US and Spain - first half of 2015

[amthog]

Not sure if this is the right forum as the request may not be specific enough. Let me know if I should shift to another forum.


I have a friend who is trying to decide in the best way to do a trip.
She has some dates/durations that definitely have to be met but also some flexibility.
She would be looking for a relatively cost-effective Y itinerary, but not necessarily down at the level of trying to use LCA's.

I thought I might see if the AFFer's had any advice.

The fixed items are:

- Needs visit US (St. Louis) and has to spend at least 6-8 weeks in a contiguous block of time at some point in the trip.
- Free to travel after Jan 9 2015, needs to be back in Oz (BNE) by end of July 2015.
- Wants to spend 12 days in Spain starting around the last week of April.(this date can shift a bit but relatively fixed)
- The time in Spain can be at the beginning of the trip or the end or even nested within a longer trip to the US.



She has:
No status.
112,000 QFF on Qantas.
116,000 on VA.
Is prepared to churn a credit card or two to bump these totals up if an award booking is the way to go.
She can do paid or points+pay option if this is a better strategy.
Can book using US and/or Oz credit cards and billing addresses as needed.


LONE4 seemed like a possibility but I would be concerned about insufficient lead time impacting seat availability even if the trip commenced with Spain in April.
I am not that familiar with if/how the VA points could be useful.
Lead time might mean that any redemption based strategy is not a good idea ? e.g. purchase points/miles with any of the current bonus offers.

I have had luck in the past at finding extraordinarily good value one way multi-city itineraries that can be booked separately as a "nested" trip within a more traditional simple return ticket itinerary, and US based bookings are almost always at an effective discount compared to other markets. (e.g. once got MRS-MUC-ORD-MCO-IAD-CDG for $US 700)

Anyway just wondered if anyone had any suggestions/thoughts even if just in terms of best options to consider ?

 

[browski]

Amthog, Can you give a guide as to what you believe to be a "cost-effective" fare?
Also your post is too vague. Just re-post it and be very specific with dates and destination.
And don't bother with Points. Just find the best revenue fare and then at the very end see if any of the sectors can be substituted with an award redemption; but don't budget for that eventuality.

 

[Mattg]

I would personally book a RTW ticket in this instance.

You seem to have identified most of the options. The dates are very broad, which is good as flexibility will mean you are potentially able to find a much better deal.

It would be ideal if your friend could quickly top up their points account by picking up a credit card sign-up bonus, however sometimes these take months for the points to come through. If they could get 140,000 points in their Qantas account, they could book a RTW oneworld award ticket. This enables you to travel up to 35,000 miles with up to 5 stopovers and 16 total segments. However the later you try to book, the less likely you are to find good seats (or seats at all!). So booking this just a month or two out is not ideal, although could be possible. If they went down this path, there would also be the potential to stopover in 3 more cities along the way - anywhere in the world, as long as the oneworld award criteria are met...

Failing that, the best option for a simple itinerary like Brisbane - St Louis - Spain - Brisbane would almost certainly be a multi-city booking (rather than a full-on RTW ticket - unless you wanted to add more stops of course, in which case I would recommend that!). With Qantas, you'd probably be looking at around $3500 depending on exact dates and destinations. It may even be possible to get it for around $3000.

You could also just book a series of one-way flights: BNE-STL, STL-MAD/BCN & BCN/MAD-BNE. This may or may not be cheaper. You would need to look on somewhere like Skyscanner or ITA Matrix to work out what kind of prices you would be up for and with which airlines.

A final option would be to book a return flight BNE-STL with Qantas during the current sale, if you can, then to book a separate return trip STL-BCN/MAD as well. More flying and backtracking, however this might be possible for around $2500 to $3000.

I got the impression you were just after general advice. If you want help more specifically with finding the cheapest flights for a more specific time frame let me know.

 

[amthog]

Hi,
Thanks for the feedback.
As I suspected, given the rather broad parameters I probably should have posted in a more general forum.

FYI, I have given her a crash course on researching flight availability and she has put together some itineraries and also checked them for availability as LONE4 award booking.
I told her to expect some sticker shock on taxes/fees and to calculate whether point spend is worth the price reduction.

Somewhat to my surprise she is not having too many problems with availability.
I think this must be because just doing a Y trip and single pax. The really tough availability problems are for J/F, especially paired, especially direct trans-Pacific, QF metal etc.
Once again thanks for the general advice.

cheers

 

[admin]

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