How to fly to Europe in Business Class for a family of 5 with Velocity, Qantas, and Amex points?

We are planning an extended visit to UK/Europe next September (2019) returning late December. Need to book flights asap but only one way given the time frame - correct? There will be 3 adults and 2 children (11 & 6). We would love one sector business if possible. We have an assortment of points. 240000 velocity. 315000 Amex. 130000 Qantas.
We expect to have to pay for some and the return will be expensive one way.
Prefer to fly into Manchester or Edinburgh but any ok. Any reputable airline, any route, any direction with or without stopovers. Kids great travellers.
All advice/suggestions welcomed.
Louise

Hi Louise,

I have a couple of questions. First, are your AmEx points Ascent, Ascent Premium or Gateway? Second, your desire to fly “one sector business” – by “sector” do you mean one flight before/after a stopover on the way to Europe (eg. Australia-Hong Kong or Singapore-Manchester), or do you mean that you want one, one-way trip to be the whole way in business class (eg. Australia-Manchester)?

I’m planning a holiday to Scotland so I’ve been looking at reward flights into Manchester and Edinburgh myself. I’ve been looking at Qantas/Oneworld, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Qatar and Singapore Airlines. My observation is that the best availability, by far, is on Singapore Airlines flying into Manchester. There’s much more that can be said, and you might get lucky with one of the other airlines (Emirates seems to have reward business class seats into Edinburgh a few times a month), but it’s quite likely, I think, that you’ll end up converting your Velocity and AmEx points into KrisFlyer Miles and booking on Singapore.

Another pretty good option, with reasonably good availability, is to use KrisFlyer miles to fly to Istanbul on Singapore, then to Edinburgh on Turkish Airlines. You can do the whole trip as a Star Alliance reward redemption for the same number of points as flying Singapore Airlines all the way.

If you’re willing to fly into London, don’t forget the Virgin Australia/Virgin Atlantic option via Hong Kong, for which you’ll be able to use Velocity points at a cheaper rate than any other Velocity option.

Either way, the best-case scenario is that you’ll have enough points for half of your flights (ie. 5 flights out of 10), assuming that you fly business class.

Anyway, there are a lot of possibilities but hopefully this is enough to get you started!

Hi Sixtyeight

Thank you very much for your response. My Amex points are Ascent. Although it would be great to go all the way in business I was not sure if we would have enough points. It looks like that would be the best with Singapore Airlines - if we can get 5 seats. Might have to try 2 business and 3 premium.

Another alternative is to go economy with Qantas to Singapore and then business to Manchester.

Too far ahead to book return so I will have to hope I have earned enough points to get back - or pay heaps for  one way tickets from France.

Edinburgh is great to fly into - no hassles.

We would go into Heathrow if we have to, it’s just not convenient for anywhere we want to be.

thank you again for taking the time to respond, it’s good to get other’s opinions.

Hope you get what you are looking for

Louise