I wonder if you can help my fiance and I? We live in Sydney and plan to fly to London to get married in August 2017. We’ve been following the blog a while and have saved up about 462,000 Qantas FF points between us and wondered how we can best use them to be able to fly business or first class for our wedding trip? Ideally we’re looking for the best possible experience that our points can afford and we’re also happy to pay a reasonable amount on top if the points won’t cover it. Alternatively if our points won’t cut it we could always fly the return leg in luxury and fly out economy.
At the moment I have a ANZ and NAB frequent flyer card which I have had a few years so happy to sign up for another card if we need some extra points to achieve our goal!
We are heading to Italy on 31st August for the wedding, so ideally we want to be in London a week before hand (maybe around 24th August) and we want to return to Sydney around the 15th September, but can be a bit flexible on dates.
I’ve never used points to book a flight and having played around it got a bit confusing and there didn’t seem to be too many business/first options so thought we would reach out to the master for some help!
Any help you can give to help us have an awesome wedding travel experience would be much appreciated!
Congratulations to both of you! We will try and help make your wedding more memorable.
As a start, your point balance is healthy.
Using Qantas FF points, you could fly in Business Class (per person return):
American Airlines (via LA) for 256k
SYD-LAX leg is usually very challenging to find availability for
Very low tax/surcharge
Emirates (via Dubai) for 278k
High tax/surcharge
Cathay Pacific (via Hong Kong) for 278k
Med tax/surcharge
Malaysia Airlines (via Kuala Lumpur) for 278k
Med tax/surcharge
The point costs for first class for the above is 384k-406k (per person return). tax and surcharge for business and first class is generally the same.
So you could consider getting a Qantas credit card signup bonus and get enough points for 2 person business return or you currently have enough for the first class trip coming back. Point Hack link of current offers
It also depends on award availabilities too. Best to play around with the Qantas availability tool and consider ringing Qantas to ask about your options and availabilities.
Also consider availabilities from Hong Kong (Cathay hub) or flying into Paris or other close by EU airports. Hong Kong - London costs 184k (business) and 268k (first) return per person.
Try and avoid flying out of London if possible to avoid the very high tax. You could fly into London and fly out of say Paris.
My only other comment is that you will have to be very flexible with dates, end of August is end of peak season and I’d suspect a lot of award flights are already taken. in other words book ASAP