Let’s take another look at the airfare market ex-London to see where we can fly for £400 or less. The last time we did this in April ‘09 we could get pretty much anywhere except South America and Australaia. This year has seen some incredibly low fares – in early summer Singapore Airlines had sub-£400 fares to Australia and New Zealand.

Qantas and British Airways held a very limited “Ashes Cricket” sale in July with return flights from London to Sydney priced at an amazing £215 – flights sold out within minutes. The Middle East carriers have also had some consistently aggressive prices to Asia and Africa.

As of today what can we book for our £400??

North America

US Airways has some reasonable deals to New York (£283), Las Vegas (£327), Los Angeles (£349) and San Francisco (£354) bookable at Netflights.

Air Transat (operated by a Thomas Cook Airbus A330) can fly you from London Gatwick to Vancouver for just £298 return – out Sep 24th and back Oct 2nd. Air Transat flies to Toronto using an Airbus A310 from £258 around the same dates.

Middle East

Qatar Airways has offers to Dubai (£229), Abu Dhabi (£239) and Bahrain (£251). Book by August 15th for travel Aug 15th to Mar 25th 2010 with some blackout dates applying over Xmas / New Year.

Netflights has even cheaper Qatar flights available to Bahrain (£233) and Dubai (£210).

Africa

Swiss and Egyptair have flights to Cairo for £250 return. Qatar has sale offers to Johannesburg (£352) and Cape Town (£382) – whilst the Joburg flight can be purchased on netflights for £327.

Egyptair can get you to Khartoum for £328 whilst Iberia has a deal to Lagos for £394.

India

Some good return deals are available to Mumbai with Qatar (£264), Etihad (£269) and KLM (£272). Qatar also flies to Delhi for £273.

Asia

Etihad will fly you to Kuala Lumpur KUL for £369 via Abu Dhabi. Travelocity UK has Etihad fares to KUL for £364 and Bangkok for £354.

Air Asia X can get you from Stansted to Kuala Lumpur for a base fare as low as £248 for some dates in November. Don’t forget to add on £5 each way for 15kg checked luggage and £12.60 for all meals.

Qatar will take you to Hong Kong for £297 (£280 on netflights, who also have Qatar fares to Singapore for £390). From Hong Kong you could also get on a cheap Air Asia flight to KUL or Bangkok.

Air France can fly you to Shanghai for £384 and KLM to Beijing for £389.

Central/ South America

More difficult to find deals under £400 – however Lufthansa has a special offer from London to Mexico City (£339) and Caracas (£379) – these are £10 cheaper if departing Birmingham. Their London – Sao Paolo fare of £419 is just over budget! Depart Sep 1st to Oct 16th, return between Sep 8th and Jan 16th.

Australaisa

No sub-£400 schedule deals on the market at the moment. The cheapest fare is Royal Brunei’s £469 to Perth and £489 to Auckland. Note, these flights stop in Dubai for re-fuelling and then transit in Brunei.

However it is “theoretically” possible to use Air Asia X to get to Oz for under £400. The cheapest Kuala Lumpur – Perth flights is currently £109 return, added on to the £248 cheapest base London – KUL fare does come to £357. Because separate bookings are needed it is more difficult to co-ordinate the dates to find sale fares that match up. That said, KUL is a good stopover location with great value hotels.

Final tip, if booking with online agents do check the fare restrictions and compare them to buying direct with the airline.