Trying to book awards flight to Italy withtout much success

[vosadrian]

Hi All,

Last year I took my family to Europe/USA using the oneworld 140k (X4) Multi flight award. I booked it in (very) late March to travel Late June/July. At the time I was surprised by the availability I was able to find. There was 4 of us travelling and I was able to find plenty of options for flights. I did this by checking one way flights on the qantas classic bookings site and then when I found all the flights I wanted I was able to enter them as a multistop flight online and get the 4 travellers at the 560k points. I got most flights within a day or two of my preferred dates.

This year I was thinking of taking my wife to Italy about the same time (mid June->July). I have checked into availability of one way classic rewards, and there is very little availability... and sometimes if I find something, I then find that when I select it and click next it then says there is no flights on that day and I get to select flights again with a more limited selection? For instance I was searching for SYD->MXP (milan) for 21/6. The closest availability is the 17th. Then I select that and click next and a new screen comes up and says no availability and the next closest is the 13th. I can select that and get the option to book. But the 13th is not ideal for me.

I am surprised because I am booking a lot less flights than last year. I am about 6 weeks earlier in booking looking for less flights than last year and I am not that fussy... but there are no options? Can anyone advise what is going on. Was I very lucky last year and this year not so lucky? Maybe there is flights that are not yet released and I was lucky to check into it last year soon after new flights were released? Is qantas search engine not showing all options and maybe I should be using another oneworld search engine?

Any advice appreciated. I am trying to decide whether to pay for flights with cash or maybe wait a few weeks if it is likely there will be more availability coming up?

I realise I book things fairly late compared to most people and should book earlier. I wish I had that option, but I don't. If I do decide to buy flights with cash, is webjet a good option for finding cheap flights?

Thanks in advance,

Adrian

 

[RB]

I think it may be that you were lucky last year. You are trying to book in relatively high season & any seats for that time first beame available a long time ago. Maybe check some alternatives to Malpensa.
It seems you are booking in economy. There are some really cheap offers for Europe out in the market so maybe you are better off buying a paid ticket this time. Also you might look at getting yourself to Asia & taking advantage of cash seats from there

 

[RichardMEL]

I agree with RB.

With the charges etc on top of any reward ticket it would be a close call between that and buying a sale fare to europe.

You're only 4-5 months out of high season demand for seats which the airlines can sell rather than give away so I'm not surprise there's limited avail

 

[vosadrian]

Thanks... I was surprised I was able to do what I did last year only 3 months before departure and I understand that was very lucky. I just thought maybe I had timed it with the release of some extra seats that had been unavailable until 3 months out or something.

So if I decide to buy fares now instead of FF, where is my best place to find these sale prices? I am just using Webjet at the moment. Not sure if there is a better option?

Thanks again!

 

[RB]

Thanks... I was surprised I was able to do what I did last year only 3 months before departure and I understand that was very lucky. I just thought maybe I had timed it with the release of some extra seats that had been unavailable until 3 months out or something.

So if I decide to buy fares now instead of FF, where is my best place to find these sale prices? I am just using Webjet at the moment. Not sure if there is a better option?

Thanks again!

Maybe have a look at the sub-section of AFF at Cheap International Airfares. You could also do some random checks on google flights to see what is out there & then follow links.

 

[RichardMEL]

skyscanner can also be helpful

 

[Limewood]

Use 2 sectors with award points or buy to HKG, then out of there on CX you should find award seats. I guess your looking for J?

 

[Mattg]

Be mindful that the Qantas website does not show all oneworld award flight options. Have you tried searching for award seats via the British Airways website?

 

[vosadrian]

Thanks everyone. It looks like awards bookings will not work this time. Not enough availability, and probably not going to be much cheaper anyway. I used cheapoair to find some etihad flights that seem great (short total time and leaving when I want to) and are under $1500 return each. Probably only $1500 more expensive than award bookings, and I will keep the points for later use on another 140k multi city award with the family (which was fantastic last time). I wish there was a oneworld partner tha had equivalent priced flights to Etihad so I could QFF but cannot find any.

Thanks again!

 

[andye]

Agree that the economics don't usually work out for economy rewards
However you can sometimes construct a trip looking for the legs individually, maybe incorporating a <24h stopover which should price the same for the flights
Eg instead of searching SYD-MXP, search for SYD-DXB (or SYD-BKK then BKK-DXB) then DXB-MXP worthwhile checking MEL and BNE flights too

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Thanks everyone. It looks like awards bookings will not work this time. Not enough availability, and probably not going to be much cheaper anyway. I used cheapoair to find some etihad flights that seem great (short total time and leaving when I want to) and are under $1500 return each. Probably only $1500 more expensive than award bookings,

If you had of redeemed under QFF the gap between under $1500 and the taxes and charges that QFF would have charged would not have been that great anyway. The RTW Oneworld redemption is a good use of QFF points in Y. Simple returns to Europe in Y are not as good value wise on QFF.

 

[blu]

Qatar has June-July fares at $1,250 ex SYD/MEL.

 

[vosadrian]

Qatar has June-July fares at $1,250 ex SYD/MEL.

I checked that but it does not seem to apply to June/July. I tried a book to Rome return for my dates and it came back around $2.5k. Not sure if I did something wrong, but seems to be for travel to end of march and then Oct/Nov.

 

[dmitri]

Have a look at HKG-DUS awards (Dusseldorf), then fly from there. I got 2 x J awards for that route last year through QF on Cathay, there was heaps of J awards as it wasn't a popular route. Easy flight from DUS to Italy. We also got 2 x J awards SYD-HKG to start the trip.

 

[blu]

I checked that but it does not seem to apply to June/July. I tried a book to Rome return for my dates and it came back around $2.5k. Not sure if I did something wrong, but seems to be for travel to end of march and then Oct/Nov.

You are correct, I must have only seen the first sector cost. But it does look a good sale fare for autum/spring.

 

[Beasley]

Id try Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong .... plus their FF flights come on-line a week ahead of Qantas.

 

[vosadrian]

Just an update here.

I just booked a QFF reward flight to Italy. I was going to pay for flights, but I missed a couple of OK deals ($2k return), and prices were looking North of $5k to get anything I was after (travelling peak time in June/July). I had noticed on the online award booking system that there were flights showing up in the calendar but when I selected the seat it would just go back to the same screen and not progress. I contacted qantas via the online chat system and found out it was not supposed to do that and the flights were there and they were able to book me some good flights via online chat help. So there does seem to be a bug in the qantas reward online booking system.

So end result is I have two return flights to Milan for 120,000 points + $550 each. So using the $0.01 per point value guideline, that is about $1750 each, which seems like good value, as I could only get flights for at least $2000 each, and more likely about $2500 each. So I am happy with the result. Just had to move the dates a few days earlier than initial plan. I think the classic rewards are probably not great value if you get a good deal outside of peak season, but they still offer good value if you are travelling peak season as the $$ value goes up for any ticket bookings but the points stays the same.

Cheers,

Adrian

 

[mviy]

which seems like good value

That depends what value you put on status credits and status. You get no status credits on an award flight. As a NB you're going to see less award availability than those with higher status and possibly right at the bottom of the upgrade queue if looking for an upgrade (depending how you rank compared with others with NB status etc.).

 

[vosadrian]

That depends what value you put on status credits and status. You get no status credits on an award flight. As a NB you're going to see less award availability than those with higher status and possibly right at the bottom of the upgrade queue if looking for an upgrade (depending how you rank compared with others with NB status etc.).

Unfortunately for me, I am not active enough to get above bronze status. I was silver once when travelling a lot for work and qantas being preferred airline by my company, but now my company prefers another airline so I get zero status through work now. I am lucky to fly once a year for personal and normally have enough points from credit cards to do that on points if I can get the flight. Even if I got status, I could not hold it for long. I certainly would like the preferential availability of award flights, but I don't care for upgrades. So for me, the only value is more awards seats available, and a lot of cost to get the status.