Hi all
Looking to use Qantas points to fly one way Sydney to London via Doha using Qatar airways.
Want to fly out end of August 2020.
Have played around on Qantas website and see Qatar flights for points, but not always consistent availability. Any tips from anyone who has booked a business reward on this route? Time of day for rewards to be available or days in advance to check? I think Qatar offer reward flights quite far into the future, possibly further in advance than Qantas.
Planning to fly home Amsterdam to Sydney using velocity points for business rewards on Etihad. Seems to be a bit easier to book (reward flights Mon to Thurs only it seems) but will keep checking as the dates I want to book get closer (end Sept 2020).
First, you’re doing everything right – you’re researching availability before the flights become available, and you’re coming up with a strategy for grabbing the flights you want. One suggestion I would make is that you check another Oneworld airline’s website for availability (I would suggest British Airways, or Qatar’s own website), just in case Qantas isn’t listing everything that’s available.
Second, what you say about sporadic availability is totally unsurprising. Remember that Sydney-London is an extremely popular route. Be surprised when availability is there, rather than when it’s not! As a general rule, you’ll find a tiny bit more availability from Amsterdam than from London. Of course, you could do it the other way around as well if availability were better (ie. Etihad to London and then Qatar from Amsterdam).
This article will tell you when reward seats become available. I’m afraid I can’t help you with the time of day, but maybe another member will be able to help. Otherwise it’s just a case of logging on a couple of times per day until you’ve narrowed down the time.
Remember that you might need to be flexible – with dates, departure points, and destinations. The price to pay for using FF points is that we might not get exactly our first-choice flights.
Thanks! Yes we have discussed the possibility of either a) flying out of a smaller Australian city, or b) flying into a different European city. It’s our plan B if we can’t find rewards direct to LHR.
The thing i have noticed with Qatar, is that they seem to release business rewards for Sydney to Doha 361 days in advance, but they don’t release the Doha to LHR route until the next day, I assume because technically the Doha to LHR flight takes place a day later (so 362 days in advance). This means there is a risk of the Sydney to Doha reward flight being taken by someone else while I wait for the second leg to LHR to become available.
We’re not wed to flying Qatar airlines so i know there are other options, but we do like the idea of the Qatar flights and their award winning business class! I guess I will just have to fiddle around a lot and hope for the best, otherwise try other airlines as they open up until something works out.
There seems to be a lot of reward availability in business for China Eastern airlines, and they have upgraded their business class product, but still don’t seem to get amazing reviews, so maybe will keep that as a backup. I think our next best options are Emirates, Qantas and Cathay Pacific.
Hi Panda1,
I recently finalised a Oneworld Classic Reward booking that included a few QR flights including a long one from ADL to DOH in Q Suites! From my searching (on QF and BA sites mainly) it appears that availability is generally better out of Adelaide that Sydney or Melbourne if you’re happy to either pay or redeem points for the connection to ADL.
Regarding seat release, I read somewhere that Qatar releases seats 361 days out which means for example seats for 28/8/2020 would release on 2/9/2019. Regarding the time of day I was (and still am) looking for availability on an AA flight and by checking availability over a few days worked out that their seats became available at 3:00 pm Melbourne time each day. This makes sense as it would be midnight in Dallas-Fort Worth - AA’s home base. So on that basis I would start by checking what the local time is when the day ticks over in Doha time. Actually just checking now I found that midnight in Doha is 7.00 am in Melbourne. So check availability shortly after 7:00 am 361 days out is the way to go.
Another trick to use on the Qantas website:
When entering flight dates the Qantas site won’t let you enter a date more than 353 days ahead (which seems to be the Qantas limit) however you can enter a date that meets the Qantas requirement and tick the Dates Flexible box, the resulting calendar display will show availability beyond the Qantas limit up to the date limit of the partner airline (Qatar in this case)
Give it a go.
Hi Adenda!
Sounds like you have done very similar research to me. I have come to the same conclusion. Using the “flexible with dates” option to get 361 days in advance I have been tracking Sydney to London via Doha. I’ve worked out when it becomes available each day as well, as the last 4 days if I jump on at that time, the flights have been available. A380 Sydney to Doha and then a350 q suites Doha to London. I haven’t seen any reward seats for the Q suite flight out of Sydney which is a shame but I’m sure the a380 is still great!
Adelaide is our backup if we can’t get flights out of Sydney on the day we want.
I’ll continue tracking it for the next 3 weeks or so until our dates come up and hopefully it will all work out!
Thanks so much for your reply
You could also try departing from DPS, CGK, SIN or KUL as there seems to be more availability from those ports. Being in Perth we only have a limited number of OW airlines to use here, so to us SIN is a good place to start and currently have two trips booked out of there in late September to LHR and another in March 2020.
