Cheap tickets with China Eastern

I have been working on the return leg for our trip from Australia to the USA and was almost ready to book reward flights with Qantas from Dallas to Bali. Each one way ticket would have cost 60,000 points. The only problem was that I was 5,000 points short and to buy the 5,000 points would cost $200.

I quickly searched for alternatives and found if I bought a case of wine for $150 off of the Qantas epiQure website, I would get a bonus 5,150 points. I did this and then went to book the flights the next day. When I had selected the flights I saw that the taxes and fees for two people totaled $800.00 US!

This kind of ticked me off, because earlier I had seen a similar flight with fees only $215.00 per person, but I could not find that flight anymore. All flights from the US to Bali or Australia seemed to have the same high fees.

A search on Google Flights came up with one way tickets around $600 each. Feeling desperate I did a search on Cheapoair.com and found ticket for $271 each! They called this a Fusion Fare as it combined a Spirit Airlines ticket to LAX with a China Eastern ticket the rest of the way.

I have seen Google Flights do this in the past, but for some reason it hasn't been combining airlines recently. The catch is we have to pay around $36 per bag (including carry ons) and with Spirit airlines. China Eastern includes two checked bags. Another thing to beware of is that Cheapoair no longer allows free cancellations in the first 4 hrs. They charge $50 per person for cancellations, and after 24 hrs the flights are non-refundable. It's a good idea to use a credit card with good travel insurance when booking through them, or just book directly with the airlines and they give you free cancellation within 24 hrs.

I will write a review of our trip with China Eastern in the future, which will include a 24 hr layover in Shanghai Pu Dong. The reviews I have read mostly complain about lack of pillows and difficulty in English communication.

Another side note is that I used Ebates as a shopping portal to earn $9.83 cash back from this booking. I will have to write about shopping portals in the future, but most airlines have them so you have can get points by shopping at places like Apple.com and other online stores by using the link to the store in the shopping portal. They are basically referring customers to online stores, which then pay the portal comany for their traffic. If you use my link by clicking on Ebates or copying and pasting the link below to sign up, I will get $25 and you will get $10.
https://www.ebates.com/r/MIGUEL4648?eeid=28187

Cheers,

Mike