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Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder.

It's Friday the 19th of January and today I am looking at flights to Australia next Christmas.

This is really crucial because we are now at the time when finally, if you were trying to get away for Christmas and indeed early new year then you are going to be able to find flights back so you can book

the whole transaction now just as a reminder scheduled airlines generally put their flights on

about 355 days.

That's just over 11.5 months in advance.

So we are now at the stage.

You can do the maths whereby, yes, you can get flights in both directions up to basically the end of the first week in January, which is good because you get to see what's on offer and you get

to see if you are able to afford it or whether you want to wait around and see if you can get a

better deal. So the argument in favour of booking now, you lock into certainty. You know what

the fair is going to be. You've got something to look forward to,

you can imagine yourself stretching out, well, depending on what sort of ticket you buy, I'm talking

here actually about economy, but stepping onto that plane from Manchester, from Heathrow,

flying out maybe to a gulf or a far eastern stopover point, and then onwards from there to Australia.

So you're going to have all that anticipation which your money will buy.

And also you will be de-risking things because, of course, it's entirely possible that fares will just continue to rise.

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