What is the most cost effective airport to fly into from Melbourne to USA?

What is the most cost effective airport to fly into from Melbourne to USA? We are a group of 6 flying to USA in December, so every cent counts. Would prefer to use a qantas alliance if possible please.

Corinna, You have multiple options.When it comes to fares LA is best with more flights.When i comes to flights Fiji Airlines and Air New Zealand are great one stop options.Avoid US carriers DL/UA/HA.QF is an option if you can get a sale fare.And if the cheapest fare is what you wish to do look at options via Asia.

Thanks for this Robert, whIch Asian port is the best one to go for in your opinion please?

One more question: I'm trying to figure out when to look for the best fare price- we need to leave on 29 December and return mid January. Any idea when we are most likely to see the best fare prices please?

Airlines never reveal their pricing structure and change rapidly without warning.  Check websites regularly for a price, but be careful not to check too carefully, because if an airline sees interest around particular dates as a result of repeated searches for those dates, then you may find the fare will go up.

At a very general level, I find that good fares tend not to appear until about nine months out, and are usually all gone by three months out. This is extremely general, though - I find on QFi that the LAX flights rarely go on sale.

I would say that the time to start looking is right now.

If you are planning to travel in December, don't expect fares to be terribly cheap as that's often a peak travel period (especially ex-Australia where everyone is forced to take leave).

In your case, I would absolutely look at all options. Expect the nonstop flights to cost a fortune, especially the MEL-LAX nonstops (less capacity and less competition than ex-SYD). Flights via Asia have a very good possibility of being cheaper, especially if you look at routings via Hong Kong, Korea and Japan.

Best of luck.

Thank you for the info everyone- watson374, do you think it would be worth looking at flights from SYDNEY-LAX and just get some cheap flights from Mel-syd separately?

You should be able to book a through flight, I think. I'd be iffy about booking a domestic-to-international connection on separate tickets connecting through SYD for an LAX flight in December. The security and immigration queues will be enormous and unless you arrive first thing in the morning for an early afternoon flight, you run the risk of ruining your holiday by missing the LAX flight.

Just to start off, I would suggest comparing the following options:

1. MEL-LAX on UA and QF
2. MEL-SYD-LAX on all carriers (QF, UA, DL, VA)
3. MEL-HKG-LAX on CX (you can also look at their other American ports)
4. MEL-AKL-LAX on NZ

Good luck finding anything cheap at that time of year - it is peak season. VA have $1200 return fares to LAX (from SYD) in Jan/Feb or $2100 in Prem Y. 

I've done the one-stop NZ to the USA before and can recommend it.