Which way to go?

[drex]

Hi All,

First post, have really enjoyed reading some of the topics here but was hoping for some advice.

Myself and my partner currently have about 106000 QF FF points between us, I also have about another 100000 with AMEX and we have about 40000 with DJ. We're looking at a short trip to Europe sometime next year and I was wondering what the best move would be to do with the Amex points? I would anticipate that I should have another 60000 by the time we get around to booking. Before reading here I would have transferred the points over to QF because that's where we have the bulk of our existing points but now I'm not so sure.

We're basically looking at getting to LHR and then will drive/train from there. Does anybody have any suggestions on the best way forward?

Thanks, Ben

 

[antycbr]

First of all, are you sure that you can transfer your AMEX points to QF? It is dependent on the type of card you have, unless you have a business card most of them require to either sweep everything over to Qantas or you are enrolled in Amex Ascent, where you can't redeem them to Qantas.

If they are stuck in Ascent, you have a choice of Air NZ, Velocity (Virgin Blue), Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic at 1:1 ratios and Malaysian, Cathay and Thai at a reduced rate.

You could split the bookings over somewhere such as Singapore - 2 x SYD-SIN for example is 120,000 points in economy on Qantas; then transfer 140,000 points from Amex over to Singapore Airlines Krisflyer, and book two Saver Economy fares SIN-LHR for 140,000 (minus 15% if you do it online) = 119,000 for two tickets.

Obviously the above is subject to award availability (check before transferring!) and you'd need to top up your QF points somehow. To minimise the tax haul, you might want to consider flying into somewhere other than the UK due to the significantly higher APD tax charged.

Hope this helps!

 

[JohnK]

With the amount of points you have the easiest would be to transfer the Amex Membership Rewards points to Singapore KrisFlyer at 1:1 and book 2 awards to LHR which require 80,750 KrisFlyer miles per person(95,000 - 15% online discount) + ~AUD600 in taxes and surcharges per person.

First of all, are you sure that you can transfer your AMEX points to QF? It is dependent on the type of card you have, unless you have a business card most of them require to either sweep everything over to Qantas or you are enrolled in Amex Ascent, where you can't redeem them to Qantas.

Memebership Rewards points in Ascent Premium can be transferred to QF when needed.

 

[drex]

Thanks for the replies. Like John said, my Amex card is linked to Ascent Premium but it looks like I won't need to transfer to QF in this case.

Many thanks, Ben