One world award flight Melb to London to New York, Melb Sept 2013 4 passengers

[DAC1]

Ok so does that mean BA from Melb to LHR, and AA to the US and accross it and QF from LAX? , no probs if I have to go from Orly, or into Newark. I'm not sure what you mean when you say I have to connect through LHR as opposed to a direct flight? I'd be flyinging into there from Melb anyway and leaving there to get to Paris would I not?

No, this part was just referring to doing CDG-JFK in Business to give your family a Business class experience. Generally you get better points value for redemption out of the higher classes.

I'm confused with part of your first paragraph "You will have to use the points + pay option for a YASA (NOT the straight out points + pay becuase this offers poor redemption rates)." Points+pay, straight out points + pay, what's the difference? I wonder what a fair bit of cash is, sounds expensive?
Ok will do the Woolworths thing. I had thought there was a family option on the Qantas card. My kids are 12 & 15.

I will have a play on the QFF site,This will be interesting!, for someone who has only ever booked all his travel through a travel agent. I take it shows availabilty on each of the legs also? take your point on the LHR,CDG leg, Ryan Air etc And thanks for leg by leg tip, I just thought that would not get as much value for my points that way.

Depends on how much you get your YASA's for. Something I couldn't personally tell you because I can't make a dummy booking online (I don't have enough points). If you did some dummy award bookings you can see that with your points balance.

Best thing is to play around! Its how most people here learnt how they did. A combination of stuff here and playing around yourself, you can really learn a lot about it all. Yeah it shows availability on legs as well.

Yeah you may not, but the redemption for economy fares is poor on a whole. If we can get one relatively long leg in Business, and then the others as a YASA (which includes taxes), it could possibly cut back on the amount of extra charges you have to pay on top of just a straight out redemption. I emphasise the may, because it may not but its worth a try.

If you were to break it up, you would look at it like
MEL-LHR - either purchase commercially or on a one-way YASA
LHR-CDG - probably best off with a cheap airline
CDG-JFK - up to you, but wouldn't be a bad route to use for business class (which gives you far better value for your points).
JFK-SYD - either purchase commerically or on another one-way YASA, an award booking takes you back around the other side of the world so this could be a good way to actually save some time.

The easiest way would be to do it on a OW 140K award in Y, but that does result in the extra $6000 in taxes and fees. If you're spending this amount of points you want to get the most you can out of them, so we are giving you all the alternatives so you have the options there because there may be some better value alternatives.

Thanks casanovawa for your tips. Some great destinations!, and if I was by myself with no time constraints having to get back to work etc, I would like to visit some of those places, however on this trip, the less time in the air the better. It's all about getting to the destination in the quickest most direct route. Purpose of this trip is to show the rest of the family who haven't been to London, Paris, some of France and New York, all places I have been to many times.

The last part I will definitely have a look at on the internet, and read up, I have never heard of these.

Buying miles is a great idea so do look into it. I often buy AA miles. To give you an example of redemption rates I got a business trip from SYD-xPER-BME for only about $450. It was a 10 hour trip and pretty much around the entire country. Makes for excellent value when economy was selling at the time for $550 and business for $2300.

 

[Pierre10]

The exotic options might be okay but the OP does have quite defined travel dates. With teenage children I gather they are I'm school thus limited in travel time and options through South America and Africa may be quite difficult and very stressful for a family of 4. If you had the time great but these options will take far longer than more direct routes. As for the Asian routes availability is quite restricted around these school holidays time ex and to Australia. I've just searched for an award that does route through indirect 'exotic' locations and I can't see much in terms of availability.

The priority here is finding the best use of 620000 points with limited money spent in additional taxes and charges.

The second point is a valid one though. If the OP wants to explore purchasing miles off US Airways, AA or even Avianca they are possibilities but the other trouble is finding 4 seats the whole way. Pierre10 if you're interested, there's quite a few threads here about these USDM, AA buy miles and Avianca promotions. A google search may break it down in more simple terms as well however it may confuse you as well so proceed with caution!

"The priority here is finding the best use of 620000 points with limited money spent in additional taxes and charges". Yes, this is the key!
An email from Best Flights just came in advertising round world flights on QF,BA,AA via Dubai for $2029 inc all taxes & charges, however only allows 2 stopovers. The point being this is just over $8k for us and I'd still have my 620k points, ad doesn't mention anything about whether this offer attracts points or not.

On your last point, I've never heard of this, I will have a look at this and proceed with caution! I would want to do this though AA as US Airways is star aliance and I am not keen on joining another loyalty program beyond QFF, VA, AFFB

Thanks once again rabbits5!

 

[DAC1]

"The priority here is finding the best use of 620000 points with limited money spent in additional taxes and charges". Yes, this is the key!
An email from Best Flights just came in advertising round world flights on QF,BA,AA via Dubai for $2029 inc all taxes & charges, however only allows 2 stopovers. The point being this is just over $8k for us and I'd still have my 620k points, ad doesn't mention anything about whether this offer attracts points or not.

On your last point, I've never heard of this, I will have a look at this and proceed with caution! I would want to do this though AA as US Airways is star aliance and I am not keen on joining another loyalty program beyond QFF, VA, AFFB

Thanks once again rabbits5!

Easy done, stop over in LHR and JFK. Do LHR-CDG-LHR on some budget carrier. Definitely worth considering options like this and attempting a J or PE upgrade on some of your legs by using points.

Yeah look into it. Bear in mind though that whilst joining more program's may be messy, they don't charge membership fees like QF and are actually in many cases easier to manage. Just food for thought!

 

[casanovawa]

The thing is the USDM offer is so compelling to get J class fares for potentially all the major legs on a RTW and with such low taxes whilst QF slap so many fuel surcharge $s on top their points that it is probably cheaper to cash in your QFF points for gift cards and save your money via that route and use this to subsidise your USDM miles purchases...

You could potentially spend $6,000-8,000 cash plus a bunch/majority of your QFF points and get 4 economy class tickets, maybe even up towards $10,000 in total with points plus pay etc, or you could go buy the USDM miles for around $10,000 and try and get 4 J class tickets and keep your QFF points for future use or as i say maybe even cash some of them in to reduce that $10,000 cash figure and so end up with 4 x J tickets for less than 4 x Y tickets on QF and its OW partners... You may struggle to get 4 J tickets all on the same flights, but a great experience, so maybe you might have to travel on consecutive days or slightly different routes on the same day 2+2 etc...

Here is the thread on successful USDM redemptions just to give you a sense of what is possible....
http://www.australianfrequentflyer....-miles/us-dividend-miles-post-your-33057.html

 

[ozbeachbabe]

It's worth noting that in early October CX have an 'Economy Core' fare JFK/SYD via HKG for USD1,203.06 pp one way or a 'Premium Economy Standard' fare USD1,728.06. Those prices. include all the taxes.

Once you are looking at 6K for taxes/fees/surcharges you really have to question the 'value' of award tickets in whY.

At least weigh up your options very carefully ie compare Classic/Partner Award levels with ASA's.

Whilst they can be good value for J & F award travel sometimes you're better off puchasing the best value whY ticket & hanging on to your points.

 

[ftm]

At circa $2100pp, the retail fare with QF/BA which would cover NY and London would be the best use of points for you. Spending $6000 on taxes, PLUS over 500k in points is not good redemption value! You would also earn points on the retail fare, further increasing its comparative value.

Not sure if you can create that fare via the QF site, but it is QF to London, BA to NY and QF home. All in O Class.

FTM

 

[Pierre10]

Easy done, stop over in LHR and JFK. Do LHR-CDG-LHR on some budget carrier. Definitely worth considering options like this and attempting a J or PE upgrade on some of your legs by using points.

Yeah look into it. Bear in mind though that whilst joining more program's may be messy, they don't charge membership fees like QF and are actually in many cases easier to manage. Just food for thought!

yes. using points for an upgrade on a leg , that does sound like a good option.

I guess so, what's one more card, and i guess with a healthy number of points with QF, maybe time to add to my other options, probablt Star Alliance.

 

[Pierre10]

The thing is the USDM offer is so compelling to get J class fares for potentially all the major legs on a RTW and with such low taxes whilst QF slap so many fuel surcharge $s on top their points that it is probably cheaper to cash in your QFF points for gift cards and save your money via that route and use this to subsidise your USDM miles purchases...

You could potentially spend $6,000-8,000 cash plus a bunch/majority of your QFF points and get 4 economy class tickets, maybe even up towards $10,000 in total with points plus pay etc, or you could go buy the USDM miles for around $10,000 and try and get 4 J class tickets and keep your QFF points for future use or as i say maybe even cash some of them in to reduce that $10,000 cash figure and so end up with 4 x J tickets for less than 4 x Y tickets on QF and its OW partners... You may struggle to get 4 J tickets all on the same flights, but a great experience, so maybe you might have to travel on consecutive days or slightly different routes on the same day 2+2 etc...

Here is the thread on successful USDM redemptions just to give you a sense of what is possible....
http://www.australianfrequentflyer....-miles/us-dividend-miles-post-your-33057.html

Yes, there is no doubt I have learnt at lot over the last week or so, from you guys. In the beginning I thought, I'd just use all my points plus several hundred $ in fees and away we go. That option now is at the bottom of the pile. When you say "save your money via that route and use this to subsidise your USDM miles purchases..." what do you mean by this? Are you saying that in some clever way I could use my QF points to purchase USDM. I thought I would have to just buy the USDM outright for cash or by credit card. Which brings me to my next question, if I was paying for these via credit card, then obvi

 

[Pierre10]

Yes, there is no doubt I have learnt at lot over the last week or so, from you guys. In the beginning I thought, I'd just use all my points plus several hundred $ in fees and away we go. That option now is at the bottom of the pile. When you say "save your money via that route and use this to subsidise your USDM miles purchases..." what do you mean by this? Are you saying that in some clever way I could use my QF points to purchase USDM. I thought I would have to just buy the USDM outright for cash or by credit card. Which brings me to my next question, if I was paying for these via credit card, then obvi

Opps, don't know what happened there to the rest of my reply! What I was going to say is if I purchase these with my credit card, should I consider taking out an ANA credit card or should I just sign up for their standard FF membership card, ie not linked to purchases and just stick with my local Qantas Visa card which generates points on pretty much everything I use it for?

Also why do they recommend to get an ANA FF membership and not a US Airways FF membership?

 

[Pierre10]

It's worth noting that in early October CX have an 'Economy Core' fare JFK/SYD via HKG for USD1,203.06 pp one way or a 'Premium Economy Standard' fare USD1,728.06. Those prices. include all the taxes.

Once you are looking at 6K for taxes/fees/surcharges you really have to question the 'value' of award tickets in whY.

At least weigh up your options very carefully ie compare Classic/Partner Award levels with ASA's.

Whilst they can be good value for J & F award travel sometimes you're better off puchasing the best value whY ticket & hanging on to your points.

Thanks Ozbeachbabe,

On this CX fare that looks like it is only the trip back. I'd still have to get us from Melb-LHR-CDG,JFK,so I would imagine this is going to still end up costing a lot, and if I did use points for the first half, then I am still going to be up fr a good chunk of the fees. I am I missing something obvious here?

 

[Pierre10]

No, this part was just referring to doing CDG-JFK in Business to give your family a Business class experience. Generally you get better points value for redemption out of the higher classes.



Depends on how much you get your YASA's for. Something I couldn't personally tell you because I can't make a dummy booking online (I don't have enough points). If you did some dummy award bookings you can see that with your points balance.

Best thing is to play around! Its how most people here learnt how they did. A combination of stuff here and playing around yourself, you can really learn a lot about it all. Yeah it shows availability on legs as well.

Yeah you may not, but the redemption for economy fares is poor on a whole. If we can get one relatively long leg in Business, and then the others as a YASA (which includes taxes), it could possibly cut back on the amount of extra charges you have to pay on top of just a straight out redemption. I emphasise the may, because it may not but its worth a try.

If you were to break it up, you would look at it like
MEL-LHR - either purchase commercially or on a one-way YASA
LHR-CDG - probably best off with a cheap airline
CDG-JFK - up to you, but wouldn't be a bad route to use for business class (which gives you far better value for your points).
JFK-SYD - either purchase commerically or on another one-way YASA, an award booking takes you back around the other side of the world so this could be a good way to actually save some time.

The easiest way would be to do it on a OW 140K award in Y, but that does result in the extra $6000 in taxes and fees. If you're spending this amount of points you want to get the most you can out of them, so we are giving you all the alternatives so you have the options there because there may be some better value alternatives.



Buying miles is a great idea so do look into it. I often buy AA miles. To give you an example of redemption rates I got a business trip from SYD-xPER-BME for only about $450. It was a 10 hour trip and pretty much around the entire country. Makes for excellent value when economy was selling at the time for $550 and business for $2300.

So to buy AA miles, you sign up for an AA FF membership in the same way you would have an ANA FF membership to do international flights, and with the AA card being able to be used on QF flights here as well as the international?