My partner, myself and our 3-year-old (we’re from Darwin, NT) have been saving Velocity and Qantas points since January of this year. So far we have accumulated close to 200,000 Qantas points and 350,000 Velocity points. We have never redeemed any points before so this will be the first. I also have 1 free domestic return flight courtesy of my AMEX Velocity Platinum card. And I have two 120 Virgin Flight Voucher ($240 in total) from my Virgin High Flyer Card and my partner’s Virgin Flyer Credit Card.
It has been our dream to travel to London, Paris, Prague and Rome coming from Darwin. We would like to go in September 2019 in time for my partner’s birthday. I don’t think our points will be enough to should all of our flights so we’re prepared to shell out if need be.
The question is, what’s the best approach when redeeming frequent flyer points to travel from Darwin, NT to London, Paris, Praque and Rome in September 2019?
Is it a good approach to ask the service of companies such as flight centre to help us out in redeeming all of our points and planning and booking our flights?
Keep in mind that most Flight Centre agents don’t get involved in points. It’s not a product which we sell, there’s no way to make money from it, so agents won’t help you with arranging your trip for free unless you’re booking an extensive trip around the flights to help make it worth their while.
I’d look for points tickets ex Singapore in business, and buy cash fares to marry it up.
I would also position to Singapore (hopefully you could use your Virgin credit, otherwise get cheap tickets).
From Singapore, you could use Qantas one way for 2 passengers (via Dubai-Emirates or HongKong-Cathay Pacific); 3 if your points stretches so far (only go for Classic Reward seats).
And use Velocity points to fly from Rome to Singapore with Singapore Airlines (redeem directly with Velocity points or transfer to Krisflyer for better award availability).
Obviously, you could swap these around, use Velocity pts for the outbound and Qantas pts for the inbound flight.
Usually, 2 premium seats are generally available, if you are lucky, 3 seats may be possible.
Be flexible if there aren’t seats to London and Rome. The important bit is getting to Europe. Once you are there, there are plenty of cheap flights to move around.