Hi All.
I'm coming out of my cave of the last three years and planning a few trips. (ex Syd)
I have a shed load of Qantas FF points and wondering the best way to use them.
Congrats on accruing so many points. They will no doubt be put to good use on Classic Award flights. What I must warn you about with Qantas and for that matter any frequent flyer program when you're redeeming points is that this isn't WebJet. You can't simply type in an origin, destination and a date you want to fly and expect there to be classic awards available. Instead, you need to do a bit of digging to find the availability you want (more on that in a sec).
Trip to Europe.
In looking for flights, I could not find any classic reward seats available over a 4 week sample period. (Feb 23)
Only points plus pay. (which don't seem to offer any benefit. about 50% of the ticket to be paid in cash and about 400 k points for the rest!)
I looked at a few sectors.
Agree that flights to Europe are a bit more challenging to find Qantas business classic awards which quite frankly you would get the best value out of your points for. However, I do have a couple suggestions to consider that might improve your odds:
- Change the destination airport (Europe has tons of airports, many of which are served by QF Partner Emirates). Some destinations in Europe I have had success in the past include CDG, ZRH, MAN, GLA
- Force Qantas to Pick a Routing with known business class availability since the booking engine is idiotic and won't admit routings off the beaten track. For instance, you could book a multi-city like SYD > TPE on China Airlines, then take Emirates from TPE to Europe. A similar trick could work, routing yourself via the USA. It is true you will spend a bit more points than a more direct routing, but if it means it gets you to the destination you want, when you want to go there it can be worthwhile
- Find Business Classic Awards on a calendar view by doing a multi-city classic award search, inputting just one origin and destination
Trip to Bangkok.
Only marginally better.
I found one classic reward outbound, but nothing inbound.
This also might be a case where you need to engineer a routing to get your inbound. For instance a multi-city with BKK to KUL then maybe flying KUL out to Australia the following day. Again, a decent amount of research needs to be done to find these diamonds in the rough.
Domestic Flights?
Lots available here.
So I guess I'll use up my points flying to remote places in Australia for the weekends........
There's certainly some sweet spots for domestic flights. One thing I enjoy doing is upgrading a cheap red e-deal flight to business classic for very little. These upgrades can be confirmed online instantly (provided there is U, business classic award availability). For instance, did you know that you could fly business class on an A330 with lie flat seats between SYD and MEL, have access to the business lounge and business check-in, earn Qantas Points and status credits from the red e-deal ticket you bought all for just 10,900 points + the cost of the red e-deal fare?
In terms of domestic destinations within Australia, yes that's another good use of points. Travelling to Lord Howe Island (which normally is a $1,000+ flight) for 16,000 points + $180 in taxes and fees is a real bargain. I've also done flights to Longreach out of Brisbane for about the same number of points to visit the Qantas founders museum. Another sweet spot are classic awards with JetStar since they include free checked baggage and cost considerably fewer points and taxes & fees.
-RooFlyer88
