Europe Routing 2024

[VeniVidiVici]

Hi all,

Just after a bit of advice, my family of 4 are heading to Greece next year, aim is to depart on or around 25 Sept and depart Athens on or around 14 October. Was initially just going to do revenue fares but thought I may as well have a look at some rewards options. 4 people make it difficult but only need Y fares.

We are in Adelaide and wondering if anyone has had any luck with rewards to Athens and if so what kind of routing was it? I'm using the multi city and not a whole lot comes up, in fact more errors than flights. I'm playing around with Euro hubs as well with an eye to then pickup flights from there to Athens but still not having much luck as my knowledge of who flies where and to which Aus city is not great.

Dates are flexible but we'd like to have the bulk of travel undertaken in those school holidays.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[dsotm]

When I booked a week ago from ATH to MEL, I couldn't get any connections via Qantas partners, but I had a bunch of Velocity points and got 2 x business awards on a Qatar codeshare for 121K points each for early October. There were loads of economy and business seats available all October. This is course may be of no use to you if you only have Qantas points, but in case you do have VA points it may be an option for you.

 

[ronlon]

getting close to Athens or Athens itself with partner airlines is tricky. If you want a 100% reward seats route than I imagine it would be BA out of London or maybe Royal Jordanian fly there from Amman. You could try searching flying into say Frankfurt with JAL or Cathay or other airlines and then take a paid fare to Athens. These airlines also fly into London if you really want 100% rewards. You could also split the family in two and fly one day apart as easier to find two reward seats than 4. Skyscanner can help with routing ideas.

I would persevere with this one, it can take time. Hey why pay 4 fares when you have points ? Good luck ! Let us know how you go.

 

[VeniVidiVici]

I have found some paid fares for around $2200 - Malaysia then Turkish which we might then combine with a few nights in Istanbul. That's pretty reasonable.

I'm trying different combos now but getting constant HTTP errors. Switched to incognito which helps but even when I find something promising it wont let me click through. Website is a giant POS.

 

[AustraliaPoochie]

What I would do, living in ADL, as we both do, if I were doing the flying, and can see rev fares, I would just book it.
Oct is SA (Adelaide) school holidays, granted you are coming back at that time.
You would have 2 options, either get the QR midday flight, dep ADL about noon, to go via MEL, but in MEL, you would just stay in the transit zone, as you would have done passport verification and gone through int sec screening in ADL, then DOH and then ATH.
Or get the night dep from ADL, which bypasses MEL, and then just DOH, and then ATH.
I do realize you are looking at reward seats at the moment.
But if QR won't release release seats to QFF, then there would not show availability.
Of course, you also have the choice of putting the points to VFF, now adays.
No lounge in ADL for Y, not sure if the QR guests have access to the QP in ADL QFd term side.
ADL airport being smaller, would be a bit easier to get in and out, esp with kids.
===
Hard one, and very long trek, er flights, would be to get (QFd and QFi), ADL - PER - FCO, and then something cheap from FCO (Rome, Italy) to ATH.

 

[VeniVidiVici]

I've booked the revenue fares as they weren't too egregious. With school holidays I had some flexibility, but not enough to make rewards work.

It's definitely tempting to look at other FF programs but with my big pile of Q points it makes it hard