Indirect flying: 9 regional flights amazingly cheap
Somehow I have ended up booking nine flights on eight tickets for very little cash. By carefully ticketing through fares on deep discount I was able to book an entire ‘milk run’ i.e. flights that fly via several stops with passengers and freight getting off/on at each stop. Somehow I saved a bundle going very, very indirect.
Super cheap, super multi segment booking
Regional flights are generally more expensive than mainline routes, they have limited capacity and fulfil the transport needs of the local communities. Recently one of the semi-regular Qantas regional sales recently came up. I’m always looking out for sales to save a little on the next flights and nearly all QantasLink routes were reduced to $49. This is a very big discount on routes that sometimes start from quadruple that. Since I’m in and out of Brisbane a bit, I figured a quick day trip would be easy and fun. However, one thing lead to another, I was playing with the multi-trip tool for a couple hours after finding some weird outcomes. I was seeing what prices were on trips with couple sectors in it, partly to help with status earning. My initial thoughts were for Longreach but most destinations requiring two sectors were costing closer $80. These are also dependent on routing rules but I found the best prices were actually on the milk run where on limited days and times I could grab two sectors for about fifty dollars. Ticketed separately that would get me 20SC and 2000 QFF points, more than enough to break even on the flights. So somehow and I still don’t really don’t know how, because I can no longer recreate it without breaking MCTs, but I came up with this:
| Flight | Dep | Arr | STD | STA | Miles | AC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QF2352 | BNE | ROK | 9:25 | 10:40 | 322 | DH4 |
| QF2308 | ROK | MKY | 11:10 | 11:55 | 174 | DH4 |
| QF2308 | MKY | TSV | 12:20 | 13:10 | 206 | DH4 |
| QF2314 | TSV | CNS | 18:30 | 19:20 | 177 | DH4 |
| QF2305 | CNS | TSV | 10:25 | 11:20 | 177 | DH3 |
| QF2307 | TSV | MKY | 14:40 | 15:30 | 206 | DH4 |
| QF2307 | MKY | ROK | 15:55 | 16:35 | 174 | DH4 |
| QF2307 | ROK | GLT | 17:00 | 17:25 | 59 | DH4 |
| QF2307 | GLT | BNE | 17:50 | 18:55 | 272 | DH4 |
Ticketed as BNE-ROK, ROK-MKY, MKY-TSV-CNS, CNS-TSV, TSV-MKY, MKY-ROK, ROK-BNE (ROK-GLT-BNE was a single flight). All in July school holidays.
Route map up and down the Queensland Pacific coast
But the best bit
Total cost: $211.38
Total QF points: 8000 (2.64c / points)
Total SC: 80 ($2.64 / SC)
Overall a pretty amazing price, even during sales it would cost significantly more to fly direct BNE-CNS. For status points and some points earn that’s pretty good. Suddenly this has become an inadvertent status/mileage run!
