Hey all, I am a complete RTW reward newbie. I have booked plenty of reward flights previously so i get that but trying to figure out the timing, competitiveness, availability not just on a return trip but on a bunch of sectors is a bit daunting.
My wife and i want to travel (approx) sometime in april to june 2026 for about 6 -7 weeks. I have enough points now for Business RTW for both of us.
We were thinking.
Stopover 1 - MEL-HND
Stopover 2 - HND to FCO via DOH.
Then make our own way to Paris.
Stopover 3 - CDG - NYC
Stopover 4 - NYC to LAX
Stopover 5 - LAX - Somewhere in South America
Then back to MEL.
Ideally i’d love to fly business class the entire way but am new to this.
What would be the best time to book the trip? All at once as soon as they are all available or one by one as they become available or just a few months out?
I am taking into consideration a points jump of 20% in August this year with Qantas.
Any advice that can be given on the timing, structure, do i need to book flights at weird times in the middle of the night? Would appreciate any help.
Hello and welcome @andrew1 !
Like you, I have booked plenty of reward flights but (full disclosure) I’ve never booked a RTW using Qantas points. My best advice would be that you join Australian Frequent Flyer, if you haven’t already, and ask for advice in their dedicated forum thread devoted to Qantas RTW planning.
Off the top of my head I can see some potential difficulties with the itinerary you suggest. My first piece of advice: be flexible. Be really flexible. Do you really need to fly into and out of Haneda? Would Narita do (in fact there are no direcrt flights between MEL and HND)? If there are no flights into Rome, would Milan or Geneva be near enough? Putting together an itinerary using reward points will usually involve thinking outside the box.
I can also see problems with your plan to fly from Tokyo to Rome via Doha, as presumably this would be on Qatar Airways. Of Australian FF programmes, Qatar prioritises Velocity over Qantas FF and only releases business class reward flights to Qantas FF a few days before the flight. So you’re likely to be frustrated if you try to include Qatar flights in your RTW planning.
Also re your planned stopover in South America – to my knowledge, the only Oneworld airline that flies between South America and Australia is Qantas (Santiago to Sydney). So you’ll have limited options there, though of course you could fly from South America to the USA on American Airlines and then fly to MEL on American, Qantas or Fiji (or, even more creatively, via Japan on JAL or Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific).
In fact, I wonder whether it would be better for you to fly from NYC to South America, and then back to LAX?
Anyway, that’s the end of my limited knowledge, but the good people on the AFF Oneworld Planning forum will be able to help you out infinitely more.
Please let us know how you go!
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@sixtyeight Thank you so much. I’ll definitely explore this more. Just trying to make the best use of my points.