Most cost effective way to get my wife and daughter to Europe in 2024

[Moy]

Greetings All,

Long time away but I want to get an idea of how to tackle this problem now.

I am going to be in Europe with work in July / August of 2024. My wife is going to visit with my daughter (4) for around a month.

We have around 800,000 Qantas points and 150,000 virgin points at our disposal.

I would love for them both to travel in J, in an ideal world the return to Sydney flight would depart from Barcelona and the inbound could land in any European city, Paris, Frankfurt, Rome, Copenhagen etc...

Business rewards on Qantas seem to be as rare as hens teeth so am prepared to pay for flights with an alternative airline with a cap of $6-7k each return.

So Brains Trust, what would your strategy be?

Thanks!

 

[Quickstatus]

strategy

Hopefully the Revenge spending will moderate next year

I would start familiarising yourself with the QF classic reward booking engine in the meantime
The target booking date will need to be from T-353 days in advance
Book the outbound separate to the inbound.

Re paid flights: Dont limit yourself to QF especially for an European destination.
Do a google flight search for say "flights SYD-BCN" , and you will be able to see the airlines that will operate between SYD and the EU

 

[Feka742]

An option that may be worth considering to both burn some points and save some cash is to incorporate a brief stopover in Asia. This is a strategy called 'nesting' - where an Asia/Europe booking effectively sits within an Australia/Asia booking.

Using this strategy, you could look for two return award tickets between Australia and Bangkok (BKK) or Kuala Lumpur (KUL), which are likely easier to find than to Europe. You would then purchase a separate cash ticket originating in and returning to BKK or KUL, which are often available in the realm of $3000 AUD, or less if demand starts to drop to pre-COVID levels in 2024. As you have quite a bit of time before the trip, you could secure the award seats when they become available and then wait for a good sale to purchase cash ticket.

The tickets would look something like this:
SYD-BKK (award) - Depart 15 July, Arrive 15 July
BKK-FRA (cash) - Depart 16 July, Arrive 17 July

BCN-BKK (cash) - Depart 15 Aug, Arrive 16 Aug
BKK-SYD (award) - Depart 17 Aug, Arrive 18 Aug

The Middle Eastern airlines often have good cash fares between Asia and Europe. Of course, the downside of this strategy is a longer transit time. But it does from my experience reduce jetlag in Europe, so there's not as much of an impact as it initially seems.

 

[Moy]

Hopefully the Revenge spending will moderate next year

I would start familiarising yourself with the QF classic reward booking engine in the meantime
The target booking date will need to be from T-353 days in advance
Book the outbound separate to the inbound.

Re paid flights: Dont limit yourself to QF especially for an European destination.
Do a google flight search for say "flights SYD-BCN" , and you will be able to see the airlines that will operate between SYD and the EU

Thanks you so much, I thought it was T-330 so this has already helped a lot!

 

[Quickstatus]

330

Depends on your status. 353 would be the earliest for WP

 

[Mwenenzi]

Thanks you so much, I thought it was T-330 so this has already helped a lot!

Airlines that use SABRE GDS, like AA, have paid/award flights from T-330.
QF uses Amadues GDS that start from T-353. But with QF, access to QF award flights is status dependant.

https://www.qantas.com/au/en/frequent-flyer/use-points/classic-flight-rewards.html

When can I book? Classic Flight Rewards are bookable up to 353 days in advance. When you book on qantas.com you can book up to two hours before departure for ...

 

[CaptJCool]

July/August is European summer holiday season high season and high competition for FF seats

and of course Covid has knocked around a lot of the international Rewards seat offerings

from what others have mentioned jump in early 353 days out, but even that’s not the guarantee of success.
And especially ex Sydney .... a re-positioning flight to Brisbane or Adelaide or Auckland might get you better options
Perth is that much closer to Europe that your points spend is lower than say out of sydney, and Emirates have resumed the A380 service AFAIK (in theory, these flights to re-position could be included in the one Reward ticket by using the Multi-city tool thus costing you no extra points as long as the connection is less than 24 hours!)

and where in Europe your arrival - the cities you suggested are high traffic centres vis a vis a place like Vienna or Manchester or Stockholm perhaps Madrid/Lisbon

for the BACK UP PLAN
paid fares
Finnair reliably less PRICEY or Swiss/Lufthansa perthe nesting strategy mentioned above. (Eg pay for day time tic to Singapore and see if you can find a QF reward seat from Singapore to London or Honkers with Cathay)

 

[Moy]

Just wanted to bump the thread and say a big thank you to all that responded. Some really great advice which I will hopefully be able to use to score my wife and daughter a nice comfy trip home on J.

Will be in SYD Qantas J international Saturday 18th around 7pm. Will put a note on the lounge thread closer to the time.