Did you know that you can fly around the world with Qantas points using a Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward ticket (also known as the Qantas Oneworld Award)?

For just 132,400 Qantas points for a Qantas Oneworld Award in Economy Class, or 318,000 points in Business Class, this is truly one of the best Qantas Frequent Flyer redemptions! Our Qantas Oneworld Award mega guide will show you how to book one…

What is a Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward?

First things first – what exactly is a “Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward”? Essentially, it’s a multi-city Classic Reward booking on steroids that lets you fly around the world for as little as 132,400 Qantas points!

A simple return Economy booking from Australia to London normally costs between 110,400-132,400 Qantas points. For only slightly more or even the same amount of points, you can travel up to 35,000 miles on Oneworld airlines with up to five stopovers anywhere in the world! So, a Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward is an excellent – actually, probably the best – way to redeem Qantas points.

Please note that the Oneworld Classic Flight Reward, which is booked using Qantas Frequent Flyer points, is different to the Oneworld Explorer round-the-world airfare that can be booked using money.

Where can I travel to?

You can easily use a Oneworld Classic Flight Reward to fly around the world with Qantas points, but this is not a requirement. Almost any combination of flights is possible, as long as your itinerary meets the criteria set out in section 14.4 of the Qantas Frequent Flyer terms & conditions:

Here’s what all of that means in plain English…

Oneworld Classic Flight Reward routing requirements

These are the basic criteria for any Oneworld Classic Flight Reward itinerary:

• Up to 5 stopovers
• Up to 35,000 total miles flown
• Up to 16 total flight sectors (maximum 10 if you want to book on the Qantas website)

There are a few other rules that you also need to follow:

• Maximum of 1 stopover (over 24 hours) and two transits (up to 24 hours) per city
• You cannot stop over in the country where you start your trip mid-way through the itinerary (only at the start or end)
• Surface sectors are allowed, and count as one stopover, but the distance between the two airports counts towards your total limit. Although there is no published limit, Qantas seems to allow up to 2 surface sectors per itinerary.

The only other condition is that your itinerary must include travel on at least two Oneworld member airlines other than Qantas. You can also fly Qantas, but you cannot include any airlines that are not Oneworld members in your itinerary. For example, you can’t include Jetstar, Emirates, LATAM Airlines or Fiji Airways flights because these are not Oneworld airlines.

The following airlines are members of the Oneworld alliance, and may be used as part of any Qantas Oneworld Award booking:

As you can see, the Oneworld Award isn’t just great value. It also offers unbeatable flexibility with countless possible itineraries!

Examples of Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward itineraries

To give you some inspiration, here is one possible Oneworld Award round-the-world itinerary commencing in Sydney. This journey includes travel on Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, British Airways, American Airlines and Qantas:

Remember, you don’t necessarily have to fly around the world with the Oneworld Classic Flight Reward!

You can’t return to the country where you started mid-trip. But you could (as an example) add a long stopover mid-trip in a nearby country like New Zealand, Indonesia or Singapore. Then, buy a separate return ticket from there back to your home in Australia. When you’re ready to pick up the second half of your Oneworld Award, simply return to where you left off.

Using this trick, you could book a Oneworld Classic Flight Reward that includes flights from Australia to Asia and Europe, then another trip to North America. This is possible, provided your Oneworld Award doesn’t touch Australia mid-trip and your total mileage doesn’t exceed 35,000 miles.

Here’s one example that utilises an extended stopover in Auckland and separate positioning flights from New Zealand to/from Australia. Commencing in Brisbane, this Oneworld Award booking includes travel on Qantas, Finnair, Cathay Pacific and American Airlines:

A note on using Qatar Airways

Although Qatar Airways is part of the Oneworld alliance, the Qatari airline only offers limited reward seats to Qantas Frequent Flyer members. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to include Qatar Airways flights as part of a Oneworld Classic Flight Reward itinerary.

At the moment, Qatar Airways flights in Economy are only available to book within 28 days of departure. Qatar Airways only releases reward seats in Business or First Class to Qantas Frequent Flyer members within 3 days of departure. This is subject to change.

How much does a Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward cost?

The number of points required is determined by the total mileage of your itinerary and the highest class of travel flown. There are ten different “mileage zones”, ranging from 1,200 to the maximum 35,000 miles. An Economy ticket will cost 20,000 points for a trip up to 1,200 miles or 132,400 points for 35,000 miles.

Here is the Oneworld Classic Flight Reward table from the Qantas website:

The best value is in Zone 10, for trips up to 35,000 miles in total distance.

Points required for travel up to the maximum of 35,000 miles

• Economy: 132,400 Qantas points
• Premium Economy: 249,600 Qantas points
• Business: 318,000 Qantas points
• First: 455,000 Qantas points

Other cash charges

In addition to the Qantas points, you will also need to pay a cash component to cover taxes, fees and airline carrier charges. This amount will vary depending on the airlines used, the exact routing, exchange rates and a range of other factors.

You can reduce the amount of taxes and charges payable by flying with Oneworld airlines with low or no fuel and carrier surcharges. Oneworld airlines with lower surcharges include Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, SriLankan Airlines, Iberia and Japan Airlines.

Where possible, try to avoid using airlines with high fuel and carrier surcharges such as British Airways, Qatar Airways and Royal Jordanian.

If you’re travelling to Europe, you can also reduce the taxes payable by avoiding the UK’s Air Passenger Duty.

As a very rough guide, the tax component is often around $1,000-$2,000 per passenger – although this may be considerably more or less, depending on your itinerary.

Planning your trip

The first step to planning your Qantas Oneworld Award is deciding which cities you would like to visit. Remember, you can have up to five stopovers. This doesn’t include transit stops of under 24 hours, which do not count towards your limit of five stopovers!

Remember, you can also use up to two “surface sectors”. If you fly into city A, make your own way to city B (e.g. by train), and then fly out of city B, it only counts as a single stopover. So you can actually get to visit more than five cities!

You will need to ensure that your entire trip does not exceed 35,000 miles. To calculate the number of miles being flown, simply plug your itinerary into an online mapping tool such as Great Circle Mapper. (Familiarising yourself with IATA airport codes will help with this!)

Finding Oneworld award availability

As you’ll be redeeming frequent flyer points to book this trip, you’ll also need to ensure there is award availability on your chosen flights.

You can use a Oneworld Classic Flight Reward to fly to any airport served by a Oneworld airline. But the main limitation is often finding suitable award availability. This is especially the case if you’re flying in a premium cabin like Business or First Class.

Admittedly, travelling to South America with Oneworld alliance airlines can be difficult since LATAM Airlines, previously the only Oneworld member based in the continent, left Oneworld in 2020. You can still fly to/from South America with British Airways, Iberia, American Airlines, Royal Air Maroc, Qantas or Qatar Airways. But there are very few Oneworld flights available within South America – other than the occasional fifth-freedom flight.

Once you’ve decided where you would like to fly, search for award availability on Oneworld airlines between each of your desired stopover cities. You can use the Qantas website, Japan Airlines website, British Airways website or American Airlines website to find Oneworld award availability. Or, use a tool such as Seats.aero to speed up your search.

You may need to make changes to your itinerary if there is no Oneworld award availability on your preferred routes.

Be sure to include at least two Oneworld carriers other than Qantas in your booking. While you are free to select any Oneworld carrier, in reality your itinerary may well determine which airlines you will be using. So this is really an iterative process with the first step.

The easiest way to determine which Oneworld airlines fly between different cities is to use a booking site like FlightConnections.com, with the filter set to Oneworld airlines. The Wikipedia pages for most airports also contain a list of all the airlines flying there.

How to book a Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward [detailed instructions]

In practice, successfully booking a Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward using Qantas points can be quite a challenge. It can be especially difficult if you have to deal with the Qantas call centre.

If you can, try to book on the Qantas website. This also saves you the $77 fee for booking through the call centre!

How to book on the Qantas website

You should be able to book relatively simple Oneworld Classic Flight Reward itineraries on the Qantas website. You would need to log in to your Qantas Frequent Flyer account and use the Qantas multi-city booking tool. Ensure that you select “Use Points – Classic Flight Rewards only” at the top of this page when doing your search.

Do not use the “Round the World” booking tool! That website is for booking paid Oneworld Explorer round-the-world tickets, which is a completely different product with different rules.

For the purposes of this example, let’s say we wanted to book the following itinerary in Economy Class, commencing in Melbourne:

Using this example, your multi-city search should look something like this:

You’ll then need to go through and select each flight segment one by one.

Once you’ve selected your preferred flight for the first leg, go to the bottom of the page and click “Continue”. You can then select flights for the next leg:

If you make a mistake or get an error message, and you need to go back to the search page, be prepared to start all over again!

If your itinerary meets the Oneworld Classic Flight Reward rules, the number of Qantas points payable will “max out” at the Oneworld Classic Flight Reward price level. For an Economy booking, for example, that’s 132,400 points per passenger.

All going well, after selecting all flights you’ll be able to check your itinerary. If you have enough Qantas points in your account to make the booking, you’ll also be able to see the taxes & carrier charges payable.

To see a breakdown of the taxes, click on “Flight amount breakdown”. Airline-imposed carrier and fuel surcharges are listed under “Air transportation charges”. The genuine third-party taxes and fees are listed below this.

If you’re ready to book, click “continue”. At this point, the website may crash and/or give you an error message. But if you can make it as far as the page that asks for your credit card details, you should be able to successfully complete your booking online.

You will need to pay for the taxes and carrier charges by credit card. Note that Qantas adds a card payment surcharge for this.

Some Oneworld Award itineraries can’t be booked online

The Qantas website often throws up an error message before you get to the payment page. If this happens, you could try making minor changes to your itinerary so that the Qantas website accepts your booking.

As long as your itinerary meets the following criteria, you should generally be able to book using the multi-city tool on the Qantas website:

• The itinerary satisfies all Oneworld Classic Flight Reward routing rules
• You are searching for a maximum of six flight segments
• Your itinerary does not contain more than 2 surface sectors (excluding changing airports in the same city)
• The first flight does not commence in a country that the Qantas website does not support
• Your itinerary does not include any destinations in Botswana, Mozambique, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or various other countries not recognised by the multi-city tool.
• You are not commencing any segments in Vientiane, Phnom Penh or Kota Kinabalu. However, you can end a segment here and then use a surface sector to commence the next segment somewhere else.
• There are not more than 10 flights in total in your booking.

If your itinerary doesn’t meet the above criteria, consider making changes to your booking so that it does. You should then be able to book online. See our guide to troubleshooting Qantas website error codes for more information.

What to do if you can’t book on the Qantas website

If you’re still unable to book online, or you wish to travel to a destination/s which is not supported by the Qantas website, you’ll have to call Qantas on 13 13 13 (from within Australia). Do not attempt to book via social media, SMS or online chat. This generally ends in tears if you’re trying to book something complicated!

A Qantas “Award Assistance Fee” of $77 or 7,700 points per passenger applies for Qantas Classic Flight Reward bookings made via the contact centre.

Depending on your Qantas Frequent Flyer status, you could wait anywhere from one minute to several hours to speak to somebody at the call centre. In general, calling just after 7am AEDT seems to result in the shortest wait times. (If there is a long wait time, you might be offered a call-back.)

Once you get through to the call centre, state that you wish to book a “Oneworld Classic Flight Reward”. Be prepared to read out the origin, destination, date and flight number of every flight on the itinerary in chronological order.

If you get a good call centre consultant, they should be able to book this for you without any problems.

However, not everyone at the Qantas call centres is fully trained on these bookings. They may tell you that flights are unavailable, even if this is not true. Some agents may also misinterpret the award routing rules or even hang up on you!

You may need to call a few times to speak to the right person. But if you persevere, you’ll most likely be successful in the end.

Making changes to Oneworld Award bookings

It is technically possible to change or cancel Qantas award bookings, including adding segments to existing bookings. This is a handy feature if all you wish to lock in the first flights of the booking, but the airlines have not yet released seats on later flights.

Changes cost 5,000 Qantas points per passenger each time you request a change/s. You can also cancel for a full refund of the points and taxes, for a penalty of 6,000 Qantas points. (There may also be additional fees for changing or cancelling bookings via the Qantas call centre, however these are waived for award bookings in Business and First Class.)

If the change results in a difference in points or taxes, you will either need to pay or be refunded the difference.

Unfortunately, changes to Oneworld Classic Flight Reward bookings can only be made over the phone with Qantas. If you have Platinum or Platinum One status, and can get through to somebody at Qantas’ excellent Hobart call centre, this shouldn’t be a problem. But most people are currently being transferred to one of the outsourced call centres based overseas. We’ve seen cases where overseas call centre staff were so poorly trained that they accidentally cancelled customers’ entire bookings after they called to request a change.

If you need to make a change to a Qantas Classic Reward booking, and you can’t get through to either the Hobart or Auckland call centre, AFF members advise to have your booking open on the Qantas website. Before ending your call, refresh the itinerary on the Qantas website. Make sure to check that there are no nasty surprises in your booking! Once the call has ended, if an agent has mistakenly cancelled one or more of your flights, it might not be possible to get the flight/s reinstated.

Ensure your booking gets ticketed

After making your booking – or if there is a significant change to your booking – Qantas must issue you with a ticket number starting with “081”. If you don’t receive a ticket number, you may wish to follow up by emailing Qantas’ Reward Ticketing Escalations team.

Without a valid ticket, you unfortunately won’t be able to fly. If in doubt, you can check for your ticket number by managing your booking on the Royal Jordanian Airlines website.

Where to get help with booking a Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward

If you’d like help with planning and booking your own Qantas Oneworld Award, you’re in luck!

The Australian Frequent Flyer (AFF) forum has a dedicated thread for helping with Oneworld Award planning. Here you’ll find tons of information and can read about others experiences. Other AFF members will also be happy to answer your questions.

You can also get in touch with our Frequent Flyer Concierge, which offers expert help with using your points for a fee.

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