For starters, you’re probably not doing anything necessarily wrong. Europe is quite popular from May → September, and airlines recognise this, so they don’t tend to release as many seats available for using points, so it’ll be harder to find.
Secondly, make sure you’re choosing the fare type “Classic Reward” - these point values are set in stone, and don’t change, but they are harder to find. If you see it costing a lot more points, then it can be because there aren’t any Classic Rewards available, and it is the “Points plus Pay” option you are seeing - Points plus pay is usually terrible value and probably not worth it.
Third, that value of 136,700 + 828, actually does sound correct if you are locking in a return economy fare, on a Qantas partner like Qatar airways, to Europe (they’re around 66k one way, + taxes). Of course, its up to you whether you’d rather pay the extra 1400 in cash, or use your points, but it is worth bearing in mind that economy fares are generally poor value for your points - in this case, your points would be worth around 1c/per point (dividing amount of points by fare cost). Business class for the same flight, on a partner airline (not Qantas) would be 159,000 points one way, + taxes.
Upshot of it is, you’re not necessarily doing anything wrong, but I do suggest reading these articles in particular:
If you have any more questions, feel free to let me know!
Hi, thanks for your response.
I can see that perhaps it was the time of year I was looking. As now I have put in March 2023 and I can get business class for 99000 points which is great.
However when I go into it it says I the business class is only on 1 of the flights and the other 2 are economy. (It’s 3 flights to get there stopping in Sydney and London)
Is this normal? For only 1 of the flights to actually be business?
Also when u say other airlines. What sites should I be looking at that will allow me to use qantas points?
As for your first question (1 of the flights are biz, the rest eco) it is quite common - that means there’s actually only availability for biz on that one flight, but the search engine represents it as “business class available”, which, while misleading (its only for 1 part of the route), is technically true. It is tougher to find flights that are all business, as you would obviously need to find biz availability for all the flights taken.
In terms of ‘other airlines’, I’m simply referring to Qantas’ partner airlines, which you can most definitely book through the Qantas website, using Qantas points. If you’re on the Qantas website, you can only use Qantas points, or cash.