Looking to book business return for 2 to Tokyo and would like to know which route gives better value when redeeming with Asia Miles, Qantas out of Brisbane or JAL out of Sydney?

Flights & Airfares
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Hi, firstly thank you Keith for the great website, which I have been following for over 12 months now and changed my earning and burning points strategy as a result. I have a large bunch of QFF points built up, which I’m keeping for an overseas trip with the family probably on CX or Qatar given the better business availability for 4.

I want to surprise my wife on our 10 year anniversary for Feb next year with a return trip to Japan. I’m originating from MEL, but as picked up from this website can do a return trip from SYD or BNE to Tokyo on QF or JAL for 80k asia miles pp, as opposed to 144k QFF points for which I redeemed 2 years ago. I’ve got enough in Membership rewards and Westpac rewards for the redemption.

Monitoring availability (I know feb isn’t fully released yet), there’s pretty much no 2 seats in business out of SYD on QF, but limited availability with JAL out of SYD and good availability on QF out of BNE. Question is, does the A330 out of BNE have the business suite now or is it likely by Feb next year or is the JAL out of SYD a better product in J and should I be targeting that anyway? Also flight departures may play a role as I would prefer overnight flights, but not fussy. Also can I book with asia miles one way on QF and return on JAL i.e. would it count as 80k (since you get a discount on return booking) or would it count as 2 separate awards hence costing more (can’t remember exact amount)?

Sorry for long question and thank you in advance.

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Sorry for the delayed reply!

I understand that the Business Suite is on the A330s running to Japan from Brisbane. You can always call Qantas and get them to double check the seatmap for your intended flights to confirm.

There are two Asia Miles Award Charts. The cheapest, first one, does allow two oneworld carriers but one of them needs to be Cathay or Dragonair. So best not to try and mix Qantas and JAL if possible otherwise you’ll move onto the second award chart.

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