Round the World Reward Seat Availability

[JonASid]

My partner and I are trying to travel over Christmas to Europe using points, business class. What routes in and out of the country should I look at? I am struggling to find any availability for business period. I am happy to fly out of any city.

 

[RichardMEL]

My partner and I are trying to travel over Christmas to Europe using points, business class. What routes in and out of the country should I look at? I am struggling to find any availability for business period. I am happy to fly out of any city.

Welcome to AFF.

I think you'll have mostly missed the boat on availability for Christmas(which always would be very limited as is) - a peak time of year. QF's recent reward seat release would have potentially had some options, but they would have been taken.

You will probably need to try for the long way - eg: CI flights via TPE, or UL (Sri Lankan) via CMB., or looking from places in Asia for rewards on say Emirates to secondary european cities may also be an option. You may need to consider options like a paid fare on Jetstar or Scoot or something to position.

If you are Platinum or above status, you may have some joy with seat release requests for QF operated services, but this is also probably going to be difficult.

If you manage to find something grab it because they will be unicorns by now unfortunately.

I don't mean to discourage you but to be realistic, but you're after one of the holy grails of rewards, and the seats have been offered for several months already and savvy folks have grabbed anything available already most likely. I'm not saying it's impossible, just very very difficult, and will take quite some work potentially and you should be prepared to make compromises (perhaps looking for Premium Economy or even Economy on some routes and airlines).

best wishes, and again welcome to AFF.

 

[jpp42]

I agree with Richard, you'd be winning the lottery if you found an easy-to-book classic rewards trip to Europe!

I can personally recommend the "Award Flight Assist" paid routing service which you might consider using, they are experts and may be able to help find some of those unusual routings that were mentioned. Award Flight Assist - Frequent Flyer Solutions . We used this to find mostly business class tickets (Oneworld Award, aka OWA on this board) about 8 months in advance (so, after most availability was taken). We did have to make some sacrifices, such as Prem-Y on our longest Asia-Europe leg and also had to choose BA with its higher carrier charges for the transatlantic route (would have preferred FinnAir). We also had to pay for intra-US flights separately. It was still a good way to spend points, but not the holy grail that some people manage by booking seats right as they're released.