Round the world with Qantas FF points

[gilly]

I hope I'm not doubling up on threads already running in this forum but from all that I've found they are out of date and before the change to the Qantas Any Seat rewards program that currently runs.

I currently have 125 000 points and should easily obtain at least 140 000 before the end of the year thanks to my employment.
I recently realised that rather than redeeming these points for just a return trip to London that I could almost fly around the world with various stopovers.

I have a rough plan: Start from Perth in January next year, fly to New Zealand and stop off for a while, fly to LA or possibly New York and from NY I can see Canada and stay for a while, then fly on to London as a base to see Europe before flying on to Bangkok and seeing some countries from there. My points may not stretch quite as far as getting me home but there are some very cheap flights to Perth from there, such as Air Asia.

Can someone who knows the workings and has redeemed FF points please let me know if I am being realistic?
I would like to use this as an 'around the world' backpacking holiday and would like to explore and work in some of these places, therefore I would prefer not to set myself exact time restrictions.
For booking this using the Any Seat rewards could I just book my next leg of the flight when I feel like moving on to another continent or would it be an itinerary I would have to pre-book at the start and stick to?

Also, what kind of costs would I incur in taxes and charges that you pay on top of your FF points for a trip like this?

Any comments on these plans would be very much appreciated thanks!

 

[JohnK]

I don't know too much about Anyseat awards but I think you don't have enough points to get very far as these are generally require more QFF points than regular awards. You could try booking each sector separately on regular awards at the last minute but there is no guarantee that the availability will be there. Also if your points only take you say to JFK it would be very expensive purchasing one-way airfares to eventually return to Australia.

A Oneworld award for 140,000 QFF points (142,500 QFF points if you use the QF service centre) could suit as long as you locked down the dates. You can change dates of sectors not yet flown but these would require a ticket re-issue fee (I think 5,000 QFF points each time) and a re-calculation of taxes for all sectors including sectors already flown.

A sample routing like PER-SYD-AKL-LAX-JFK-YYZ-LHR-BKK-SYD-PER is 28,947 miles according to Great Circle Mapper. You can even add a few more destinations as you can fly up to 35,000 miles, 16 sectors and 5 stopovers. Your biggest hurdle would be availability at the times you want to travel and BKK is not the easiest city to get an award to/from. When you start planning you may want to consider transitting into SIN or HKG and get a cheap flight to BKK from there.

Have a play around with the award booking engine to get an indication of what is available and possible routings. For taxes and surcharges you should budget on somewhere between $800-$1,100. My next Oneworld award booked in March/April had taxes and surcharges of $843.

 

[serfty]

This thread should go a long way to explaining the "mechanics" of this award:

http://www.frequentflyer.com.au/com...lyer-program/140-000-pts-rtw-award-16582.html

Once you digest that, all should be pretty straight forward (other than finding availability).

Note, be prepared to actually have to spend 142,500 points.

 

[philflyer]

Just last week I used points to purchase 2 RTW trip tickets with QF paying just 140,000 points. It was booked over the phone with Qantas and was allowed to pay $50 rather than the 5000 points.

However any changes after ticketing was done was a cost of 2500 points per person. No option for paying cash this time.

Please do note that every time you land and staying over in a place is classed as one of the 5 stops. However it seems you can have plenty of open jaws during the trip. This is my plan:

Melbourne to Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires to New York
New York to Berlin
Barcelona to Palermo
Rome to Bangkok
Bangkok to Melbourne

So you can see I have 2 open jaws in my trip plan where I will make my own way, allowing me to squeeze in more destinations.

I checked on the OneWorld website first to see where I could travel to before calling Qantas to make the booking.

Good luck! RTW trips are the best!

 

[Warks]

I assume that was 140 000 points each philflyer?

 

[philflyer]

Yes. Sorry, that is 140 000 points for each person.

You can use the Qantas website Award Booking tool to work out how many points are needed to get around by plugging in your destinations. But I found it pretty poor for actually booking the trip. The tool:
- times out after a very short period
- does not look at availability all One World airlines (like Cathay)
- includes carriers which are not One World carriers (like Jetstar) and happily charge extra points for those.

 

[gilly]

Thanks very much for your help everyone!!

The One World Round the World trip looks like the way to go. Would I be right in saying my Qantas Gold membership would get me some benefits on all the One World flights around the world too?

It looks like I have to do some playing around with calculations on the Qantas site, wait until I have an extra 15000 points under my belt and then attempt to snare the award seats.

Would you say this is probably one of the best value ways of spending your points even though you would still pay approx. $1000 taxes?

 

[stryker]

Thanks very much for your help everyone!!

The One World Round the World trip looks like the way to go. Would I be right in saying my Qantas Gold membership would get me some benefits on all the One World flights around the world too?

It looks like I have to do some playing around with calculations on the Qantas site, wait until I have an extra 15000 points under my belt and then attempt to snare the award seats.

Would you say this is probably one of the best value ways of spending your points even though you would still pay approx. $1000 taxes?

Hi Gilly, that sounds like a good strategy, but it's a pity that you're not *Gold with the same number of miles.

I recently booked HNL-ORD-LHR-ATH-LHR-IAD-SFO-HNL for 50,000 miles with UA.

You really should consider changing your allegiance.

Anyways, hope it all works out well for you.

 

[Evan]

Hi Gilly, that sounds like a good strategy, but it's a pity that you're not *Gold with the same number of miles.

I recently booked HNL-ORD-LHR-ATH-LHR-IAD-SFO-HNL for 50,000 miles with UA.

You really should consider changing your allegiance.

Anyways, hope it all works out well for you.

:shock: And considering the double EQM's etc and the wonderful ability to FD on lots of routes when using .bomb i am almost tempted myself
You could just about get the 50k miles for less that the ticket would cost by flying some MR's

 

[JohnK]

The One World Round the World trip looks like the way to go. Would I be right in saying my Qantas Gold membership would get me some benefits on all the One World flights around the world too?

As a Gold, Oneworld Sapphire, you would have lounge access before all your Oneworld flights, priority check-in, preferred seating, priority luggage tags etc.

Would you say this is probably one of the best value ways of spending your points even though you would still pay approx. $1000 taxes?

In my opinion a Oneworld award provides the best value for QFF points.

 

[Skyring]

I booked a couple of RTWs on points a couple of months ago for travel in June/July. I tried doing it online - as I've done in the past - but this time around it jacked up on me and I was pretty much forced to book over the phone. This was a pretty straightforward process and together the consultant and I worked out a reasonable itinerary.

I had enough for RTW in business, but I couldn't find enough availability online to hook up the legs in a reasonable amount of travel time, and this way I get to take my 23YO daughter with me, who loves flying and travel and lounges and all that cough as much as I do.

There are some limitations in the rules, but by being creative I managed to get seven stopovers in - trains from London to Edinburgh and Paris. And some decent Flounge time in Sydney and Hong Kong.

This penultimate sectors are going to be a bit of a drain. Sixteen hours JFK-HKG, eight hour stopover, then red-eye to Sydney, where I'll meet my wife and son to make a family trip up to Rockhampton for a week to recharge the batteries after the holiday.

All travel on points.

 

[pn1]

Further to my posting yesterday and thanks to those who responded, I booked a 140,000 point itinerary today after calling the Qantas FF centre to clarify a couple of points.

Five stopovers maximum.
Sixteen sectors maximum
Transit stops not to exceed 24 hours.

So for $526.68 charges and taxes I have a three week tour

Melbourne-Perth-Sydney-Tokyo-Helsinki-Vienna
Vienna-London-Madrid-Tenerife
Tenerife-Madrid-Frankfurt
Frankfurt-Helsinki-Tokyo
Tokyo-Sydney-Melbourne

The diversion via Perth was a bonus. I get to celebrate a 70th birthday in Vienna and a 60th birthday in Sydney during my transit stop on the way home.

The 140,000 ticket is a continuous journey not a return trip.

Everything went fine for me except for a bug in the Qantas database just as I was about to hit the "review" button on their internet site. I called them and they accepted that the problem was at their end and did the booking for me over the phone without charging my the additional 2,500 points.

I am time and budget constrained but feel I have done pretty well for a trip booked only weeks in advance.

Paul in Melbourne

 

[tuapekastar]

Further to my posting yesterday and thanks to those who responded, I booked a 140,000 point itinerary today after calling the Qantas FF centre to clarify a couple of points.

Five stopovers maximum.
Sixteen sectors maximum
Transit stops not to exceed 24 hours.

So for $526.68 charges and taxes I have a three week tour

Melbourne-Perth-Sydney-Tokyo-Helsinki-Vienna
Vienna-London-Madrid-Tenerife
Tenerife-Madrid-Frankfurt
Frankfurt-Helsinki-Tokyo
Tokyo-Sydney-Melbourne

The diversion via Perth was a bonus. I get to celebrate a 70th birthday in Vienna and a 60th birthday in Sydney during my transit stop on the way home.

The 140,000 ticket is a continuous journey not a return trip.

Everything went fine for me except for a bug in the Qantas database just as I was about to hit the "review" button on their internet site. I called them and they accepted that the problem was at their end and did the booking for me over the phone without charging my the additional 2,500 points.

I am time and budget constrained but feel I have done pretty well for a trip booked only weeks in advance.

Paul in Melbourne

Looks like an excellent trip - do enjoy. And I wish I could lose 10 years off my age in one short trip.

 

[JohnK]

So for $526.68 charges and taxes I have a three week tour

Not bad. Those taxes and surcharges are quite low.

Everything went fine for me except for a bug in the Qantas database just as I was about to hit the "review" button on their internet site. I called them and they accepted that the problem was at their end and did the booking for me over the phone without charging my the additional 2,500 points.

This is a known glitch in the online award booking engine for at least 2 years that Qantas has not bothered to fix. Once the itinerary goes over 10-12 sectors it is hard to get it to go to the review page and book the itinerary.

 

[philflyer]

Well done Paul! It looks like a great trip!

After I booked my reward RTW trip recently I was then able to call up Qantas and get certain seats assigned (using a combination of SeatGuru.com and CheckMyTrip.com to find best and vacant seats). I have silver status, not sure if that option is available to everyone. Also some airlines could not give assigned seats like British Airways.

Have a good trip!

 

[serfty]

... The 140,000 ticket is a continuous journey not a return trip. ...

With a QFF oneworld award, if you do not complete your travel at the same place you originated, the distance between your origin and the final destination will be taken into account for total distance and point cost - so in effect it IS a return trip.