Difficult conundrum. My dream is to fly around the world in business class, but I don’t know where (very open to seeing anywhere) and don’t know when., and we’ve never booked with points before. We each have around 350,000 QFF points.
Two questions –
I’ve read that for 280,000 QFF points, that buys you a business round the world ticket. I assume this is the ‘best’ option out there provided you book pretty much a year in advance? Does the ‘point cost’ rise at all, or is 280,000 the standard?
For someone who enjoys holiday planning, but lacks the time to search high and low for availability, what is a low-cost alternative? If say, you have a dream itinerary, and rough dates which you are available for travel, how far would Qantas customer service go in helping you ‘join up the pieces’?
Ideally, we would be travelling to Cuba next March/April – and would love to do a big trip (say 6 weeks, in business, with points) incorporating Cuba. Off the top of my head (in no particular order), Australia > Santiago > Mexico City > Cuba > Canada (flexible as to where) > Europe (flexible as to where > South Africa (Cape Town) > Australia
How likely, being now July, would it be to be able to book the above (or similar) trip on points for March/April next year?
I realise I’ve asked a lot in this post, but appreciate any advice!
Hi Claire, I’m in the process of preparing to book for Sep / Oct 2019. Amongst all the info I have found 2 bits to be particularly useful. As sixtyeight says use the Multi-city search tool (not RTW) to book your flights when you know what is available BUT to find what is available do individual flight searches first - then add them together in Multi-city when you are booking. If you only fly on oneworld airlines your RTW will be 280,000 points. If you add in an Emirates flight (which is NOT oneworld but is a Qantas partner) your flights will probably be 320.000 points each. Hope that helps.
Dear Ianz\r\n\r\nGreat tips, thanks! Use the Multi-city search, got it.\r\n\r\nTwo questions come out of that – \r\n\r\nNaturally, I presume you won’t be able to book all your flights at once – say you book one flight, and that is 140,000 points (just a rough example), and you book another a few days later for 100,000 points, and another for 60,000 points a few days on. Clearly, that’s above the 280,000 points which you want to keep the final point figure to. I presume this is where calling Qantas customer service to tailor your original booking comes into play, and you tell them you’re booking a RTW, and then they adjust your bookings to keep to the 280,000 point limit? Forgive me if this seems like a silly question, but this is my main question with all this.\r\n\r\nSecondly, just a random question. I was vaguely looking at Sydney > Honolulu flights through points, and yes, I’ve read these are a dime a dozen! My gripe is that it says ‘business seats’ are available, but with a little condition – you click on that small information icon, and it says your seats would be in economy, and not business. Why does it say originally then, that there are seats available? \r\n\r\nThanks so much, and again, appreciate all the help these forums give!
I would suggest that your best course of action would be to read and digest the above guide, then hop onto the Qantas website and so some searches yourself (remember to use the multi-city search tool). If you have any more questions after that, you can always come back here and ask!
Don’t expect the Qantas staff to be particularly helpful. They’re not travel agents. I know you have limited time, but the fact is that you’ll probably need to do the bulk of the research/planning yourself.
Many thanks SixtyEight. Appreciate that you responded.
I have read that article before, but will now spend more time digesting it, hoping to helps me further.
I’ve read of companies like ‘IFLYFlat’ who seem to take care of the hard work – you give them an itinerary, then they seem to find available flights. Would you/anyone have any experience in dealing with companies in this regard?