New Member : how best to use my point to get return Business Class flights to London

[Wendy Taylor]

EDITED : We have been told there will be a family wedding in England in February or March 2018. We are still waiting to be told exact date. We would be flying Perth to LHR and intend to fly business class.
I would like to get the best use of our points. We currently have about 323,000 between us.
We are currently both Silver status and should maintain that level next year.

Hopefully by end of June we will have actual dates and I expect we would have about 417,000 points between us.
We have a return business class flight to Dublin booked in June and we usually get 4,000 a month from Credit cards and other expenditure.

I understand that we will have missed the chance to get an awards flight using points (unless they delay wedding until after July 2018!!!)

So What is the best way to use the points, given that I can not book until they give me the dates.
How does the upgrade lottery work?
I understand there is a points plus pay option - is that worthwhile?
Many Thanks

 

[Mattg]

Re: New Member : how best to use my point to get return Business Class flights to Lo

You'll need at least 256,000 Qantas points each to get return flights to London in business class. Even after your upcoming trip, you'll still be a bit short.

One option could be to take out a couple of credit cards with nice sign-up bonuses. Then you can fly all the way to London in business. You can fly Qantas or any partner airline (e.g. Emirates, Cathay Pacific, Qatar, Malaysia Airlines etc.) as long as there is award availability. This is not always guaranteed, but booking as far in advance as possible helps.

If you don't have enough points to get to Europe, you could redeem points for return flights to somewhere in Asia (e.g. Bangkok). From there, you can generally pick up revenue business class flights for ~$2,500 return.

 

[mviy]

Re: New Member : how best to use my point to get return Business Class flights to Lo

To book on points you have to book very quickly after the seats are released. If you miss out then you'll either need to buy business fares using cash or go into the upgrade lottery.

A single classic award seat in business costs 256000 points return to LHR (London Heathrow) from MEL/SYD. So you would need 512000 points for two. You're currently well short and June would probably be way too late to book.

 

[Mattg]

Re: New Member : how best to use my point to get return Business Class flights to Lo

I see that you've edited your post with a few more details.

I wouldn't necessarily say that using your points is now impossible - there will probably still be some seats available once you know what dates you need to travel. You might just need to be a little more flexible.

Points+Pay is not good value at all - especially for business class bookings - so I personally would not even consider it.

 

[mviy]

Re: New Member : how best to use my point to get return Business Class flights to Lo

How does the upgrade lottery work?

You book a fare that can be upgraded (the cheapest international economy fares are not) and put in a request to upgrade.

Then closer to the departure you find out if you are successful or not. If you are the only passenger on a booking you can request that your upgrade be processed as late as at the gate which could mean that when you go to board the plane a beep is hear when your boarding pass is scanned and you get handed a business class boarding pass.

Upgrades are processed from 7 days out depending on the status you have. Silver and Gold are officially said to be done up to 24 hours out (in practice it seems this can be done a little earlier than that sometimes. Perhaps up to about 30 hours out). If you have Silver then all the Platinum One, Chairman's Lounge, Platinum and Gold requests would be processed first as well as possibly some other silver members requesting upgrades. Many more people may request upgrades than there are upgrades available.

 

[trippin_the_rift]

Re: New Member : how best to use my point to get return Business Class flights to Lo

All of the thoughts above ^^ are sound.
However, quite frankly, the chances of you having a successful points upgrade are LOW, and the odds of finding an award seat at 256k (+ ~$1500 in additional taxes) are slim as well.
In addition, the new points upgrade rates are astronomically expensive.

A more reasonable approach may be to break up the flights. For example, you could use points in business class to Hong Kong (good availability year round + lowest taxes), then pick up Qatar for ~$3,000 return to London in biz class.