Hi guys,
I live in Melbourne and travel to Canberra a fair few times throughout the year.
Flights between Melbourne and Canberra are just so expensive (Usually $179 with Qantas and $169 with Virgin).. I think this is likely because we don't have jetstar in Canberra.
I remember a few years ago when i was regularly travelling between Canberra and Adelaide that usually every Tuesday after lunch there would be a flight sale where flights were discounted by ~$50…
Does anything like this still exist?
Are there any somewhat systematic/regular times where Qantas or Virgin do sales? Or is it just totally sporadic now.
I can mainly speak for Virgin's ecosystem here, but the only thing I can think of is virgin's happy hour each thursday from 4-11pm. Of course you can't predict easily what fares will come up on sale (they broadly seem to fall into discounts on flights 6+ months to kickstart passenger loads, or last minute (i.e. within 4-6 weeks) to bump up numbers on a lightly-loaded flight).
Specifically for your MEL-CBR route, you've really got little chance of sales or real value due to lack of competition, and the fact it's primarily a business route (with the government purse propping up the prices) rather than a leisure route.
I think it would be worth in your case investigating the velocity amex https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/201033. For the $349 fee you get a return domestic flight, but more than that you also get 100k points, which could be traded in for 7 return flights (6,900pts each way x 14) plus about $280 taxes for those flights. So <$650 for 8 rtn MEL-CBR flights - that's a pretty good deal in my books