points, status, club and rtw

[marce]

hi gang,

ok here is my situation,

2.5m pts
points club plus for a few years
low status

AIM: would like to take my family RTW on points in business.

questions:
what is the best way to book ?
is it worth a status run and becoming silver before booking?
is it worth engaging a service to do it for me ?as I'm generally a bit pathetic.
what other questions should I be asking?

thanks in advance

cheers
marce

 

[AustraliaPoochie]

PS is still low in the pecking order.
Considering that there are 5 other tiers above, CL/WP/P1/SG the PS.
Chairmans Lounge are the highest, and they would get first go at any seats in F or J, then WP, Platinum, and then Platinum 1, then SG ie, Gold.
Lots of points would not help, if you were higher up their (QF's) tier/status, you will get better odds at seats when QF releases them.
Not that I have an ideal answer.
On Aust dom flights, upgrades can be yours, if you jump in fast enough, and if there are U class, ie, seats in J business that QF is happy to have points used to pay for them.
Trips to the UK will be in high demand, as QF has the market on it.
Wait for what the others say tho.

 

[Must...Fly!]

It's not impossible but it might be close to it.

How big is your family?
How flexible are your dates? If it's school holidays it just adds to the challenge.

There is a very long thread on this forum which gives a world full of information. "oneworld" award (132.4K/249.6K/318K/455K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I used it extensively in my own research before deciding against such a redemption.

 

[dizz]

If you're not up for putting in the effort researching and checking flights, paying for a service might be pf value to you, however, more than 2 for a business OWA they likely won't take you on.

How big is your family? If there are 4+ and no very young children, splitting your group into separate bookings and staggering flights by +-1 day on some legs would increase your chances of success.
As said above, peak times you're going to struggle unless you luck a fresh batch release of seats. Off peak you'll have better luck, but in general the further ahead you book the better.
Depending on how long your trip is, general advice is to book the first couple of legs, then add the others as they become available (check out the blogs and RTW thread devoted to this for other common tips).
Another thing worth considering: The legs to and from Australia will probably have the least availability. If you're willing to pay cash for a positioning flight to SE Asia you could potentially avoid that (and potentially pay lower fees).

In terms of how to book, the blogs and forum have more details, but in short: research, plan with flight numbers and dates (maybe backups on each leg), then unless your trip is 5 or 6 flights, brave the call centre, be very specific saying I want [this flight] on [this date] in Business award.

Good luck! It's possible, but a bit of work.

 

[RooFlyer]

what is the best way to book ?
is it worth a status run and becoming silver before booking?
is it worth engaging a service to do it for me ?as I'm generally a bit pathetic.
what other questions should I be asking?

* Best way to book would be direct with the airline offering - in fact little else you could do

* Not worth the status run for Silver, I suggest.

* Getting 4 business seats on a RTW will be EXTREMELY difficult, but not impossible and not without extreme flexibility as to date and even route - unless you are OK with a number of legs with, say 2 in business, 2 in economy or the party travelling on different flights.

Award Flight Assist (seems to be known as Frequent Flyer Concierge these days) is a 'sister' site to AFF and will find award flight itineraries, including RTW, I believe. You tell them what you want and they tell you the fee. No harm in asking, but they may not take it on - again, unless you are OK with some poor compromises.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - Frequent Flyer Solutions

frequentflyer.com.au

Frequent Flyer Concierge - Customer - Questionnaire - Form-1

This form allows customers to tell us where, when and how they want to travel.

frequentflyer.paperform.co

* Often the most difficult part of getting multiple award seats is to get in and out of Australia. You might need to consider 'positioning' the party in, say, SIN or BKK or Japan via paid, cheap Y seats and doing the RTW from/to there.

 

[AustraliaPoochie]

Also, with the "horror" tales of QFF not ticketing flights for partners in time, and what others have related, I would also try not to have the trip too complicated.
If QFF outsourced overseas call centre/center staff do a half hearted booking, there is a chance of the whole booking being cancelled by the partner airline, depending on where you want to go, some flights might have to be on OW airlines, or on EK with a QF flight number.
How about, dare I say it, a trip with the family to a beach resort in say, Malaysia, or Thailand, make it a bit easier.
Also, easier to come back to Aust, if something in a booking goes wrong, ie, you just have to pay a bit more.
There was a relation, on here I think, that someone has gotten stuck in Philadelphia in the US, because a certain airline, they were booked on, has cancelled the routing, and another airline, not in their FF alliance, is flying that route.
If the family are happy to sit in Y, you can also use points for hotel redemption.

 

[Mr H]

One World Award bookings (which you refer to as RTW) are the most complex and hardest of all redemption bookings. It is rare to get more than two J award seats on a flight - some are only one and some are none at all. They are often snapped up as soon as they are released. Building an itinerary is therefore hard and requires a leap of faith that future flights will be available as you lock in earlier ones. You then have to spend a year watching the itinerary wriggle as flights change - often needing you to pounce into action to save the booking. It takes all my heart and soul to do it for a single passenger - it can take weeks of planning and research about when flights are released and exploring creative routes. I would not even think of doing it for more than two passengers.

 

[ShelleyB]

Hi Marce. I am no expert but as others have noted above it can be really challenging to book classic award flights on Oneworld partners for even 2 travellers, never mind more. I can share a little of my recent experience. We had saved over a million Qantas points with the intention of using them for a Oneworld classic RTW ticket for 3 people in J class. However, even with our ability to plan over a year ahead (when availability is often best) we just could not find the flights we wanted. Ultimately we found it better to split the various flights across different bookings. This meant we could also include Emirates in the booking too (although be aware Emirates taxes are high). This meant for so far just over a million we have booked J class flights MEL-NRT-KUL-DPS-MEL (already taken) and coming up we have MEL-DXB-AMM (in Dec) and then DAR-DXB-SIN (end Jan). We still need a way back to MEL from SIN but we'll just pay if we need to. The first ticket was all Oneworld carriers but the last two are Emirates (which is not a Oneworld member). Although you do end up using more points it is more flexible and with separate tickets at least your whole itinerary is not at risk if Qantas stuff up any ticketing. With your 2.5 million points perhaps you can afford the extra points cost for separate tickets.

 

[marce]

Thanks for all your replies, the last time I looked at anything like this was 15yrs ago, and I thought it was easier/more likely

lots of great advice, separate bookings looks far less stressful and more my style.

cheers

m

 

[kangarooflyer88]

As others have pointed out round the world award tickets are doable, but are usually limited to one or two seats at most. And just take a step and think about it, for every leg in the round the world journey there must be classic awards available. If one sector doesn't have availability you'll either need to skip that sector and pay out of pocket (not recommended) or do a positioning flight to get there. Another key thing is that classic award availability, especially to Europe has been a challenge to put it mildly. The usual suspects of Qatar and Emirates are simply not providing a ton of award availability there which leaves Qantas and BA which historically have been pretty tight when it comes to awards to Europe.

If I was you I would engage with a service to help you find these award flights. It's gonna take a lot of research to find routings that line up with the classic award availability and that work for you. I know for myself, having booked an Aeroplan round the world award ticket last year it took several straight days of searching just to find a routing that would close the loop so to speak. I ended up having to fly into Zurich to find any award availability from Australia to Europe.

PS is still low in the pecking order.
Considering that there are 5 other tiers above, CL/WP/P1/SG the PS.
Chairmans Lounge are the highest, and they would get first go at any seats in F or J, then WP, Platinum, and then Platinum 1, then SG ie, Gold.
Lots of points would not help, if you were higher up their (QF's) tier/status, you will get better odds at seats when QF releases them.
Not that I have an ideal answer.
On Aust dom flights, upgrades can be yours, if you jump in fast enough, and if there are U class, ie, seats in J business that QF is happy to have points used to pay for them.
Trips to the UK will be in high demand, as QF has the market on it.
Wait for what the others say tho.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on the assessment of Silver status. Yes, Silver isn't the most amazing status in terms of benefits but there are some key benefits of being OneWorld Ruby (Qantas Silver) such as business class check-in, access to preferred seating and priority standby and waitlists. You are right that there are statuses that provide not only more benefits (i.e. Qantas First Class lounge as a Platinum) but also higher priority when it comes to things like upgrades and award booking (i.e. Gold's ability to book 353 days out a classic award), but there is still value in being Silver.

And the thing about Silver is it doesn't take much to get there, particularly if you are a Points Club member. A return Sydney to London Heathrow business award will net you 224 status credits. Well the requirement for earning Silver is what? 300? So not a huge leap to book a couple of award tickets to get there. Heck, they could book two trips: Sydney to London and Sydney to New York as Business classic awards and that would earn them a total of 448 status credits, putting them into contention for Qantas Gold.

-RooFlyer88

 

[Mr H]

And the thing about Silver is it doesn't take much to get there, particularly if you are a Points Club member. A return Sydney to London Heathrow business award will net you 224 status credits.

Yeah but - that’s only applies if you get QF award flights? And given that they are seldom available to NBs…

 

[kangarooflyer88]

Yeah but - that’s only applies if you get QF award flights? And given that they are seldom available to NBs…

That applies if you are flying on a QF marketed classic award yes. If you use points + pray (not recommended but possible) you'd earn status credits based on the fare type booked. As for long haul QF classic business award flights being unavailable to Bronze members, I respectfully have to disagree with you here. A quick search on Seats.aero shows you a number of long-haul QF classic awards available for booking:

 

[RichardMEL]

PS is still low in the pecking order.
Considering that there are 5 other tiers above, CL/WP/P1/SG the PS.
Chairmans Lounge are the highest, and they would get first go at any seats in F or J, then WP, Platinum, and then Platinum 1, then SG ie, Gold.

Point of order (literally ). Platinum One is well ahead of Platinum (in terms of QF reward seat availability and release). You should know this.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I would also keep an eye out for the next major release/drop of awards. Rumoured for October? You gotta be quick, but I coupled my last OWA together on the day of the release… even after the initial rush.

Just be ready to pounce, and book the long hauls first… AU to Europe, and Usa back to AU. You can add the transatlantic and domestic connection in USA and europe at a later time.

 

[kangarooflyer88]

I would also keep an eye out for the next major release/drop of awards. Rumoured for October? You gotta be quick, but I coupled my last OWA together on the day of the release… even after the initial rush.

Just be ready to pounce, and book the long hauls first… AU to Europe, and Usa back to AU. You can add the transatlantic and domestic connection in USA and europe at a later time.

Are you suggesting that they book a simple multi-city AU to Europe, USA to AU on the QF website as soon as the availability lands, then call up QFF to add the remaining sectors and turn it into a OneWorld Award? If so, they will likely have to pay a fee of 5,000 QFF points per passenger. Then again, it may make sense to have the peace of mind that the major segments on QF have been secured for your whole family.

 

[Mr H]

Are you suggesting that they book a simple multi-city AU to Europe, USA to AU on the QF website as soon as the availability lands, then call up QFF to add the remaining sectors and turn it into a OneWorld Award? If so, they will likely have to pay a fee of 5,000 QFF points per passenger. Then again, it may make sense to have the peace of mind that the major segments on QF have been secured for your whole family.

Most of us who have done OWAs will have had to make more than one addition/change along the way. It's just not realistic to wait until all your flights have been released before booking as most of them will have disappeared by the time the final piece of the puzzle is available.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Are you suggesting that they book a simple multi-city AU to Europe, USA to AU on the QF website as soon as the availability lands, then call up QFF to add the remaining sectors and turn it into a OneWorld Award? If so, they will likely have to pay a fee of 5,000 QFF points per passenger. Then again, it may make sense to have the peace of mind that the major segments on QF have been secured for your whole family.

Yes. When qantas did the last drop there was a feeding frenzy. Flights were disappearing fast.

The QF multi city tool also doesn’t handle more than 5 sectors well, often returning an error if you try to book the full 6.

Additionally you can’t book more than 2 flights on the one day, as it often returns an error.

My advice is to keep it simple. If they release seats just grab the Qantas sectors, to europe, and back home from the usa (of v.v.).

Then there’s plenty of time to work out where else in Europe you might want to go, or where else in the states. Those sectors are usually pretty open. 5000 point change fee, but with 2.5 million points that won’t be an issue. Securing the bones of the ticket is more important.

 

[ShelleyB]

I'd just like to add that the OP didn't specify that they definitely want Europe and/or the US in their itinerary (unless I missed it!) and the Classic RTW fare doesn't actually specify that you must go "around the world". As long as you stay under mileage, segment and stopover limits you can go where you like and backtrack if you want. Just noting for the benefit of the OP, who may not be aware. That said, totally support the recommendation to book the long haul segments as soon as they are available. On the few occasions multiple seats become available on desired flights they go very quickly.

 

[kangarooflyer88]

The other point that needs raising here is they must find classic awards with OneWorld airlines like Qantas, FinnAir, Japan Air, AA, BA, Malaysian and Sri Lankan to name but a few. In other words, no Emirates, KLM, Air France or even JetStar can appear on the itinerary

 

[stopthecap]

If you do not need to do RTW you can do manual segment searches. I have completed all my bookings in J using rewards

HKG to ROME with Finnair, BKK to Rome with Finnair, ROME to BKK with Royal Jordanian. There was alot of seats flying out of Taipei flying the Chinese airlines a few months ago. With 2 seats it was very difficult to find availability compared to Single.