Manchester to Australia flights: Airlines, ticket costs and duration

Manchester to Australia flights: Airlines, ticket costs and duration

One stop Manchester to Australia flights are available with Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific. Ticket prices start at around £800 with a Manchester to Sydney flight duration of at least 22 hours.

Getting to Australia from the UK takes a horribly long time. You’re going to spend nearly a full day on a plane, irrespective of which airline you take. And if you live in the north of England, then having to get to and from London for a flight makes the journey take a lot longer.

One stop Manchester to Australia flights

The good news is that you don’t have to go to London for a flight to Australia. There are several Manchester to Australia flights, although you’ll not see them listed on the Manchester Airport website as none of them are direct.

There might not be any direct Manchester to Australia flights, but there are several one-stop options. These require a hopefully short layover and change of planes in a hub airport. This is no more of a nuisance than it is flying from London, however. The only non-stop flight from London to Australia is the Qantas service that usually runs from London Heathrow to Perth, but has been temporarily shifted to Darwin while Western Australia’s border is effectively closed.

Which airlines fly from Manchester to Australia?

So which airlines fly the Manchester to Australia route, with one stop somewhere in Asia or the Middle East? Well, at time of writing there are five options for one stop flights from Manchester to Sydney.

Ferries crossing in front of Sydney Opera House
Five airlines run one-stop flights from Manchester to Sydney. Photo by David Whitley/ Australia Travel Questions

Qatar Airways goes via Doha in Qatar, Emirates goes via Dubai in the UAE and Etihad flies from Manchester to Australia via Abu Dhabi.

If you want the longest leg of the journey first, opt for Singapore Airlines via Singapore. The fifth option for Manchester to Sydney flights is Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong. However, due to Hong Kong’s ultra-strict Covid quarantine laws, you can pretty much rule out the Cathay Pacific flights from Manchester for now.

These five airlines also offer flights to other Australian cities, such as Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane, although the route map varies slightly by airline.

How to find cheap flights from Manchester to Australia

The first place to start when looking for cheap flights from Manchester to Australia is a comparison site such as Kayak. This should give you a rough figure for the flights. As a rule of thumb, flights from Manchester to Australia rarely cost below £800 and any economy class tickets below £1,000 are generally pretty good value.

Business class tickets from Manchester to Australia are very expensive. Expect to pay at least £5,000 for a business class ticket on Manchester to Sydney flights.

For specific flight routes, check below

Which airline sells the cheapest Manchester to Australia flights?

No single airline is reliably cheaper than the others. Sometimes Emirates might work out cheapest, sometimes Qatar Airways does, sometimes it’s Etihad, Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific. Often, however, the five airlines will herd within a couple of hundred pounds of each other.

Picking the cheapest airline for a Manchester to Australia flight will often depend on sale deals and specific dates. If you have some flexibility with dates, it is worth searching with both Kayak and the individual airline websites a couple of days either side. Sometimes going on a Tuesday or Wednesday rather than Thursday or Friday can knock a couple of hundred pounds off the price.

Manchester to Sydney flight duration

Flight durations from Manchester to Sydney are somewhat variable, too. The length of layover fluctuates with clock changes in both the UK and Australia.

But for a rough idea, for flights in early March, the Manchester to Sydney journey in early March would take 22 hours with Etihad. With Singapore Airlines, it was 23h20m, as opposed to 24h20m with Qatar Airways.

Most Manchester to Australia flights depart in the morning – some uncomfortably early. The Qatar Airways departures are at 07.20 in March, for example. These usually land in the late afternoon or in the evening. Emirates, however, has two flights per day, one of which leaves in the evening. Take this Emirates option, and you’ll land in Sydney early in the morning, two days later.