Update: Since this article was published, Qantas appears to have pulled all First Class award inventory.
For many people with Qantas Frequent Flyer points, redeeming for a First Class international flight is the “holy grail” of rewards. But it can be exceptionally difficult to find Qantas First Class award availability, even if you have status with the airline.
Qantas is currently offering First Class service on its Airbus A380 flights from Sydney to Los Angeles. It will also resume A380 flights from Sydney to London (via Singapore) from 19 June, and on the Melbourne-Los Angeles route in December. But if you search for Classic Flight Reward seats on these routes on the Qantas website, you typically won’t see any First Class availability.
In the example shown above, we searched for Qantas Classic Reward availability in March 2023 (as a Gold frequent flyer) from Sydney to Los Angeles. Sure enough, if we click through to view the available flights for each day, no First Class reward seats are shown…
But if we search for Classic Reward availability from a town in regional NSW to Los Angeles, such as Orange or Wagga Wagga, suddenly a Qantas First Class reward seat appears on the Sydney-Los Angeles sector!
With this option, the flight from Wagga Wagga to Sydney will be in Economy and the Sydney-Los Angles flight will be in First Class. And it is bookable on the Qantas website.
This trick doesn’t just work if you start your trip in Wagga Wagga. It also works if you originate in many other regional towns in NSW or even Victoria. For example, you could start your trip in Albury:
This doesn’t work if you add a connecting flight from another city such as Brisbane, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Canberra or Adelaide. It only seems to work for regional destinations. But if you live in Melbourne, you could catch a train up to Bendigo and then fly out the next day from there…
Bizarrely, this First Class availability is not shown on the Classic Reward calendar on the Qantas website…
But if you click through to view the availability for a specific date and there is a First Class reward available, the seat appears.
This trick also works on Qantas’ Melbourne-Los Angeles route if you originate your journey in somewhere like Mildura. For example, if we search for availability from Melbourne to Los Angeles on 1 May 2023 (as a Gold or Platinum frequent flyer), there is only Economy, Premium Economy or Business Classic Reward availability…
But sure enough, starting your trip in Mildura opens up a seat in First Class on the Melbourne-Los Angeles leg.
This should also work in the opposite direction, i.e. from Los Angeles to regional Australia.
This trick doesn’t work every day as First Class reward seats aren’t available on every flight. And once the First Class reward seats for a particular travel date are sold, that’s it – there won’t be any more award availability. But on dates where First seats are available, you may be able to find up to 2 seats.
The 297-day rule still applies
If you have Gold, Platinum or Platinum One status with Qantas Frequent Flyer, you should get access to Qantas international premium cabin award availability up to 353 days before departure. (This release happens at 10am AEST.)
For Silver frequent flyers, you’ll generally need to wait until around 323 days from departure and hope that there are still some seats available.
But Bronze members are not given access to premium cabin awards on Qantas long-haul flights until around 297 days from departure.
This rule still applies when using this trick. So, if you’re a Bronze member of the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, you would only be able to book any First Class seats that happen to be available right now for travel up to around 8 March 2023.
There are currently a limited number of seats available for travel dates before then, which Bronze members could access. For example, we found this option yesterday for 2 passengers from Tamworth to Los Angeles via Sydney:
Once again, the First Class reward availability was nowhere to be found when just searching for a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles.
This trick only works when redeeming Qantas Frequent Flyer points via the airline’s website. You can’t access the same availability from Australian country towns to Los Angeles when using points with a partner airline frequent flyer program such as American Airlines AAdvantage or Alaska Airlines MileagePlan (which both happen to charge significantly fewer miles for Qantas award flights to North America).
If you decide to use this Qantas First Class trick, beware that you must take all the flights on your ticket! This means that if you book a ticket originating in Port Macquarie, for example, you would need to actually start your trip in Port Macquarie. If you skipped the Port Macquarie-Sydney flight (in this case), you would be considered a “no-show” and the rest of your booking will be cancelled!
You can leave a comment or discuss this topic on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum.
