I’ve churned cards for years and saved up 688k Qantas points with the expectation I would be able to fly to Europe.
My understanding was that a business class ticket to Europe was ~200k Qantas points.
Using the Qantas website to look at flights Brisbane > Stockholm around March 14, a business class ticket is around a million (!) points.
What am I missing? Is there no way to fly Brisbane > Stockholm (or anywhere in Europe really) for a reasonable amount of points? Heck, even the OneWorld around the world business class ticket is supposed to be only 350k Qantas points!!
Hi @fred.a.f
Well done for saving up so many Qantas points! The good news is that you do indeed have enough Qantas points to fly to Europe and back in Business Class – twice (or once, with a friend)!
The trick is to search for “Classic Flight Reward” seats. The seats you’re seeing that cost a million-ish points are “Points Plus Pay” seats, which require a lot more points.
Read this Point Hacks guide for more on the difference between Classic Flight Rewards and Points Plus Pay. You can also access the Qantas reward tables here, which tell you that for a one-way flight to Europe in Business class you’ll need either 144,600 or 159,000 Qantas points, depending on which airline you fly.
Hope this helps!
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Thanks, that does help a bit… I’ve now also read the guide on How to search for frequent flyer reward seats - Point Hacks
But from what I can tell, there are zero business or first class award seats on any flights to Europe from any city in Australia until September/October 2022?
Is this normal? It’s pretty discouraging tbh, I was hoping there would be at least some flights in March that I could book. (please note, I do appreciate your help haha and I’m not frustrated at you or anyone else at pointhacks or in this community but yeah, wow, this isn’t what I was expecting when saving up all those points)
Hi @fred.a.f
These are not normal times and it’s very difficult to know what’s going on. But I agree with you – reward seats using Qantas points are particularly difficult to come by at the moment. I have four thoughts (three for now, one for the future):
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Be patient, be flexible and keep looking. Airlines may, and probably will, release new reward seats at any time. Be ready to pounce!
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In my searches I’ve been seeing some availability on Japan Air Lines, via Tokyo. If it’s not turning up on searches on the Qantas website, try some searches involving flights to/from the two Tokyo airports (NRT and HND).
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There’s also availability that can be found on the Emirates website, but which isn’t turning up on Qantas searches. If you see an Emirates flight with reward seat availability on its own website, it might be worth calling Qantas and asking if you can book a Classic Flight Reward over the phone.
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(For the future): consider diversifying from Qantas into other FF programmes. At the moment, KrisFlyer (Singapore Airlines’ FF programme) is showing reasonable availability on Singapore Airlines – not great availability, but certainly a whole lot more than Qantas FF. When searching for rare reward seats, having points in multiple FF programmes or in a flexible rewards programme is invaluable and it’s gotten me out of a hole more than once!
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Ok, thanks to your reply I was able to find that whatever I was doing to search for business and first class rewards availability, I wasn’t doing it right
Through the Qantas multicity trip interface I’ve now managed to find business class rewards availability from as early as March on a couple of routes, including Brisbane > Sydney > Singapore > Helsinki > Stockholm (the one I chose, ended up being ~200k points + $350 ish)
but also via Auckland - Dubai or even Los Angeles (not my choice but there’s availability there earlier than September/October for anyone who cares to fly out)
Can’t thank you enough!!!