note: i live in Perth so i’ll just fly straight from Perth.
however, these prices in the screenshot are 40-80k points for an economy flight in 2022 - looking at them on Qantas’s website today for those same dates for 2023 they’re all 200k points or higher.
is that correct that prices have gone up this much, and i’ll just need to get more points and pay for half the journey? or is there something i’m missing here?
There is one type of seats on a flight that pointhackers/enthusiasts chase after. These are called award seats; Qantas calls these Reward seats. These Reward seats cost a fixed amount of points; usually much lower in point costs. However, Reward seats are limited in supply; often airlines may choose to release up to 2 business class seats per flight. So these gets snapped up fast as they are in high demand.
The seats that costs more points that you see are call Any Seat Award (or something like that). These are based on revenue flight costs (in $). These usually have a fixed conversion - approximately 0.6 cents per point. So if your flight costs $600, they will try to charge you 100,000 Qantas points.
In addition, frequent flyers (with Qantas status) have first dibs on award seats on Qantas flights. If you have zero status like me (Bronze or Silver), you can only access some award seats around 10mths in advance. Vs 11-12 mths in advance for Gold/Platinum.
In short, it is very very hard to find 2 business class award seats on a Qantas flight with no significant Qantas status. This is especially true for flights to EU or USA.
Apologies for being the bearer of not so good news. I always tell people that often half the challenge is earning points, the other half is finding the award seats on the flights you want.
Also, Qantas now tends to release premium reward seats in batches. About a month back, Qantas released lots of Business Class reward seats on routes such as Perth-London and Rome, which were bookable at those low reward seat rates. Lots of our readers were able to use points this way.
Thanks guys. I didnt know it would be so difficult.
Hmm i dont think id have frequent flyer status either. @w.hiew just to confirm my understanding - this means ill need to book 10 months in advance? If we had frequent flyer status we have earlier access to these seats, but still need to book 12 months in advance?
Ah i missed that release @BrandonLoo , looks like theyre all gone now.
Ive just logged in and tried various flight dates - september in particular as thats 10 months in the futrue, but it doesnt have any award seats. I guess its waiting for a release and pouncing on them? So in my situation where we have to go on specific months due to my partners work (school holidays), we’re probably pretty unlikely to ever get anything?
As Brandon has mentioned, the release patterns for Qantas award seats have changed in recent times. They now seem to release in batches at random times instead of releasing 10-12 mths in advance half-reliably.
I would definitely subscribe to be notified of any award seats release and hope for the best.
Alternatively, you generally would have more luck on flights that doesn’t involve Australia as that is the major bottleneck (flights in and out of Australia). Since you are based in Perth, a palatable option may be to take a cheap and cheerful positioning flight to Singapore/Malaysia and build your itinerary from there onwards.