Help and suggestion on 140,000 itinarary...

[Priscilla]

Hi

We are heading away on a 6 month holiday. At this point in time I have the following:
SYD-LAX, MIA-DCA, DCA-YMQ, YMO-LGA, JFK-LIS, LIS-LHR, LHR-SIN, SIN-SYD

This equates to a little over 24,000 miles.
We are spending just under 3 months in the USA and 3 months in Lisbon, Portugal.
We want to do some travelling within Europe using Lisbon as our base. Can I add more flights? For example: Lisbon - Barcelona return. Or Lisbon - Marrakech return.

How can I maximise my points?
I have 3 internal USA flights, is this allowed? Will it stay within the 140K points allowance?

Let me know what you think. Thanks!!

 

[Danger]

Hi

We are heading away on a 6 month holiday. At this point in time I have the following:
SYD-LAX, MIA-DCA, DCA-YMQ, YMO-LGA, JFK-LIS, LIS-LHR, LHR-SIN, SIN-SYD

This equates to a little over 24,000 miles.
We are spending just under 3 months in the USA and 3 months in Lisbon, Portugal.
We want to do some travelling within Europe using Lisbon as our base. Can I add more flights? For example: Lisbon - Barcelona return. Or Lisbon -Marrakech return.

How can I maximise my points?
I have 3 internal USA flights, is this allowed? Will it stay within the 140K points allowance?

Let me know what you think. Thanks!!

Hi Priscilla. Welcome to AFF.

We'll need a little more information to give you accurate advice. For example, are you referring to using 140k Qantas Frequent Flyer points? If so, the 140k award redemption only allows up to 16 sectors but a maximum of five stops. Stops are destinations where you stay for more than 24 hours. So, for example, you could start in Sydney and fly to Los Angeles, arriving 9am and then leave for Miami at 8am the following morning, staying there for a few days. In this scenario, Miami is a stop (one of your five) but Los Angeles is a stopover (one of your 16). Note, the 16 total includes the five stops so it's a total of 16 sectors, of which five can be stops. I probably haven't explained this part very well.

In light of this, perhaps you'd be better suited to a round the world fare. With Qantas and its oneworld partners, the oneworld Explorer fare products allows a maximum of 16 sectors, all of which can be stops (unlike the 140k award redemption which is a maximum of five stops).

So:

1. Your planned routing, which seems to indicate more than five stops, will not be valid on the Qantas 140k award points product.
2. If you're prepared to pay, a round the world product will be better.
3. With oneworld (Qantas's alliance) I think you're unlikely to find services to YMO and YMQ.
4. Surface sectors are counted as part of the maximum 16 sectors you can take on the oneworld Explorer fare. A surface sector is when you arrive at one airport but fly out of another. For example, you fly Sydney to Los Angeles, drive to Las Vegas and then fly to Miami. Los Angeles to Las Vegas would be counted as a 'flight sector' even if you didn't actually fly.
5. With the oneworld Explorer product, you're allowed up to six sectors in America (North America and Canada).
6. You may find that it's cheaper to take separate flights (ie. on a separate ticket, not part of the round the world fare) for the short stops like Lisbon-Barcelona return.

If you decide to go with a paid fare, there's plenty of people on AFF who will be able to help you out with maximising mileage for frequent flyer points earning.

Here's a link to information on the oneworld Explorer product.

 

[JohnM]

Agree with Danger. Also note that surface sectors in OneWorld Explorer (xONEx) fares can also occur within cities (eg. if you fly in to JFK and out of LGA, or in to LHR and out of LGW). This wasn't previously the case until the 'enhancements' about three years ago when an xONEx went from a maximum of 20 sectors to sixteen :evil:. I loved those 20-sectors DONEx's!

I'm not up with the details of using points to buy a RTW fare but note with interest that Danger's reply seems to suggest that a redemption RTW is not equivalent to an XONEx.

The base fare, ex Australia, for a LONEx (ie. economy) is currently c. $3900 plus about $1K in taxes.

 

[casanovawa]

Yeah, there are a few intricacies to using the 140,000 point RTW deal...

I flew SYD-EZE - first stop (bought a LAN South America Airpas and flew to five cities) - GIG - MIA -ORF - second stop (did a road trip around the US and Canada finishing in Chicago) - ORD - LHR - ARN - 3rd stop (bought cheap tickets to fly to Oslo and then to Copenhagen and then a train to Berlin) - TXL - LHR - FCO - 4th stop (will train to Naples) - NAP - MAD - BCN -JNB - 5th stop (where i have booked a return flight up to Victoria Falls with 1time airlines of South Africa and might book another flight or two to Durban or Cape Town) - SYD...

So I have used the 140,000 RTW fair as the backbone of the trip, then used cheapish fares to get me around each continent (the RTW fare does have a couple of the intra hops within Europe)... And it stays within the 35,000 mile limit, the 5 stop limit and the total of 16 segments (land and air combined)...

I think if you added up the prices it would still be cheaper than a xONEx if you could get a xONEx that would do that itinerary as its over 35,000 miles by the time you add in all the intra hops...

That's how I have worked it anyway....