What’s the best way to fly to Australia on a one-way trip?

Q Our daughter is going to Australia early next year on a working holiday. She is heading for Perth first but does not know when (or where from) she might return, so she wants a one-way ticket. All the cheapest deals on Skyscanner are labelled “self-transfer”, and we’re not sure what risks that might involve. Also, she knows a friend who lost all her money when an airline collapsed. Should she buy insurance in advance to ensure the flights are covered?

Name supplied

A Looking at the flight-comparison site Skyscanner for London-Perth trips on 1 February, easily the cheapest deal (£519) involves a Wizz Air flight from Luton to Istanbul and an overnight wait at the Turkish airport before a morning flight to Abu Dhabi on Etihad. Another nine-hour airport stay ensues before a flight on the same airline to Bali. Here, it’s a final 13-hour wait before Air Asia flies on to Perth.

“Self-connect” means she will have to collect her luggage and go through passport and customs formalities before checking in again at both Istanbul and Bali.

Also, these are separate tickets, which puts the risk on the traveller – starting with that Wizz Air flight. The small possibility of a last-minute cancellation would see the rest of the journey jeopardised.

In contrast, a London-Singapore-Perth journey issued as a through-ticket comes with solid protection: if anything goes wrong with the first part of the trip, it is down to the airline to sort out the problem (and, usually, provide hotel accommodation if that turns out to be necessary).

In addition, there is the thorny question of baggage. I imagine she will want to take a fair amount – say 20kg. That will constitute a significant extra cost on both Wizz Air and Air Asia. All said, I recommend a through-ticket. At present, Thai Airways via Bangkok looks best at around £750.

Paying extra in order to financially protect the flights looks unnecessary to me; using a credit card confers some protection.

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Q I travelled to the US last September from Scotland to Honolulu via New York and San Francisco. Initially, the flights were great with no delays. But when we landed in San Francisco, there was a delay announcement. As the day went on, we believed we would be flying out in the small hours of the next day. We even boarded a plane.

But then it appeared one of the flight crew was “out of hours” – so the whole plane was decanted to queue at the desk for alternative travel arrangements. In the end, we were sent down to Los Angeles for a subsequent connecting flight to Honolulu. We arrived almost a day later than we should have. Can I claim compensation?

Jim W

A In my opinion, you can probably claim £520 per person for the inconvenience – though if the airline can cite “extraordinary circumstances” such as bad weather, a security issue or air-traffic control shortcomings, your application will be declined. Even if you are entitled to the cash – for example, if a mechanical problem was responsible – don’t expect it to be a smooth process. Foreign airlines loathe the UK/European air passengers’ rights rules that stipulate large amounts of compensation for delays of three hours or more in reaching the final destination. (For a long-haul flight like yours, the amount is “only” £260 for a delay of between three and four hours, but you comfortably exceed this.) An airline may even ignore passengers completely, hoping they will go away.

The best way to proceed, in that event, is to find out which alternative dispute resolution provider the airline is signed up with, and open a case. Even then, I have seen too many examples of when an incorrect decision has been made, so ultimately you may decide to go with one of the “no-win, no-fee” legal firms that typically take one-third of the compensation but do all the legwork.

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Q With the incoming US government under Donald Trump, do you sense that British people will be put off from visiting in future?

Simon V

A Many nations offer a warm welcome to visitors and great tourist experiences – yet have leaders whose behaviour and views some find abhorrent. Examples include Hungary, China (including Hong Kong) and some states around the Gulf. More broadly, in some countries, the prevailing social and legal attitudes towards women, the LGBT+ community and people of colour are completely at odds with the views of many British travellers.

Last Tuesday, the Americans decisively elected a convicted felon as their president from January 2024. Trump’s second term in the US will no doubt deter some people from visiting the country over the next four years.

Yet I recall being at the huge travel-trade World Travel Market in London eight years ago – the morning after Trump was elected for his first term. The mood in the US sector of the travel industry was a mix of bewilderment and alarm at how the travelling public would react. In practice, there was no detectable downturn in the British appetite for travel to America.

Since the first Trump presidency, much more has emerged about the 2024 winner. For example in May, Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. A jury of New Yorkers found him guilty of all counts in connection with a hush-money payment made to an adult film star.

Yet such considerations – along with the controversy about the alarming events at the Capitol in Washington on 6 January 2021 – appear not to have deterred a majority of US voters. Nor, I predict, will a significant number of British travellers be put off from travelling to America where, from 20 January next year, the first thing they see when arriving at a US airport will be a photo of Donald Trump.

Email your questions to s@hols.tv or tweet @SimonCalder