Hi All, looking to get a family of 4 to Vancouver and back from CNS ideally which is Fiji Airways, or happy to fly out of Sydney also. Looking at 4-10th Jan 2027. I have been playing around with dates and availability. Am I right in thinking there is a bit of a black out from mid dec to mid Jan usually on reward flights around this time?
Couple missing details here. Do you hold Qantas frequent flyer status (i.e. Silver, Gold or Platinum/Platinum One)? The reason I ask is that dictates how far in advance you can search for awards. Supposing you hold no Qantas status (i.e. Qantas Bronze) you can search for awards just 297 days out whereas with Gold or higher you can find seats up to 353 days out. This timelines apply for Qantas operated award flights so think Sydney to Vancouver for instance. For partners, you will realistically find awards pop up around mid to late February.
I have 600,000 qantas points and happy with economy. I am set up with gyoza and flight alerts for this time frame.
In theory this shouldn't be too difficult to find as economy typically has the best availability of all travel classes. Then again, the amount of money you are saving (and corresponding value) will be lower too.
What's missing from your post is how many Velocity points you have as it seems like your post is interested in using Velocity points to book this travel as you have posted your question on the Velocity thread. If you could provide details here, it would be appreciated.
The obvious choice when thinking of flights to Canada would be Air Canada which operates direct flights out of Brisbane and Sydney for Vancouver. Again economy availability should be there as well. Alternatively, you can use Velocity points to book United Airlines operated flights. The benefit with United is they operate the most flights to North America amongst the North American Airlines flying out of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and most recently Adelaide.
Any tips? is it doable? Happy/keen to do a few nights in Fiji on the way back if we can make it work!
Economy should be possible. The other consideration to make particularly if travelling in economy is to break up the trip at Honolulu too. Then instead of there being a long 15 hour trip to Vancouver, you've got a 10 hour flight to Honolulu, where you can enjoy some time on the beach before the short 5 hour domestic trip to Vancouver.
-RooFlyer88
