Securing 3 x Qantas Business Classic Award Seats

[danmar]

Hi, I'm a big fan of this site for flight and holiday tips and have got alot out of it over the recent years.
Question for the experienced ones. I'm a QF Gold FF with over 1m points that I want to put to good use. Next year in late June I have a business trip to France. I will organise and pay for a business class fare for myself. I would like to bring my family (wife & 2 kids - 11 & 8) to meet me at the end of June 2016 and use points for them to fly business. We will then plan to return around mid July. Whenever I have considered doing similar trips in the past I have always had difficulty finding seats and looking at close dates now I cannot find any business or first seats. I am flexible where they fly into, preference would likely be Milan but could be Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Geneva even London - anywhere that would only leave them with a reasonably short connecting flight.
I will try contacting QF by phone to discuss, but any tips on how I may make this happen would be hugely appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Hvr]

Three seats are going to be very hard to get. You'll be lucky to get two on one trip. Are you prepared to travel separately, i.e. you and one child and wife and other child on different flights a day earlier or later?

If not you'll probably be out of luck.

 

[danmar]

Three seats are going to be very hard to get. You'll be lucky to get two on one trip. Are you prepared to travel separately, i.e. you and one child and wife and other child on different flights a day earlier or later?

If not you'll probably be out of luck.

Thanks for your quick reply but bugger, thats not what I was hoping to hear Travelling separately on the way over not an option as I'll already be there - its my wife and 2 kids coming to meet me. As we're then planning to be travelling back together that may be an option although obviously not ideal.

 

[Hvr]

The other solution is to leave the children in Y.

 

[kevrosmith]

Booking for that many could always be tricky, but you're starting early, so that's always an advantage.

I just did a quick search for 3 J Reward seats SYD-MXP in May-2016, and one option came up on CX on Tue 3 May. No return J or F options at the moment though for late May.

With QF, the 353 day rule will apply here as well: reward seats are released 353 days in advance, so as of today, the latest you can book out to is 10-June-2016.

If you are quite flexible with which airport you want to fly into and out of, then you increase your options, especially with the EK partnership.

When I was trying to find a return F reward seat 2 months in advance, I pulled up the EK map to see where they fly into, and then used EF to search for EK reward availability over a particular week (e.g. MXP/FCO/CDG/VIE/NCE/GVA etc. - DXB) and then matched that up to timings for searches on DXB-PER/ADL/BNE/MEL/SYD and ended up finding a successful connection which, once I plugged those details into the QF reward search, came up easily. Mind you, this didn't also take into account other OW options, such as CX.

This helped me sift through the QF search engine with its numerous "i" options, which means probably the majority of the flight is in economy, even though you think you're booking Business.

 

[danmar]

Booking for that many could always be tricky, but you're starting early, so that's always an advantage.

I just did a quick search for 3 J Reward seats SYD-MXP in May-2016, and one option came up on CX on Tue 3 May. No return J or F options at the moment though for late May.

With QF, the 353 day rule will apply here as well: reward seats are released 353 days in advance, so as of today, the latest you can book out to is 10-June-2016.

If you are quite flexible with which airport you want to fly into and out of, then you increase your options, especially with the EK partnership.

When I was trying to find a return F reward seat 2 months in advance, I pulled up the EK map to see where they fly into, and then used EF to search for EK reward availability over a particular week (e.g. MXP/FCO/CDG/VIE/NCE/GVA etc. - DXB) and then matched that up to timings for searches on DXB-PER/ADL/BNE/MEL/SYD and ended up finding a successful connection which, once I plugged those details into the QF reward search, came up easily. Mind you, this didn't also take into account other OW options, such as CX.

This helped me sift through the QF search engine with its numerous "i" options, which means probably the majority of the flight is in economy, even though you think you're booking Business.

Great info - exactly why I love coming to this site, thanks so much!

 

[amaroo]

Booked a similar trip for the four of us earlier this year ... CX or BA will be your best bet.

Take a look at this thread for advice/tips http://www.australianfrequentflyer....s/family-trip-split-bookings-worth-65358.html

Use the multi-city function rather than straight out return

 

[Andyzx]

I have done Similar bookings and used the point to point to find the options then used the multi city to put it all together. It won't be easy to get the 3 seats. You might look at a paid child? or seats to sin, bkk, hkg, pvg, India etc anywhere to get out of Oz then use BA CX OW to get you to France or just UK and a paid trip to France. Also look at DXB and then BA to LHR
happy hunting

 

[Gold Member]

QR is generous with 2+ Pax in premium cabins, and a decent biz cabin too. Continue all the way through or just slum it down the back for the ME-EU short leg.

 

[Nizar]

QR is generous with 2+ Pax in premium cabins, and a decent biz cabin too. Continue all the way through or just slum it down the back for the ME-EU short leg.

QR I have found very hard to find anything in J ex-MEL but ex-PER anything is possible. I have seen 9 J seats available as awards.