Hi all
I've been accumulating points and have 340k ish QFF points and roughly around 150k VFF points. Planning to get return flights to the UK for the missus and myself for early to mid 2024 hopefully on a national airline and need some advice on the best ways to utilise these points.
Thanks for any help.
return? im assuming this can be found directly on the qantas website?
Max 5 stopovers, 16 sectors, 35,000 miles
thanks but sorry that's all just gibberish to me lol.
can you point out where i can get this deal?
flying from PERTH. might increase the point requirements.
You can book a simple return classic rewards flights on the qantas website. Usually around 110k return but depends on routing.
The 132,400 version allows more flights and stopovers. Good value if you want to do some extra flights.
nothing available for classic rewards for all the dates i've tried. i guess they are pretty rare.
also no way for me to just search classic reward flight dates only, urgh.
@Hellfire: Preferably Apr-May for about 3 weeks.
what website are you using? The qantas had very limited 51,300 point+$$ flights on msian airline (which im avoiding)
@plentifoo: Just on the Qantas website. The calendar view shows classic rewards availability although doesn't indicate the airline.
But I think I might have broken it. I get an access denied message when I try to search now
from perth all i see are sale flights from 162,225 (one way).
Perth gets an absolutely sh1t selection of international flights, Rome/London flights are all booked up by the eastern states people where it originates some 10 months before. Singapore's 1 flight a day is nearly always gone and the only other option is domestic where the value for money comes in.
We don't even get fallback options with Emirates etc.
I've saved up close to 600k points and struggle to use them.
you are 2 days late.
Qantas just released a ton of rewards flights for Europe for mid next year.
no doubt gone now. but was an excellent sale if you got some tickets.
(was surprised no one posted a deal on here).
your best bet would be to check every day. no doubt someone who booked spur of the moment will cancel there flights.
but youll have to be quick.
There's economy classic reward availability from Perth to LHR (via Syd and then on QF1 via Singapore) for a few days at the start of August (1, 2, 5, 6, 7). Plenty of availability back three weeks later (including on the direct QF10 from LHR to PER on 21 Aug).
I couldn't see anything earlier in the year on QF. Like other posters have said, you're just a few days too late after a massive release!
If you are happy to book the journey there and back separately (and I suggest you should - it's the same price as two one ways or a return) then you can book:
16 April - PER via SIN to LHR on Singapore Airlines (65k VFF points each)
7 May - LHR to PER on Qantas direct (51k QFF points each)
Happy hunting!
these are points + $$ i realise. Still about +$450 per person on the return flight.
These are both rewards seats. For any reward booking (even short domestic hops) you need to pay the taxes and surcharges. They vary between airlines but are usually a small fraction of what the seat would cost to buy. No way around them for reward seats unfortunately.
Some airports have lower fees (and London is known as having very high fees). If the cost is a dealbreaker, you can look at a short hop elsewhere (eg, Dublin) and looking for a rewards seat home from there - but it adds a lot of time and annoyance so whether that is worthwhile for the saving is something to consider.
Virgin does give you the option of paying the taxes with points, but that usually ~doubles the amount of points needed and is a very poor value use of points compared with the reward booking itself.
@isaacn97: is there anyway to buy 22k VFF points? (without spending ridiculous amounts on alochol in the velocity shop lol)
edit: realise i can trade my qff points for vff on the classified section of the forum
forgot i booked flights to tas this year using VFF, so really i only have a balance of 108k points. Tried to book with 2x65,000 but don't have the balance for it. Realise you can't book using currency+remaining point balance. Only allows you to use points if you have enough for exactly the number of seats you want to book. Is that correct or am i using the website wrongly?
Ah bummer! That's right - no way to pay the difference except to purchase points, which is usually not worth it (22k points is ~$600). You can also look at the Velocity Wine Store which can usually be cheaper to get points by buying wine with bonus points (and then you also get to drink or gift the wine…)
Alternatively, you could look at flying on Velocity points to a stopover (most likely Singapore), and then using QFF to continue on? With separate tickets though, you would want to leave a good amount of buffer between flights.
What you could do is use points to fly Perth - Dubai return (there is availability 28/4)
Then have a Dubai stop over then get a one way fare from Dubai or Abu Dhabi to Europe with points then a one way fare back to Abu Dhabi using VFF points
thanks all, i just booked the return flight with qantas rewards on 7 May direct for 51,500 points + $465 aud per person.
now shopping around for flights from perth to london/dublin/edinburgh that can be part of our itinerary before taking a short connecting flight to london.
just for reference, if you can build a one world itinery it would cap out at 132k points despite being able to fly all over the place.
So for example you could go to Asia on the way back and do stopovers there as well as all sorts of additional flying in europe.
rather than flying direct back to perth for example you could conceivably look at flying to hong kong, bangkok, tokyo, jakarta, tokyo, singapore from London, Helsinki, frankfurt, amsterdam, rome, barcelona, zurich, brussels, dublin etc.
There's a lot of work knowing what can be searched but the rules tend to be pretty simple once you figure it out.
If you're on oneworld, look at the carrier and see where they fly to. For example Cathay (hong kong base) flies to 12 destinations in Europe currently. Just have to search for their options.
British Airways flies from london to a bunch. Finnair from Helsinki to a bunch of asian countries. JAL flies to Tokyo etc.
Then once you're in Asia look for other ways back to Perth, possibly via Singapore or Malaysia or even Sydney.
thanks all, i just booked the return flight with qantas rewards on 7 May direct for 51,500 points + $465 aud per person.
Which flight did you book? Those taxes seem high.
QF10 direct Heathrow to Perth
Just FYI flights out of LHR generally attract high taxes. You can avoid this by having your itinerary originate from Australia (which if you're building a RTW itinerary, you'll do anyway).
There's plenty of PER-SIN and SIN-HEL (on Finnair) in April. You can then easily connect from HEL to the UK.
@Autonomic: There weren't any return flights I can book out of Perth to Heathrow and only when we decided to do scandanavia did helsinki come up on my radar. In any case, I could only book the to and return separately because there no Qantas reward flights to Europe for the dates I want to travel
@plentifoo: I don't know what dates you're looking at specifically but there is PER-SIN available on 22/4 and SIN-HEL-MAN available on 24/4, for 2 people.
i've already booked PER-OSLO 14 Apr for 65,000 VFF + $325 per person on Qatar Airway.
132,400 Qantas Points buys a Qantas oneworld Classic Flight Reward in economy