A bit of context 1st. I am single with week on/week off custody of a 7 year old. I am pretty familiar with travel hacking. We have had plenty of points flights in Econ & Biz and I’m about to go gold from paid VA flights. I only travel for leisure.
I picked a hypothetical trip. ADL to MEL 14/2/23-15/2/23.
Economy is $69 for choice and $299 Biz. (Qantas was $120 & $723)
Velocity points 7,800+$37 and 15k+$37, QFF points were similar
FlyBuys was 13,800 points Economy = 6900 velocity points and no carrier charge and I think it will earn SC and points
It changes for Biz with 59,000 FlyBuys read and 144,600 required for Qantas
I know that the best value is Premium cabins but this is mostly wasted on a 7 year old and for my personal use case, more trips is better. When I get Gold I’ll have lounge access anyway which I don’t get value from with him but I do enjoy.
If I keep the points in FlyBuys I can use them at the cheaper rate for Econ and if the desire to go back to the front returns I can easily transfer to Velocity and book Biz with Velocity points.
I suppose there may be the potential to upgrade the FlyBuys Econ flights as they will look like a normal Choice fare?
Thoughts on this approach?
That’s a really good spot — for the super-cheap Choice fares (I’ve also seen $69 Sydney-Gold Coast Choice fares recently) it’s better value to leave the points in FlyBuys and you collect points and status credits too!
Yep, given your circumstances and priorities, that approach seems pretty good to me.
The other advantage of having auto-transfer off is that every now and then you’ll get a fairly good offer to transfer your points. Most recently there was an offer to people who had more than 100,000 FlyBuys points: transfer your points and receive 4000 Velocity points and 4000 FlyBuys points. That’s effectively a 6% bonus.
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