This is the cheap trip that we had been looking forward to for about 10 months. When AirAsia X first opened up their sales for the new route to/from Christchuch we snapped up some tickets to KL for NZD58 plus airport taxes, coming to NZD99 … add to that luggage at NZD1 per kg and some meals. Fortunately we were able to get the same fare coming back. Early bird gets the worm!
When we eventually came around to booking our short domestic flights to Christchurch and back, all the fares were around the NZD600 mark due to the rugby world cup. Fortunately, some cheap fares came up in the final month … perhaps when all the rugby fans that can be profiteered from had booked, leaving some spare seats for people like us. In this case, the early bird would have been a ripped-off angry bird.
While we had the option of flying standby on staff tickets to Christchurch, there was an element of risk when trying to connect to a longhaul flight. We departed at 1100 from Auckland getting to Christchurch at 1220, giving us 3h50 to connect on to our AirAsia X flight to Kuala Lumpur departing at 1610.