I’d really appreciate help from the experts for a “once-in-a-lifetime” trip I’m planning Australia-Milan for my Mum and I. I want to fly Business on some or all of the legs.
I have a large number of Qantas and Velocity Points.
I can use Qantas Points one way and Velocity the other, or both ways using Qantas points.
I definitely want to fly April - June (Italian Spring) or September - November (Italian Autumn) and I would consider leaving our holiday until next year if necessary to make it work.
I’ve tried finding an “on-point” guide but haven’t had any luck as they confuse me.
I’d really appreciate any help to make this happen.
I’m in Brisbane. But we could fly in and out of anywhere.
How exciting! I’m sure you’ll be able to make this happen with a bit of patience and diligence. In one sense this entire website is about the answer to your question. If you haven’t already, navigate to the “Guides” section and scroll through the Beginners Guides. Many of them will be relevant to you and will give you guidance for how to get started. It will take time to read through them, but be assured that it will be worth the effort. You can do this!
Without going into specifics, here are a few random thoughts to begin with:
Be prepared to find this frustrating and time-consuming. That's the price you pay for finding reward seats to popular destinations. You'll probably need to be patient and flexible (with both dates and destinations). It's not unlikely that you'll find your reward seats quickly, but it's equally likely that it will take a lot of time and will be quite finicky. Don't be discouraged: you'll get your reward seats sooner or later!
Your first option should be to look at Qantas/Emirates (because you need fewer Qantas points), and at Etihad/Singapore (because these can be booked using Velocity points). However, be prepared to have to resort to Plan B with both your Qantas and Velocity points. With Qantas, the Plan B is to fly other Oneworld Airlines (I know that Cathay Pacific flies into Milan) even though you'll need more points. With Velocity, Plan B is to convert your points to KrisFlyer points (try to avoid this as you'll lose over 35% of your points in the conversion process, but it'll open up a heap of availability on Singapore Air and other Star Alliance airlines).
With Velocity, a "Plan C" could be using Virgin and Virgin Atlantic to fly to London via Hong Kong, and then flying separately from London into Milan. (You could also do this to fly home).
Plan D might be to pay to fly to somewhere in SE Asia and use your points from there, and/or to fly to somewhere else in Europe or the Middle East and to pay from there, etc, etc. Flexibility!!
The bottom line is that if you do this yourself (which I'd recommend) it will probably take time, planning, and patience. There's probably no avoiding that. The alternative is to pay someone to do it for you but I suggest you give it a go yourself first. It does get easier!
Until now I’ve always used my points for Economy flights to and from the US. That was easy.
But now I’m wanting to find Business flights.
Am I correct that when I'm searching, it's all done through either the Qantas or Virgin sites? (Including if I start looking at the option of flying in/out of another country instead of Australia.)
And to find other airlines that you mention, I just simply have to change the departure and arrival locations to make those other airlines become available in my choices?