Business Class Reward Sydney to London, Return from maybe Zurich? Sept 2020

meowmeowmeow on 25/07/2019 - 13:52

Hi all
Have redeemed business class fares from Qantas to USA a few times, relatively straightforward as there's only a few routes and a few carriers.

Now considering a 3-4ish week Europe trip.

Would be wanting to fly from Sydney to London, travel Europe for around 3-4 weeks, ending in Lucerne Switzerland (close enough to Zurich).

Tentative itinerary is London, Paris, Amsterdam, fly to Prague, then Salzburg, Munich and Lucerne/Zurich. Can also do this in reverse if needed.

It's for 2 adults.

Question is - what's the best way and carrier to redeem business class flights, considering:

-Ease of redemption
-Ability to choose seats
-Least stopovers (prefer just 1 each way, max 2 if it's a great deal)
-Best business class product

We would consider flying in/out of other nearby airports if it worked out better.

We have:

Around 600K qantas points, enough for business return for 2 adults
Around 350K velocity points, which is probably not enough for two return tickets (or even one haha)

Any thoughts or tips? I've been doing some research and know i can do qantas/emirates both ways with one stopover through qantas, pending availability. Any other options?

Travel

Comments

    • meowmeowmeow on 25/07/2019 - 15:58

      Ok thanks, just read the one about flying from Hong Kong to save a lot of cash and this actually seems feasible. Round the world is hard because we don't want to fly to many places, but will look into it anyway.

  • Randxyz123 on 25/07/2019 - 15:06

    If you play with the dates enough you might be able to get Qatar Q suite.

    • meowmeowmeow on 25/07/2019 - 15:57

      Having a hard time getting Qatar to come up in search results on Qantas site, do i need to search using the Qatar website maybe?

      Edit: NVM just googled it and will follow the tips :)

      • Randxyz123 on 25/07/2019 - 21:26
        +1

        Nope book through Qantas

        • meowmeowmeow on 27/07/2019 - 15:17

          I'm leaning towards trying to book Qatar flights to London. The availability is the furthest in advance of all the airlines, followed by Cathay and China Eastern. Just need to wait for the end August/early Sept 2020 dates to come up, I guess a month and a bit to wait (they are up to July 22 2020 so far). Fingers crossed I will be able to find reward seats!

  • theHMASfriendship on 25/07/2019 - 15:34

    If you have status with Qantas, if you call their reservations number with some dates you get more options than what you'd get searching online.

    • meowmeowmeow on 25/07/2019 - 15:57

      Absolutely no status with Qantas, unfortunately

      • Hellfire on 25/07/2019 - 16:27

        You can still call and they'll do all the hard work looking (no access to additional seats though). Just need to pay the booking fee.

        • meowmeowmeow on 25/07/2019 - 16:37

          Yah for sure, I've called to get them to change business reward flights before. It's time consuming but they do have more systems and access to see what is available, and can get it done properly (and sometimes mess up the calcs and refund all your money lolololol). Will see if i need to call once the dates become available.

  • stoodamire on 25/07/2019 - 16:00

    Time, patience, notepad or excel.

    • meowmeowmeow on 25/07/2019 - 16:01

      HAHA yes of course. Sept next year so can't book for a few months, but have been trying some dummy bookings to see what works

  • try2bhelpful on 25/07/2019 - 18:20

    We just did Business Class to Brussels on Emirates with Qantas points then Economy back with Etihad with Virgin points. (Not enough points). We have Virgin Gold so we got lounges and priority check in. Emirates was not that great. We just used the standard booking online using classic points and pay option. I would be tempted to use trains over there. We’ve done first class rail, using Eurail passes, a few times and they work well for places like Switzerland where travel is expensive.

    Look at man in seat 61 to see good options and how to book.

    https://www.seat61.com/

    This time we took cheap flights for long distances and trains for shorter hops.

    I would allow 4 weeks.

    • Stewardo on 25/07/2019 - 19:42

      Seat 61 website is great, so many great experiences and things to see on the trains. Much better than being crammed on the plane. I like high speed German trains where you can have a full hot meal and a pint of beer in a glass.

      • meowmeowmeow on 25/07/2019 - 22:15

        Thanks, yep I remember using seat 61 for trains in the US. We are planning on trains for everything, have mapped it all out and it seems to work quite well.

        We have best intentions of 3 weeks but as you would all know it always blows out to 4 weeks.

        This is really helpful. As it turns out we have enough velocity points for business class one way to or from london/Amsterdam/frankfurt/Zurich/Paris. So we could redeem Qantas one way and Virgin the other. Opens us up to more reward seats and airlines. Etihad business would be nice!

        Can you choose your seats if you book Etihad through velocity or Emirates through Qantas?

        • Stewardo on 25/07/2019 - 22:16

          Yes subject to availability

        • try2bhelpful on 25/07/2019 - 23:07

          We could book Emirates business seat but not Etihad economy, from memory. You can usually test it out because you aren’t booking until you give them the credit card details. With our classic points we still had to pay $600 each for business class because we only just had enough points. Play around with the options, and dates, as you might get a choice of airline dependent on dates and points to burn.

          • meowmeowmeow on 26/07/2019 - 06:59

            @try2bhelpful: Ahhh OK thanks, the reason I asked was because when I looked into flying Singapore Airlines through Velocity you couldn't pick seats, so must be the same issue. Potentially can choose them by calling up Virgin or Velocity after booking. I will look into that further before committing, would be a shame to snag business class tickets and then not be able to pick where we sit.

            The fees and taxes do seem high (we all don't have enough velocity points to cover the fees)
            , but still a small price to pay for business class seats :)

            • try2bhelpful on 26/07/2019 - 12:40

              @meowmeowmeow: The Etihad inability to precheck was a PITA, we had to do it at the airport. Our 14 hour seats, in economy, weren’t the worst but they were near the loos. I would look into allocating seats prior if you can. Seatguru can give you an idea on the best seats for a particular plane type, but be careful as there can be several configurations for a flight, where one is OK and the other is a bad seat.
              https://www.seatguru.com/

              Completely agree on the using points for business class, it is a bit of a waste to use them for economy, given the cheap fares.

              • meowmeowmeow on 26/07/2019 - 12:53

                @try2bhelpful: For sure. I really hope there is a way to choose seats before flying, like ASAP after booking, otherwise it's a pretty risky business. There are still bad seats in business class so it does worry me a bit. Will look into it further and maybe call Virgin to ask what the process is.

                • Howdydoo on 23/01/2020 - 00:05

                  @meowmeowmeow: Once you book your ticket you can use the ticket number to 'manage your booking' and choose seats on the airline you are flying with using that airlines website. If this doesn't work ask for the details from the airline you booked through and get the airline reservation number for the airline you are flying with and then you should be able to manage the booking.

                  • meowmeowmeow on 23/01/2020 - 10:43

                    @Howdydoo: All good, we ended up transferring points to Kris Flyer and booking Singapore Airlines for the way home, so got to choose seats. For the trip to London we booked Qatar Airways through Qantas and picked out seats through the Qatar website using our PNR :)

                    • Howdydoo on 23/01/2020 - 12:22

                      @meowmeowmeow: Great work! How many Singapore airlines did it cost you for the one way in business? I have been saving mine up.

                      • meowmeowmeow on 23/01/2020 - 15:54
                        +1

                        @Howdydoo: It was 232,000 Kris Flyers for two and $200 euro, so 116K each, plus $100 euro each in taxes. I transferred almost 360K velocity points to get the Kris Flyer points, which is not great value but it was the safest way to do it, as the Singapore flights are sometimes redeemable through Velocity 30 days later but usually snapped up through Kris Flyer before that.

                        I now have only 12k velocity points :(

        • TimOfEastBNE on 30/08/2019 - 07:14

          Last year we did Emirates business to Zurich then return Etihad business from Milan. I'd choose the Emirates product over the Etihad every day, both hard and soft product.
          Lounges in Abu Dhabi were disappointing (I think we were in terminal C and that's not where the good ones are)..

          Next year we are trying Singapore Airlines to Paris and return from Milan, business both ways booked using velocity points. SQ had better availability and much cheaper taxes and charges. Total fees for the return trip for 2 ppl is about $500 compared to about $500 per person each way on Etihad and about $700 per person each way on Emirates!

          • meowmeowmeow on 30/08/2019 - 07:28

            @TimOfEastBNE: Awesome. I think I'll save my velocity points to use on Singapore Airlines and not waste them on Etihad then.

        • spendy on 22/01/2020 - 22:38

          Hi Meow i wonder how many points does it cost for sq business through velocity to europe?

  • madreece on 25/07/2019 - 22:07
    +2

    +1 for the awesome trains and Seat61, such a great resource.

    • meowmeowmeow on 25/07/2019 - 22:15

      Looking forward to catching a fast train in France!

      • try2bhelpful on 25/07/2019 - 23:12

        The Swiss trains tend to be the best. We did the Amsterdam to Paris this time and it was pretty comfortable. The thing to watch with the TGV is that you don’t, necessarily, end up in the centre of town with them. The aix-en-Provence TGV was a station about 20 km from Aix-en-Provence, we would’ve been better to go to Marseille and take the local train back. We had hired a car so it was OK, and there was a shuttle bus.

        • meowmeowmeow on 26/07/2019 - 07:00

          Good to know. I haven't looked into where exactly the trains stop, so will keep this is mind when I start looking into things in more detail. The Swiss trains look cool too, hopefully we will be able to catch one!

  • meowmeowmeow on 23/08/2019 - 11:52
    +1

    Oh man I am getting ready to book this, using Qatar airways. Have been practicing every day at 10am for 3 weeks and its been successful to grab a business reward Sydney to London every day.

    I need to book on Monday for the day I want. Today i go in at 10am and ALL the direct flights SYD to DOHA have disappeared. I hope it's just a computer glitch!!

  • meowmeowmeow on 26/08/2019 - 15:59

    I managed to book SYD to Doha, Doha to London in August 2020 today. Phew what a relief, i had to call Qantas and it took AGES. All done and ticketed :)

    • madreece on 27/08/2019 - 18:25

      Awesome,isn't that a relief when it's booked. Enjoy the QSuites, the only problem is that it just ruins other business class experiences because they just don't measure up.

      • meowmeowmeow on 27/08/2019 - 22:08

        Yep! Thanks!
        Oh man I know it's gonna be so good. We either fly home on Qatar with a long layover or Etihad with a short layover. I wonder if Etihad will measure up after flying Qatar lol!

        • madreece on 27/08/2019 - 23:11

          I know what I would be taking. Al Mourjan lounge is a nice place to kill some time, not sure if they are still doing the free tours also.

          • meowmeowmeow on 28/08/2019 - 06:53

            @madreece: Good to know. We will probably try book Qatar since it becomes available earlier than the Etihad flight anyway. We can either have an 8 hour layover or a 22 hour layover and spend a day in Doha. A day I. Doha might be cool, if we can grab the right flights.

            • madreece on 28/08/2019 - 07:41

              @meowmeowmeow: A day is about all you will want. Super cheap high end hotels, but I felt uncomfortable with the two tier, foreign worker(read shit scared slaves) society.

              • meowmeowmeow on 28/08/2019 - 08:27

                @madreece: Hmmm yes I found Dubai like that too, plus the disparity between men and women. As a female nobody would stop at crossings for me to cross the road so I had to stand there and wait for a male to cross and go with them.

                I think we aim for the 8 hr layover but if we end up with the 22 hour then we can spend a day to see the main sights and then head back to the airport.

                • madreece on 28/08/2019 - 11:15

                  @meowmeowmeow: Looks like you need to pay for the tours now.
                  https://www.qatarairways.com/en-au/offers/doha-city-tour.htm…

                  $30 each for a three hour tour to pass the time.

                  Mind you, anything will seem cheap after being in Zurich.

                  • meowmeowmeow on 28/08/2019 - 11:30

                    @madreece: Hahaha yes we're only in Zurich for 3 days luckily.

                    We're actually planning to fly home from Amsterdam now, but similar flight schedules to Zurich anyway.

                    If we spend a day in Doha, we will definitely do the tour, that should cover the main sights and then we can chill out before going back to the airport :)

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