Article: Last Minute Award Availability to Europe: How to Still Make Euro Summer Happen (2026)

[AFF Editor]

Canonical URL

https://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/last-minute-award-availability-to-europe-euro-summer/

Last Minute Award Availability to Europe: How to Still Make Euro Summer Happen (2026) is an article written by the AFF editorial team:

Last Minute Award Availability to Europe: How to Still Make Euro Summer Happen (2026)

Still hoping to reach Europe this July or August? Last minute award availability is possible. You can look at alternatives to secure Business Class flights to Europe using Qantas, Velocity Points and Qatar Airways Avios.

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic below.

 

[freqflyer77]

The options given are convoluted and ridiculously expensive.

The Vietnam Airlines option needs over 1 million Amex points plus $1,600 in fees.

The Qantas option requires 400,000+ points, over $2,000 in fees per person and 8 separate flights.

I get that AFF needs to promote points to make money via affiliate links and their relationship with pay. com, but these examples are exactly why people are nowadays better off saving the mental time & energy, alongside all the costs of earning points, and just paying cash and flying on the dates they actually want.

 

[Beer_budget]

The options given are convoluted and ridiculously expensive.

The Vietnam Airlines option needs over 1 million Amex points plus $1,600 in fees.

The Qantas option requires 400,000+ points, over $2,000 in fees per person and 8 separate flights.

I get that AFF needs to promote points to make money via affiliate links and their relationship with pay. com, but these examples are exactly why people are nowadays better off saving the mental time & energy, alongside all the costs of earning points, and just paying cash and flying on the dates they actually want.

Well yes, last minute redemptions are usually expensive. So are last minute cash fares, most of the time. Euro summer 2026 has already started, after all!

Most of us doing "Euro summer" on points booked at T-355 (or whatever tempo applies to your FFP of choice), but if you're points rich, cash poor and still want a holiday, there isn't nothing, which is the point of the article. This year especially, there will be plenty of people who did plan ahead and book a better value redemption, whose plans are now in disarray due to the tantrums of a man with control of the largest military on the planet. It is what it is, and some of those folks might just want to salvage their plans at any cost. We're certainly paying more than we intended to keep our plans on track.

Is it good value? Nope. Personally if I were considering an impulsive points break to escape the Canberra winter, I'd give up on Europe and keep an eye on Spontaneous Escapes options to SG or elsewhere in SEA, but that's me.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

The options given are convoluted and ridiculously expensive.

The Vietnam Airlines option needs over 1 million Amex points plus $1,600 in fees.

The Qantas option requires 400,000+ points, over $2,000 in fees per person and 8 separate flights.

I get that AFF needs to promote points to make money via affiliate links and their relationship with pay. com, but these examples are exactly why people are nowadays better off saving the mental time & energy, alongside all the costs of earning points, and just paying cash and flying on the dates they actually want.

The only semi-convoluted option was the VN tickets via AMEX to VS.

All the other options… EK, QR, KL, AF, WY… all straightforward and easy to book with QF points.

It takes me a couple of hours to research and book my Europe flights… I’m paying $4400 return on SQ and VA. Current pricing is around $10500, or slightly less if I fly Scoot to Singapore and pick up Swiss from there.

I don’t earn $6000 in two hours… so it’s defo worth my while!

 

[AFF Editor]

The options given are convoluted and ridiculously expensive.

The Vietnam Airlines option needs over 1 million Amex points plus $1,600 in fees.

The Qantas option requires 400,000+ points, over $2,000 in fees per person and 8 separate flights.

I get that AFF needs to promote points to make money via affiliate links and their relationship with pay. com, but these examples are exactly why people are nowadays better off saving the mental time & energy, alongside all the costs of earning points, and just paying cash and flying on the dates they actually want.

For what it's worth, this article is purely written with reader service in mind. We didn't link out to any particular credit cards, and Pay.com.au isn't mentioned or even hinted at all.

As mentioned, yes it's not your simple QF SYD-SIN-LHR but this is Australian Frequent Flyer after all - someone will hopefully find it useful.

 

[freqflyer77]

The only semi-convoluted option was the VN tickets via AMEX to VS.

So Sydney → Hong Kong → Bangkok → Muscat → Paris → Muscat → Manila → Brisbane → Sydney isn't a convoluted way to get to Europe?

We definitely have different definitions of the word.

This is exactly where points chasing loses me nowadays. At some point the extra flights, transit time and complexity outweigh the benefit of sitting in Business Class. Not to mention the associated time/monetary costs in earning those points.

I'd rather take a more direct economy flight and get on with my trip.

 

[levelnine]

Agree with freqflyer77. So much so that I thought this article was a backhanded attempt to show that the points game is for mugs lol.

Want to use points to Europe? Be prepared to go to a place on DFAT's do not travel list or take 8 flights.

 

[elanshin]

I feel as though this year is a bad year to be doing this as an example. Without ME3 playing at their full capacity, the other airlines books are just going to be so much fuller and have less availability AND they know that. So its alot less likely for them to release stuff knowing there's higher likelihood of last minute sales.

 

[freqflyer77]

I feel as though this year is a bad year to be doing this as an example. Without ME3 playing at their full capacity, the other airlines books are just going to be so much fuller and have less availability AND they know that. So its alot less likely for them to release stuff knowing there's higher likelihood of last minute sales.

That's fair, but people have been saying some version of this for 4–5 years now.

First it was COVID revenge travel, now reduced Middle East capacity. The reason changes, but the trend seems to be the same: fewer premium reward seats, higher points costs and higher fees.

At some point you have to really ask whether the juice is worth the squeeze. For me...not anymore.

 

[elanshin]

That's fair, but people have been saying some version of this for 4–5 years now.

First it was COVID revenge travel, now reduced Middle East capacity. The reason changes, but the trend seems to be the same: fewer premium reward seats, higher points costs and higher fees.

At some point you have to really ask whether the juice is worth the squeeze. For me...not anymore.

The other things are true, but the ME3 problem is unprecedented and also nothing that can even remotely be relatable. Whilst we have recovered some capacity through ME, its nowhere near what they would normally be doing.

For reference, I believe somewhere in the vicinity of 300-400k passengers used to transit everyday through the ME before the war started. Even if they lost 10% customer an extra 30k pax is ~80 a380 worth of pax a day displaced. Of course not all of them will travel now, but it is an enormous number being absorbed by other airlines now.

 

[Silvia]

Yes, some programs offer predictability with early release at T-355 but that is not always the case.

As a few of you have mentioned, it is hard with the ME3 and the insurance as indicated in the article. There are options in EK which are a single stop but I don't think a lot of people would be after it. Part of the concept of breaking the trip in Asia to get 2 trips in one, but also understand that this may not be for everyone but it is possible if you are after a last minute trip which is the concept of the article.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

So Sydney → Hong Kong → Bangkok → Muscat → Paris → Muscat → Manila → Brisbane → Sydney isn't a convoluted way to get to Europe?

We definitely have different definitions of the word.

This is exactly where points chasing loses me nowadays. At some point the extra flights, transit time and complexity outweigh the benefit of sitting in Business Class. Not to mention the associated time/monetary costs in earning those points.

I'd rather take a more direct economy flight and get on with my trip.

I’ve read the article twice now… maybe skimmed … but I’m not seeing that routing… it was just availability out of Bangkok and KL, or for other airlines out of Hong Kong, SGN and Shanghai etc.

You can pair those gateways with a paid ticket on say Scoot or JQ.

If you just want one stop, avoiding the ME, the article wasn’t for that.

 

[levelnine]

I’ve read the article twice now… maybe skimmed … but I’m not seeing that routing… it was just availability out of Bangkok and KL, or for other airlines out of Hong Kong, SGN and Shanghai etc.

It's one of the literally two itineraries posted in the article.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

It's one of the literally two itineraries posted in the article.

Ah… right at the end of the article! Got it now! (sorry freqflyer77)

I didn’t even read to the end because the important points were in the main part…the availability out of BKK, SIN, KUL, PVG and SGN etc. That’s the long hauls sorted.