My wife is taking my elderly mother in law to Ireland and only wants one stop therefore ETIHAD appears to be the only option. I have points with velocity and Amex. Can anyone help with the best way to do a business class flight and points required please?
Hi,
One question I have is … how many AmEx points do you have? If you have enough AmEx Membership Rewards points, you could convert them to Emirates points which would give you a second option as Emirates also flies one-stop from Brisbane to Dublin.
Assuming that you don’t have quite enough AmEx points and/or you want to use your Velocity points, you’ll need 139,000 points per person, each way, to get to Dublin in Business class (ie. 556,000 points for a return trip for 2), and yes, a very quick search reveals that Etihad is your best/only option. Virgin Australia codeshares with Etihad all the way to Dublin, so you can use your Velocity points.
Start by going to the Virgin Australia website, key in Brisbane to Dublin and the dates you want, select “Premium/Business” and click on “Use points + pay”. The only trick after that (apart from finding actual availability which may not be easy) is to select “Reward” seats rather than “Any seat” seats which need vastly more points.
One warning: Etihad’s extra fees and charges are almost extortionately high. Expect to be paying well over a thousand dollars in fees even if you can get a reward seat.
And one more thought: I know your wife and mother in law want only one stop. But your options will increase considerably if they could bring themselves to tolerate a second stop. Maybe they could agree to a relaxing 1 or 2-night stopover? It’s just a thought.
Anyway, all the best!
On top of sixtyeight’s advice. Depending on your point balance, you could do one way in Emirates and one way in Etihad. Emirates also has large surcharge/taxes.