for all ticket types. The infants must be 18 months or younger and weight less than 25 lbs.

So after it’s all said and done, we have a flight from Los Angelos to Cairns, Australia for $2,283.  We also purchased 3 Southwest tickets from Indianapolis to L.A. for $340.  Bringing our grand total to $2,623 roundtrip.

Do you know other trustworthy international airlines?  What flight search engine do you prefer?

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