New York to Brisbane or Sydney in first Week of October

[newcomic]

Hello

I am in a bit of a pickle.

I used Velocity Points to buy 2 tickets from Gold Cost to Amsterdam on Etihad A380 in September 2016.

I am then flying from London to Bermuda using my own money.

I'll be able to fly from Bermuda to New York or anywhere on the East Coast of USA pretty cheaply.

The issue I have is now being able to get back to Australia on Business Class for a reasonable amount of money. One way business class flights are way too expensive, I don't trust the option of upgrading and can't seem to find AA points redemptions.

I need to fly business class because of my knee operation recently and economy is out of the question.

Can anyone please help?

This is the situation:

- 2 x Business / First Class seats from East Coast of USA to East Coast of Australia leaving anytime in the 1st week of October 2016.
- Happy to fly back to Europe if need be or anywhere else to route back to Australia but prefer total flying time to be less than 36 hours
- 240k Qantas Points
- 300k AA Points

Your assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Mattg]

I would be looking at one of the following options:

-Use AA miles to fly back via AUH on Etihad Airways. This would cost around 110K AA miles each. You would have to book this is two separate awards with a stop in Abu Dhabi. The problem with this is award availability. There are 2x Business class seats on EY from Toronto to Abu Dhabi on 1, 4 and 6 October. But onwards from Abu Dhabi, there aren't many seats in J or F on the same flights in the first week of October. There is one seat on AUH-BNE on 4 October, and no more until 11 Oct (when there are 2 seats on the same flight). If you feel like going via MEL, there are 2 J seats on AUH-MEL on 9 Oct. I appreciate this might be a little late for you.

-Another option is to use a combination of AA and/or QF points (as required - though AA miles are generally better for these kind of redemptions) to travel via Hong Kong or Tokyo. I can see a bit of availability on AA from DFW or LAX to NRT in both J and F at the start of October. Using AA miles you can book this for no extra cost originating in New York or elsewhere in the USA. The only difficulty then is getting back to Australia from Japan. There is a QF flight from NRT-BNE but I can't see 2 J awards on any of these flights. You could use JQ "Business class" (either with QF points or cash) but I realise that isn't ideal. Looking at flights via HKG, there is some availability on CX from NY to HKG. Again, getting back to Australia from Hong Kong could be challenging but I haven't checked this thoroughly.

-Failing that, the other option I often suggest is to forget about using points and to book separate tickets from New York to HNL, and then fly from HNL to BNE or SYD in Jetstar Business. This is probably the cheapest option without using points, and there is no "penalty" for flying one-way.

 

[support]

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