Flights to Thailand from Australia | Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai

Four countries wearing one name

There is no such thing as a Thailand holiday. There are four of them, and they want different flights, different months and different expectations.

Bangkok is a great world city that most Australians allocate two nights to and then wish they had given four. The Andaman coast, meaning Phuket, Krabi, Phi Phi and Koh Lanta, is the limestone-and-turquoise Thailand of the photographs. The Gulf islands, Samui, Phangan and Tao, are a softer, slower Thailand on the opposite side of the country with its own weather. The north, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, is temples, mountains, food and a genuinely different culture.

Booking Thailand well is mostly a matter of deciding which of the four you actually want, and then not fighting the calendar. Tell us which Thailand you want and we will build the trip around it rather than around a fare.

The honest skip-list

Most travel pages tell you what to do. Here is what we tell clients to skip, because it costs nothing to be honest and it saves a real holiday.

• Do not try to see both island coasts in one trip. They are on opposite sides of the country with opposing weather, and the transfer eats a day at each end. Pick one, stay longer, be happier.
• Do not book Chiang Mai for February to April without knowing about the smoke. Regional agricultural burning produces genuinely poor air quality in the north for weeks at a time. It is not marketing-friendly, so nobody mentions it. If you have asthma or small children, this matters more than the fare.
• Do not connect between Bangkok's two airports on separate tickets. They are an hour apart with Bangkok traffic in between. This is not a connection, it is a hope.
• Do not book two nights in Bangkok and call it done. It is the best-value great city in Asia and it rewards four days. If you are treating it as a transit stop, at least treat it as a good one. Our Bangkok guide covers the case.
• Do not book the elephant attraction with the riding, or anything advertising tiger photographs. We will not arrange them, and the ethical sanctuaries are better days out anyway.

Which airport decides your week

When Australians go, and when Thailand is good

These are not the same weeks, and knowing the difference is most of the value on this page.

Australians go in the school holidays. Thailand is at its best on the Andaman coast from roughly November to April, in the north from November to February, and on the Gulf islands across a broadly opposite window, with October to December being their difficult stretch. The December and January peak happens to align well with the Andaman coast, which is why Phuket is expensive then and worth it. It aligns badly with Samui, which is why a December Samui holiday can be a wet, disappointing surprise at a firm price.

The shoulder weeks are where the value hides. May and June on the Andaman side are gentler than their reputation, with rain that arrives and leaves rather than settling in. September and early October are quiet almost everywhere. If your dates are your own, that is where we would send you.

The two dates to know: Songkran in mid-April, when the country celebrates the new year with several days of water and everything books out, and Loy Krathong around November, when the lanterns go up and Chiang Mai in particular fills months ahead. Both are wonderful. Neither should be a surprise. Ask us to check your dates against both before you pay for anything.

The internal legs, and the ticket rule

Almost every Thailand trip involves a domestic flight, and almost every problem we fix involves one that was booked separately.

The rule is simple: the domestic leg belongs on the same ticket as the international flight, wherever the airlines allow it. If your Sydney flight lands three hours late and your Krabi flight is on the same ticket, the airline rebooks you and it costs you nothing. If it is on a separate booking made on a different website, that fare is gone and you are buying a new one at the counter, at the counter's price, on the worst afternoon of your holiday.

The saving that tempts people into two bookings is usually modest. The cost when it fails is not. We price it both ways so you can see the real difference, and we are happy to be told no; we just will not let you make the choice by accident.

Full-service, and what it actually buys on this route

Thailand is heavily served by budget carriers, and they have their place. But the honest comparison looks like this: add two checked bags for a family, seat selection so the kids are not scattered, a meal each on a nine-hour flight, and the payment surcharge at the end, and the headline gap narrows sharply. Then add the week something goes wrong, when a full-service airline reroutes you through its own network and a budget carrier hands you a refund and a queue.

We quote the full-service options with everything included, in Australian dollars, and we will tell you when the budget fare genuinely is the better buy for your particular trip. Sometimes it is. What we will not do is compare an advertisement to a finished holiday and pretend they are the same number.

What happens when you ask us

Tell us which Thailand, when, who is coming, and what matters most. A Sydney-based consultant compares published, wholesale and unpublished fares across every airline flying your dates, puts the domestic legs on the same protected ticket, checks your month against your coast and your dates against the festival calendar, and replies within 2 business hours with the two or three options genuinely worth your attention, baggage in writing.

If your plan has a problem in it, a smoke season, a wrong-coast December, an airport-to-airport connection that cannot work, we will tell you before you book rather than after you land. That is the job. Start your Thailand fare quote now, or call 1800 865 126.