We've just returned home from 3 months in Europe and are now looking at flights to SCL or EZE again ready to start booking when award flights beome available for early Feb 2021. I'm seeing less J award availability showing up on QFF than I was seeing earler in the year when LA flights seemed to show up as available most days of the week at the time seats are released at 10am SYD time so I realise that we may have to purchase flights. Having become used to always flying J over the last 10 years thanks to QFF award bookings flying QF, CX, BA etc we really don't want to fly long haul in Y any more.
We do plan on arriving a day or two earlier in EZE and then also to arrive in USH a day earlier than required there for the cruise in case of any delays.
Looking at sale fares at the moment if I was looking at early Feb to early March 2020 to give me an idea of possible fares for the same period in 2021 with QF I could get J return for 7642 for SYD-SCL or 7704 for SYD-EZE. With LA I could get SYD-SCL in J return for 6214 and SYD-EZE for 7487. If I can't get award flights using QFF points and have to pay for flights I like the idea of flying NZ via AKL to EZE without having to go via SCL if we can get a good fare but at the moment their J fares for Feb-Mar 2020 are 7895, 8750 and 9462, a lot more than I want to pay. They have a sale at the momet for flights between 15 April and 21 June 2020 with J return fares for as low as 3488 to 4908.
I realise that the Feb and Mar period will be a peak period. Has anyone noticed if any of these airlines offer sale J fares to SCL or EZE for Feb/Mar flights? If we can't get award flights we'll watch paid fares regularly and if we can get fares around 5000 we'll book them. Going on earlier comments about LA we'll try for QF or NZ before LA although we won't be able to avoid using LA for SCL-EZE if we fly into SCL and for EZE-USH flights. Hopefully I may be able to use QFF points for those LA flights.
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