Route brief · SFO → MEL
San Francisco → Melbourne
$912
round-trip · too little price history on this route to compare
Sep 10 – Sep 17 · 7 nights
Alaska Airlines2 stops
Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.
Destination briefMELMelbourneLaneway coffee, four seasons before lunch, and the Great Ocean Road starting an hour down the coast.Best windowMar–May · Sep–NovAirportsTullamarine (MEL) · Avalon (AVV)All routes into MelbourneWhen this route gets cheap.
Best time to be in Melbourne: Mar–May · Sep–Nov. Fare history for this route is still thin, so we make no seasonal call yet.
The cheapest itinerary we are tracking makes 2 stops and takes about 18 hours outbound, on a 7-night trip — ticketed under Alaska Airlines, which on a connecting fare need not operate every leg. At $912 for 12,658 km each way, that works out to about $36 per 1,000 km flown. That is below the $40 typical of ultra-long-haul fares here. Across the 13 departure cities we track at a similar distance from Melbourne, this fare ranks 6th — 26% above the $721 from Los Angeles. For context, the middle fare among the 39 routes of similar length we watch out of San Francisco is $826. We have 1 month of cached prices for this route so far — not enough to call a fare cheap or expensive, so we publish the price without a percentage.
Route facts
- Airports
- SFO · Oakland (OAK) · San José (SJC) ↔ Tullamarine (MEL) · Avalon (AVV)
- Flight time
- ~18 hours outbound
- Distance
- ~12,658 km each way
- Airlines on the board
- Alaska Airlines
- Itineraries
- Connections on current fares
- Best months to visit
- Mar–May · Sep–Nov
SF → MEL, answered.
How far in advance should I book SF → Melbourne?
We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet. Answering it honestly means watching the same departure date on this route over many weeks as it approaches, and that archive is still filling up — so any "book N days ahead" figure here would be borrowed from somewhere else rather than measured. See /guides/what-moves-a-flight-price/ for the levers we can measure.
Are there nonstop flights from San Francisco to Melbourne?
The current cheapest fares involve a connection, ticketed under Alaska Airlines. Nonstop options exist on many dates at higher prices — check the live search for your exact dates.
Are these prices guaranteed?
No — these are cached fares found on real searches (this one on September 1). Airlines reprice constantly, so the booking search re-checks the live price before you pay. Fresher finds are far more likely to still be available.
Next step
Sleeping in Melbourne?
Lock the flight first — then compare stays for Sep 10 – Sep 17 · 7 nights.
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Missed it?
Cached fares expire. This route has a feed of its own — follow it and the next SF → MEL drop reaches you as soon as we find it.
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