My wife and I are looking to travel to the US late January 2019 for a 5yr anniversary. We currently have 130K of Qantas Points and are looking to travel business class both legs.
We have no issues with credit, we pay our current CC’s off monthly, have great mortgage history, have stable employment and earn relatively ok wages (both on ~$85k) and our free Equifax score is excellent. So in light of that, we’ve decided to apply for a few CC over the next 12 months to accrue sign-up bonuses to meet our goal of flying J both legs.
My conundrum is what FF program do I target when applying for sign-up bonuses, we have some Qantas points and there’s the possibility to quickly accrue them through some generous AMEX bonuses - but redemption are expensive (although I’ve seen the surcharge ‘loop-hole’ of originating flights from HKG).
Or, do I forgo our banked Qantas points and look at Asia Miles/Krisflyer where redemption’s are cheaper but we’re starting off from scratch.
So many options and possible outcomes - my head spinning!!
Unfortunately there are no short cut in this. I doubt anyone would be able to answer your queries with 100% accuracy.
In Australia (at least), it can be generally agreed that Qantas points and Velocity points are the easiest to accumulate due to their many partners. Similarly to real world currencies (cash), an over supply of any currency would encourage devaluation. Hence, it will require more of the devalued currency to exchange it for a product/service.
Personally, I would suggest that you stick to QFF if all you are trying to do is accelerate your points earning to be able to get sufficient points for your planned trip. However, bear in mind that if you collect solely QFF pts, your options of flights are limited to Qantas partner airlines. If you are not flexible and leave booking to much closer to departure date, you will potentially find it is rather challenging to find reward seats still available. This is another effect of a popular FF program-> there are many more people with higher FF status and balance out there competing for the same seats. There are pros and cons to every frequent flyer program and credit card.
Please also keep in mind that Qantas and Cathay Pacific (Asia Miles) are both oneWorld airlines. i.e. you could use Qantas pts to redeem Cathay flights and vice versa.
I hope I have at least clarified some of your queries.
Personally, I have balances in multiple FF programs and some flexible points to increase my options available to get me award/reward seats from A to B. The downside to this is that I have too many options at times. This makes decision making more challenging. #firstworldproblem I know. However, I too struggle with finding seats for last minute flights and peak periods too.
Signup bonuses is a large part of how I collect my points. However, please be cautious towards the effect you can do to your credit rating.
My last piece of advice is: Just start with Qantas and adjust your strategy as you slowly learn more about the point game and as more changes come to make our point hacking more challenging. Better to start somewhere than being paralyzed by over analysis.
Thanks for the reply. We’ve decided that it’s definitely easier this time to look at accruing the QFF points - especially with the AMEX cards bonus of 100k at present. So we’re both going to sign up for that which will grow our balance significantly and get us much closer to where we need to be.
I certainly agree regarding finding availability is more difficult on QFF, but at present it looks as though going via DXB to NYC there’s good availability most times on Emirates, and we don’t mind spending an extra 5ish hrs in the air if it’s in J - so fingers crossed nothing changes in the next 6 months with the Emirates partnership!