Making the most of status and points

[AWSH]

Keen to hear of any good strategies for the following situation, which I think would be quite common:

I earn my status in Dom Y - some personal, mostly work flights. Currently QF SG and unlikely to change.

We (me & the Mrs) earn our QFF points through those flights and our CC spend, amounting to around 130k points/year.

Every ~2 years we will do a long haul flight for a holiday (i.e. MEL-Europe). Given the high co-pay, Y award seats are not worth the points outlay IMO, but we have never had enough points for 2 x J award seats (even if I could get availability). Needless to say we don't fly in paid J.

So we do what I think many fliers do: we wait for sale Y fares and take advantage of the lounge, priority boarding/seating etc through status. But these fares are not usually upgradeable, and paying more for the same Y seat with only the possibility of an upgrade just seems like money that could be better spent on travels.

Is there a strategy I'm missing for how to make the most of my status/points situation, and to not fly in long haul whY?

We currently have 200k points and will probably have 300k by the time we look at booking long haul flights again (i.e. enough for a Y>J upgrade if one was available).

Interested to know if I'm missing anything or if I'm destined to use my points only on Dom J awards/upgrades.

 

[dmitri]

I just booked 2 x J CX flights (through QF award partner flights) Hong Kong to Dusseldorf for 320K points. If you can get to HK cheap, the CX partner award flights are good value if you plan ahead, cheap taxes too. That could be an option for you in the future?

 

[Spongbob]

There is the option of PE (Y+) award seats. Sometimes the QF website offers J award seats with the notation "your flight from AUS to xx_ will be in PE", yet want to charge the full J award points. So you may as well get the PE award.

 

[AWSH]

I just booked 2 x J CX flights (through QF award partner flights) Hong Kong to Dusseldorf for 320K points. If you can get to HK cheap, the CX partner award flights are good value is you plan ahead, cheap taxes too. That could be an option for you in the future?

Thanks, just checked that out, not a bad option. You're right about the taxes too, far less than I've seen elsewhere. The trouble for me will be getting to HKG and having to factor in a stopover to make it work.

Cheers

 

[JohnK]

Thanks, just checked that out, not a bad option. You're right about the taxes too, far less than I've seen elsewhere. The trouble for me will be getting to HKG and having to factor in a stopover to make it work.

You don't need to worry about stopover if you don't want to stay in HKG.

I know the QF SYD-HKG flight gets in ~5:00pm and the MEL-HKG flight gets in ~6:00pm and both should leave enough time to connect to one of the late night CX departures to Europe.