Qantas Premium Economy Reward seats availability from Melbourne to London?

Flights & Airfares
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Hi All,
I’m looking to book for myself +1 from Melb to the UK next year using points in Premium Economy. At the moment I’m just shy of the required points balance, but have a new credit card with bonus points coming my way soon which will get me over the line. Q1 - Do Qantas actually provide any reward seats direct from Melb or Syd to London in premium economy? I’ve been having a look but of late can only see options using partner airlines - which is fine, except that I’ll need to earn quite a few more points before I can qualify. Am I just wasting my time hoping to find availability (keep in mind I need two seats on the same flight). I don’t have a good enough record of the likelyhood of upgrade so figure reward seat is my only option. Happy to fly out of Melb or Syd, and don’t have to fly into London, but would prefer to. Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholn could work if that made it easier.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated???

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Hi marymary,

  1. Qantas certainly do provide award seats in premium economy, however it's helpful to remember that seats won't necessarily be made available in all cabin classes and on all dates. As a rule airlines provide a small amount of seats initially when the flight goes on sale about 11 months out, but may then periodically drop more seats into the market for frequent flyers but only if the flight isn't selling as well as they'd hoped. They'd rather have those seats paid in points than to go empty, but they're still going to give prospective customers every chance to purchase those seats at full fare before offering them to their members. There's no guarantee that this will happen though, so it's generally not a great strategy to wait and hope.
Not all airlines offer premium economy, and unfortunately for those of us with hefty QF points balances, a lot of the Qantas partners into Europe don't. Emirates and Qatar who have the two most extensive European networks don't, however partners Cathay, Japan Airlines and British Airways do offer premium economy cabins on long haul routes into Europe.

British Airways are one to avoid as in addition to your points you would need to pay their hefty fuel surcharges, and Japan Airlines don’t fly to Melbourne (although as you mentioned getting to Sydney was an option this probably isn’t an issue). Cathay fly a few daily routes MEL - HKG, and operate premium economy on all of their routes into Europe. Cathay fly 5-daily to London, as well as multiple flights a day to most of the larger European capitals.

My recommendation would be take advantage of what you can get with Cathay/Japan Airlines. As I say hoping for more Qantas seats to be made available isn’t a reliable method, and you’d run the risk of missing out entirely and either needing to pay full fare at short notice or not go if no more seats opened up. I know Qantas is the preferred, but even if Cathay is more points for you you’ll still be getting a steal over paying $3500+ per seat as most passengers would by using your points.

 

Hope that helps!

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