Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth: €2,831/£2,355 Cathay Pacific Business Class from Manchester

Oneworld member Cathay Pacific currently offers a decent business class to four Australian cities. With departure from Manchester and a stop in Hong Kong, you can reach Perth for as little as £2,485 (~€2,859). Tickets to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne are just slightly more expensive.

Two checked bags of up to 32kg each are included in this fare, as well as priority services on the ground and lounge access. Even better, you can add a stopover in Hong Kong without increasing the ticket price.

You can reach the following destinations with this deal:

• Perth ab £2,355 (~€2,709) (long layover)
• Melbourne at £2,362 (~€2,718)
• Sydney at £2,373 (~€2,730)
• Brisbane at £2,396 (~€2,757) (long layover)

Our availability calendar highlights all possible flight dates at the lowest price for trips up to 28 days. It will forward you to Cathay Pacific with your selected flight dates. You can also check what OTAs have to offer, as they sell these tickets up to €80 cheaper.

All itineraries require a change of planes in Hong Kong. To Sydney and Melbourne, you can find trips with short stops between two and five hours. Trips to Brisbane and Perth requires at least one layover of more than 12 hours.

The airline currently plans to operate all possible segments with Airbus A350 aircraft. These feature lie-flat-seats in a 1-2-1 seating pattern. You can find a review of the product here. Both soft and hard product receive very positive reviews.

Search & Book

According to the fare rules, tickets are on sale until October 23, 2024 for travel between April and June 2024. A minimum stay of three days is necessary to get the lowest fare. You may not stay longer than three months.

Google Flights preview available flight dates reliably. While online travel agencies may offer cheaper tickets, we recommend booking directly on Cathay Pacific’s website. It is both safer and also offer the chance to get a £200 discount by using the discount code SAVE200GB. However, the code only works when booking for at least two people.

Why is booking with an airline better than with an online travel agency?

More often than not, online travel agencies offer lower fares than airlines do. We still recommend booking with the airlines directly. There are two main reasons for that:

Better Customer Service
In case any problems like delays, cancellations or missed connections arise, you can communicate directly with the airline. The airline has to take care of you because you have a contract with them.

If a travel agency issues your ticket, you may have to reach out to them first. You also depend on your OTA to forward information like flight changes instead of receiving them directly from the airline. In many cases, you may get a prime exhibition of responsibility shifting rather than problem-solving.

This especially applies to premium tickets. You don’t want to spend more than €1,000 to wind up with some budget OTA’s telephone hotline in case anything goes wrong.

Baggage and Other Fees
Economy fares not including hold luggage are industry standard by now. In most cases, travel agencies charge much higher baggage fees than the airlines themselves. If bags are not included in your fare, airlines are often the cheaper alternative.

This also applies to other things like food services, insurances or priority treatment. In almost all cases, you pay less for additional amenities when booking on the airlines’ website.

Adding A Stopover in Hong Kong

The fare rules also allow free stopovers. Especially on trips to Brisbane or Perth, you can make the most of your already long stint in Hong Kong by tacking on a few nights without increasing flight costs. For example, a trip to Brisbane with a 4-day stopover in Hong Kong is available for £2,496 (~€2,872). Feel free to use our Go2 Search Form to book tickets.

Searching suitable flight dates is always a hassle. We recommend searching for cheap roundtrips on Google Flights, then switching to the multi-city search form and toying around with the second leg of either your in- or outbound flight.

Miles & Points

Cathay Pacific issues tickets for all flight segments in booking class I. A trip from Manchester to Melbourne and back earns the following miles and points:

Especially, members of British Airways’ Executive Club can improve their earnings by adding more stops to their itinerary. For example, a ticket with the routing MAN - LHR - HKG - SYD - PER - SYD - HKG - MAN (available for approx. €3,150) would earn you enough Tier Points for instant Oneworld Sapphire¹:

¹In addition to 600 Tier Points, Executive Club Silver (or Oneworld Sapphire) also requires four flight segments on either Iberia or British Airways.

Thanks to our source, Flyertalk!