Best way to get to LHR in J or PE using points and cash mix

[WindowSeat]

Hi all, I'm after some ideas on travel to LHR Q1 or Q2 2012.

*Will have around 200-220k QFF points
*Am thinking my best bet will be to buy one ticket with cash, and use points award for the GF (also good for SC earn, want to retain QF Gold next year)
*Would prefer to fly PE or J
*Ex SYD

Options:

1. Buy outright a PE return flight with either QF, JL or BA and points for a second ticket (about 220k points by my calculations), could range from $3k to $4.5k depending on airline. Total cost $3-$5k plus 220k points, earn 280 SC.

2. Get 2x JQ StarClass flight with cash to either SIN, BKK or NRT. Then PE or J on points x1, paid x1 to LHR with either JL, QF or BA (PE points x1 should be 126k, J x1 should be 168k). If I can get StarClass flights for $1k each this looks like decent value, plus added benefit of J SCs both legs, and obviously J service Asia>LHR.

Looking at the Qantas international sites J, but not PE seems much cheaper ex BKK rather than NRT or SIN. J ex SIN/NRT/HKG doesn't seem great value to be honest.

Is what's quoted on that site the same as what I'd get if I ring up the QF call centre in AU?

Will there be any issues booking an award flight with a partner airline via QF, then booking the cash companion fare directly with the partner airline (or is there a better way to do this)?

From members' experience, am I going to run into problems with availability for classic award seats in J or PE?

Any other thoughts on ways of doing this? Would prefer to keep flight costs to points plus say $5-7k cash for both of us (otherwise I struggle to see great value from the points spend if I have to pay over the odds - ie QF - for a companion J fare).

Thanks

 

[trippin_the_rift]

I try to do similar to what you're after at least twice a year!

Generally I find it easiest to use the award seat on partner and pay for your own.

Option 1:
JAL PE you can score for ~4k, and use points for the second seat. JAL often have business specials, usually ~5.5k rt ai. You'd blow all your points and a few more going this option though.

Option 2:
QF/BA, PE seats at ~5k, and try for a classic award seat. As a Gold you may have difficulty getting award seats for your GF opened up without a paid and confirmed booking under your name first.

Option 3:
Starclass to SIN or BKK - sounds good in theory especially with the sales on right now. Only downside is if Jet* is delayed or cancelled, you're up a creek that travel insurance won't cover....

Option 4:
Cash your 200K points in for Qantas travel gift vouchers (approx $2k value). You might be able to book 2x JAL PE tickets with that and your cash if you get lucky.


Biggest issue you'll face is trying to line up award and paid tickets. I had all sorts of problems doing this when I was QF Gold. As a platinum it's much easier, and even easier when you can prove you've got a confirmed premium cabin ticket on the table.

At the end of the day I don't see any right or wrong ways to go about it, you're certainly on the right track!

 

[pshepvic]

Biggest issue you'll face is trying to line up award and paid tickets. I had all sorts of problems doing this when I was QF Gold. As a platinum it's much easier, and even easier when you can prove you've got a confirmed premium cabin ticket on the table.

My parents are only QP Silver, however their old travel agent from Amex Travel is now in the Qantas Awards Call Centre. I think technically they're not supposed to do it, but they have got her to book flights a couple of times with one of them paid and the other on points, ensuring they got the same flights the whole way. I've done this before as well with someone I used to know at Qantas Holidays, but unfortunately you need to know someone to do this, and my contact has since left the company.

 

[Keith009]

My partner and I are doing the exact same thing for Jan 2012. I used a combination of QFF points and AAdvantage miles to book an award for him - MEL-xSYD-LHR//CDG-xLHR-MEL return. Tried for BA J on the outbound but BA awards always seem to be sold out in J (F isn't a problem), so booked the QF A380 instead, not complaining. Now I'm just hanging out for one of those QF J specials for myself that get released around Sept or Oct for about $7000ish. If not, a regular I class fare is approximately 8k. We'd probably get a better deal with JAL but we don't like the idea of forced overnights in NRT and potentially SYD, and a holiday is just so much nicer on QF.

I'd thought of booking 2 x QF PE seats, then use QFF points to upgrade. But I don't really like the uncertainty of the QF Russian Roulette upgrade process on such long flights. The cost of 2 x PE is the same or more expensive than 1 seat in J. This way not only do we get 2 x J seats confirmed, I also get J points and SCs rather than PE. The OH doesn't care about miles or status so it doesn't bother him to not earn anything.

 

[pshepvic]

We'd probably get a better deal with JAL but we don't like the idea of forced overnights in NRT and potentially SYD, and a holiday is just so much nicer on QF.

Interesting point here. We did SYD-NRT-SFO, LAX-NRT-SYD on JAL at Christmas.

Their J seats are almost the same as a SkyBed on a 747, but maybe slightly narrower and slightly shorter (except on the LAX-NRT route, we were on their newer configured 777 which are a bit more comfortable, but they don't fly that to Aus). Agree the SkyBed on the A380 is definitely better, as I'm 6'2" and can stretch right out. Reality is I probably still got the same amount of sleep.

Food on JAL wasn't quite as good as QF also. Crew were excellent, but I must say the crew between Japan and the US were better, as I think on the flights to/from Aus we get the ex-JALways Thai based crew, who aren't quite up to the usual Japanese standards.

777 was much quieter than a 747 - except I do like the upper deck on the 747.

So overall, yes QF is better. But the deal clincher was the price. We got companion fares through Amex Platinum Travel which meant that the routing via Japan was less than half the price of a single QF J fare MEL-LAX. That was a no brainer - under 5 hours extra travel time, but we also took some extra time out and spent 3 days in Japan on the way over and the way back.

We could have done a direct connection each way, so wouldn't have had to overnight at all, but decided to break it up a little. Even if we didn't, I'd still rather 19 hours of flying plus a couple hours connection vs 15 on QF, saving over $10k ... more shopping money!

 

[Keith009]

For a 10k difference... of course I'd be choosing the cheaper option! That's 10 pairs of Prada shoes or 5 Louis Vuitton manbags!

The fare differences are a lot lower to Europe especially with end of year QF/BA specials, and we're also redeeming one ticket with miles. In our case it's only going to be about 2k difference (even less when attaching a dollar value to the inconvenience of the JAL option), well worth it for an enjoyable and memorable flight. Personally I've never had a good experience with JAL so I'm even less inclined to fly with them. Our back up options are the AY fare to Europe which allows significant QF content, or the VA/EY alliance which I'm keen to try.

How do you get a direct connection with JL to LAX/SFO though? The SYD-NRT flight arrives too late for the onward connections. Also, due to daylight savings, the SYD-NRT sometimes departs too early for any MEL-SYD connection to work.

 

[pshepvic]

How do you get a direct connection with JL to LAX/SFO though? The SYD-NRT flight arrives too late for the onward connections. Also, due to daylight savings, the SYD-NRT sometimes departs too early for any MEL-SYD connection to work.

Since October there is a flight to SFO from HND, and I think the connection is now possible, but involves changing airports which is a PITA. I kind of wish JAL flew SYD-HND instead of NRT...

But in the end decided to spend 3 days in Japan first, and rearrange the US component of the trip to get everywhere we wanted.

Regarding connection from MEL the JAL flight departed at 9:30, so according to JAL rules of 90 minute connection, we technically could have got there. However, as it was an Amex Companion fare we couldn't book MEL-SYD on the same PNR, so just booked a JASA instead. Didn't want to risk a delay or cancellation and miss the flight to Japan, so went the night before just to be safe

 

[WindowSeat]

I think technically they're not supposed to do it, but they have got her to book flights a couple of times with one of them paid and the other on points, ensuring they got the same flights the whole way.

I must say I'm surprised that they prefer not to do this. I would have thought making it easier to redeem points in this fashion encourages the purchase of a fully paid companion ticket in a premium cabin. A premium ticket that might not otherwise be bought on QF (especially considering QF are usually quite a bit more expensive).

I'm new to redeeming QFF points internationally so this may be a newb question - can a decent travel agent manage this type of scenario or is the QF call centre the best bet regardless?

Thanks for everyone's thoughts so far, interesting to hear the different experiences.

 

[pshepvic]

I must say I'm surprised that they prefer not to do this. I would have thought making it easier to redeem points in this fashion encourages the purchase of a fully paid companion ticket in a premium cabin. A premium ticket that might not otherwise be bought on QF (especially considering QF are usually quite a bit more expensive).

I'm new to redeeming QFF points internationally so this may be a newb question - can a decent travel agent manage this type of scenario or is the QF call centre the best bet regardless?

Thanks for everyone's thoughts so far, interesting to hear the different experiences.

My experience and the experience of those I've spoken to has been:

Qantas "regular" Reservations: Will only book paid seats. Except for the TA that my parents know there who will book both paid and award seats. She also didn't charge them for the assisted award booking fee.

Qantas Holidays: Will only book paid seats. Except for the TA that I knew there who would book both paid and award seats, by holding reservations for us in both booking classes, then calling the FF Call Centre and asking them to deduct the points 'payment' for the award seats. (Possibly this is what the TA my parents know did as well?)

Qantas FF Reservations: Will only book award seats, and will want to charge the assisted award fee.

I don't know if this all happens due to policy, training, lack of commission on award seats, or otherwise. Also, I don't know if this is what is supposed to happen, and if not, I'd certainly like to hear otherwise!

 

[blu]

To clarify, as I don't think it was mentioned above, with 220k points, how much would a JASA cost (I'm in a similar situation).

 

[TonyHancock]

To clarify, as I don't think it was mentioned above, with 220k points, how much would a JASA cost (I'm in a similar situation).

I booked a return JASA to LHR for travel in December 2011, and the minimum points requirement each way was 128k.

 

[fiscal]

My experience comes from living in Perth, which has it's own limitations when redeeming points.

PER - SIN or PER - HKG J seats can be very very limited compared with other cities, so we normally fund flights to the Asian hubs and then try for first or business for the long haul.

Most of the time you can snag a BA flight, especially from HKG, but less often from SIN.

My top tip would be to get the FF seat quickly, as I had a recent unfortunate experience, when I finalized an itinerary, paid the deposit on a cruise, went back to the QF web site to secure the seats and one leg of the trip suddenly disappeared. Luckily, a "cancellation" appeared on the web site a couple of days later which we snapped up, and caused minimal disruption to the trip, and saved my cashflow.

Just checked Jan and Feb 12 and very good availability from HKG - LHR snf back.

 

[blu]

Currently thinking of applying for Y+ classic award SYD-LHR and return (via NRT) for Feb 2012 - for two seats (me & MrsB). Advice sought:
. Probability of finding seats (pax status is only PS).
. Can you get a stopover in each direction on a classic award & what would be the maximum number of days allowed (in SIN or HKG on departure & NRT on return).
. Should I check or apply for the QF flights online, or wait to contact QFF to discuss the full itinerary (if seats available). We would prefer to use JL LHR-NRT rather than BA WT+.
. Do I need to raise a new thread or does it fit here.

Thanks