Advice on how to use Points please ?

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bcsfromsydney

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I have an objective of taking my 2 boys (17yo/14yo) to Europe during the December school holidays.
We will be leaving ex Perth and returning to Melbourne. Ideally we would like to take in 4-5 cities, Paris, London, Berlin, Rome etc. but are flexible on this, the main objective is to give the boys a European experience.
We would like to fly J class, and are flexible on Carriers etc.
I'm currently a Platinum QF FF and have Apx. 240,000 in my FF account and 800,000 in my Amex account available for redemption.
My preference is to use QF or at least a OneWorld airline so I can utilise lounges and advance boarding etc., but again, this isn't an absolute requirement.
I realise I can't achieve this objective with points alone however, if I can put these to some use to offset some of the costs then I'm happy.
Thanks !
 
The Frequent Flyer Concierge team takes the hard work out of finding reward seat availability. Using their expert knowledge and specialised tools, they'll help you book a great trip that maximises the value for your points.

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You may have trouble with availability at this late stage, keep that in mind first!

IF you find availability the simplest will be to use your Amex points for an AA alliance award. These are mileage based, will give you all the stopovers you need and date flexibility once you've started. The award is valid for any flight operated by a oneworld carrier (you technically will need 2 non-AA, which is trivial in this case).

As example: PER-KUL-CDG-LHR-TXL-FCO-HKG-MEL is between 20-25000 miles. Any combination should fit within this distance bracket. You're looking at 150,000 AA miles for 1 J award. So that's 450,000 you need. Amex points transfer to SPG at 2:1 which transfer to AA at 1:1 + 25% bonus. This means you'll be down a total of 720,000 AMEX points. Taxes on AA are negligible (London will cost you a little).

I'll let you google and research a bit, these types of awards take a lot to get your head around. You would be able to add a few more destinations without much addition cost. Keeping in mind if you're flying J the oneworld benefits will be of limited use to you, but I think the above fits your requirements neatly.

Additionally: A few days ago I started typing quick a cheat sheet/introduction to these sorts of awards, mostly comparing the QF and AA differences. Definitely a WIP, but I can try to give you a copy.
 
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You may have trouble with availability at this late stage, keep that in mind first!

I second that - awards on any airline at Xmas will be hard to come by at this stage.

However, if you can find availability, I would strongly recommend you look into using your Amex points for awards with SQ or MH. For example, with SQ a return J saver award to most EU destinations costs 161,500 KF miles if booked online, and Amex MR points transfer 1:1 to KF, so 3 J rtns would cost 484,500 Amex points. If you can't find any saver awards, you might get standard J awards instead, which would cost a total of 765,000 points. You can also mix and match saver and standard awards, giving a total cost somewhere in between. And IMHO, SQ J is the best there is, so that would be my first port of call.

MH will cost fewer points, and of course it's in OW. You can get awards in J to Europe for 102,000 pts each, and again Amex MR points transfer 1:1, so you'd be looking at only 306,000 Amex pts for 3 rtns. MH J is nowhere near as good as SQ, but it is still not bad, so I'd consider it.

I tend to agree that OW is not that important if you're travelling on J awards though - the only thing your status will get you over standard J benefits is access to the F lounge instead of the J lounge, and I'm not even sure if you'll be able to guest both of your boys when outside of Oz, so you may end up in the J lounges overseas anyway (I'm sure someone else can confirm or correct that).

It should be noted of course that the options above are just straight rtns to EU, they don't cover additional intra-EU travel, whereas I gather the AA option does. However, you can get around Europe cheaply enough in Y, and J is really not worth it there (you normally get exactly the same seat as Y, but with an empty seat beside you).

Going back to the availability issue though, you might end up having to look into all of the airlines that Amex transfers to, and just go with anything you find available. The good news is you can research what's available before deciding where to transfer your points, although there is a risk that seats will disappear in the couple if days it takes for the points to appear in your chosen FF scheme.
 
If your in J, lounge access is often a given regardless of the alliance.
 
If your in J, lounge access is often a given regardless of the alliance.

Right, but the OP is QFF WP so he/she would get F lounge access when travelling with QF/OW, instead of the J lounge access that comes with a J ticket. I'm not sure if he/she can guest 2 people into the F lounge when travelling with other OW carriers though.

In any case, I don't think F lounge vs J lounge would be the main consideration here (it wouldn't be for me anyway).
 
Right, but the OP is QFF WP so she would get F lounge access when travelling with QF/OW, instead of the J lounge access that comes with a J ticket. I'm not sure if she can guest 2 people into the F lounge when travelling with other OW carriers though.

In any case, I don't think F lounge vs J lounge would be the main consideration here (it wouldn't be for me anyway).

Only one guest permitted, and the OP is ex Perth which would be a backtrack if heading to Europe, while the DXB lounge might come into play, which has no guesting IIRC (although a certain WP did guest two in to the F lounge at DXB in April when things were just starting up).
 
Only one guest permitted, and the OP is ex Perth which would be a backtrack if heading to Europe, while the DXB lounge might come into play, which has no guesting IIRC (although a certain WP did guest two in to the F lounge at DXB in April when things were just starting up).

Thanks for clarifying. OW status is virtually irrelevant in this case then.
 
Malayasian has excellent availability. And 51 K in J one way..
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However SQ is also affordable and if you book now you should get availability. Do some dummy bookings to find out. Xmas holidays are easier, as unlike the Semester breaks not everyone with kids wants to book on the same few days.

TIP: also consider booking one-way with different airlines.

ie

MH to London

SQ from Rome or Frankfurt.


You would also have enough points to book *A via SQ for multi-leg itineraries, and given you can then fly on say a number of different *A members on the one booking, if you book soon you should get availability. This includes Thai which has very good availability.


Consider also using the fast trains in Europe which are excellent for some legs, and when booked in advance quite cheap. As they go city centre to city centre are often preferable to flying. See The Man in Seat Sixty-One - the train travel guide...

** For example you might fly in to London (not out as the greenie tax applies) and out of Rome (or Milan) and catch trains to Paris, and then down to Italy......stopping off at various cities along the way.


** booking in advance on Mini fares (a discount advance fare) I did Milan-Venice-Florence-Rome-Pisa-Monterosso (Cinque Terra )- Milan by train for less than a 100 Euro per person., and mainly on VFT.


Flights within Europe are often very cheap as well, and you might slum it in Y for a 1 -2 flight anyway.
 
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