Flights from LA to San Francisco

We have booked our international flights from Melbourne, Australia direct to Los Angeles for our holiday next year and we are returning to Melbourne from San Francisco.

We now need to organise a one way flight from LA to San Francisco for April next year.

Can anyone tell us which are the best airlines to do this with (as far as price, safety, reliability etc) and is it better to book early or leave until the last minute.

Thanks

Deb

Flights from LA to San Francisco

In general, the least expensive flights are on southwest.com and virginamerica.com. Both fly from LAX to SFO; Southwest also flies from BUR (Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, near Hollywood -- small, %26#39;domestic only travel%26#39; airport) to OAK (Oakland Airport -- serving SF along with SFO). Southwest also flies BUR to SFO.

The flights are about an hour. I don%26#39;t think safety is much of a concern on such a short flight. As far as punctuality is concerned, I%26#39;ve flown Southwest a lot with no problems (I had one flight that was delayed and I simply switched to a different Southwest flight that flew into OAK instead of SFO and arrived at my hotel in SF on time. Southwest has HOURLY departures from LAX and BUR to OAK and, less frequently, SFO.

Southwest only sells tickets a few months in advance. Check their website to see the last date that they are selling through (it%26#39;s written adjacent to the place you select the date of your flight). Southwest has sales a few times per year and they also offer for sale seats for different prices at the same time -- the seats are all identical but once the cheaper seats are sold, the next cheaper ones are bought up, and so on.