Hi everyone,
Now that Australia is talking about things "opening up" we are looking to plan a trip to USA for 2023 to Disneyworld and Caribbean cruise etc (pending safety of travel)
We will likely have about 800k points of qantas and velocity points (roughly 400K of each) by then and thinking about the best way to get ourselves there (2 adults 2 kids). Would love to hear how people have done this in the past. Hoping the points still are worth the same value for flights as they were previously!
You currently can't use Velocity points for international flights but this will probably change in the future.
You need a minimum of 441,600 Qantas points, plus taxes, to get 4 people to Orlando. You could aim for this.
Taxes for AA not to mention availability and value for points seem to be much better than qantas so I'd be looking at using them for this.
Next year we plan to fly one way to Hawaii using cash to pay for Jetstar flights then use points from then on to travel internally in USA on AA and then on to Europe from there on AA. Much better value. My recollection is that the taxes on an award QF fare to Honolulu are almost the same as the cost of the jetstar seat outright.
Wow thats a great tip to look into AA. I dont have any preference for carrier so this sounds ideal, Thanks for sharing :)
Don't you have book with AA points to get the benefit of their lower taxes? They are pretty difficult to acquire in Aus.
You book AA with QFF
I realise you can potentially book AA flights with QFF points.
The question was in relation to booking AA flights and paying lower taxes. My understanding was that you had to book through AA (obviously using AA points) to get the lower taxes, better value redemptions, etc.
Good that you are thinking ahead as you'll need to jump in right away with bookings (circa 330 days out but google for exact number of days) especially if you need to be going during school holidays, and will be doing this without any status as with Gold status or above reward seats both open up earlier and there's higher availability.
Beware of taxes to pay as well though which are unavoidable with Qantas and quite the rort vs paying cash for ticket.
Depending on where you flying from I think its about 42k points, plus around $200 in taxes one way, so say 85k points and $400 in taxes per ticket.
EDIT: Ooops this is to LA not to Orlando. Misread DIsneyWORLD. Will be more.