Qantas Round the World with FF points - how do I do it?
Qantas Round the World with FF points - how do I do it?.
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Qantas Round the World with FF points - how do I do it?
Long time poster, first time listener. *sheesh*, even that's an old gag nowadays.
I need help. Around Feb-Mar next year, I'm planning on using my vast collection of 140K ff points (yup, vassst) to go to London. Thing is, I'd like to also go to Los Angeles, if I can stretch the points. I have a pile of points on Amex that can be transferred over if need be, but I can't work out how many points it will take, since the Qantas FF Point-user-planner-widget can't factor in the BA or AA flight from LA to London.
So, can one of you kind souls help me figure out:
- can I do Melbourne-LA-London-Melbourne using Qantas FF points?
- do I need to ring Q, or can I figure it all out and book it online?
- how many points will it cost me?
- will it be more point-effective to go for a round-the-world ticket, or just book for the actual stops on each leg?
Thanks kindly in advance
gmask1
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While I'm not an expert like some around here you could go for a Oneworld Award ticket. The drawbacks are you need to use two non-QANTAS but Oneworld partners.
You didn't say what home port you are located in so I used Sydney for the following real example using online bookings:
Sydney-Hong Kong (Cathay) 7/2/06 CX110
Hong Kong - London (British) 13/02/06 BA28
London - LA (British) 24/03/06 BA283
LA - Sydney 31/03/06 QF8
I just picked these dates at random, so not much problems booking. Spending a few days in Hong Kong actually makes it easier to travel to London which can be hard to book at times.
All this is for a 140k award, cheapest option I believe. SYD-LDN is 64k pts, LDN-LA 36k pts & LA-SYD 48k pts total 148k (remembering you can add in other dest. with RTW ticket without adding FF cost).
Now not doing it with a side visit to Hong Kong makes it a little harder to book however you could do the following bookings as at 8.25 pm today:
Syd-HKG-London (Cathay - CX100 & BA26) 8/2/06
LDN-LA BA283 22/3/06
LA - Sydney 31/03/06 QF8
As long as you use 2 Oneworld partners you shouldn't have a problem. It's worth noting you can have 5 destinations on this ticket, so in the first one you could add to more stops (say Rome, Henski or NYC etc). You can book this ticket online but not with you need to use AA.
Good luck. Let us know how you went getting seats.
Member of: Qantas FF, American Airlines AAdv, NW WorldPerks
Posts: 3,860
Quote:
Originally Posted by coyote25
You didn't say what home port you are located in
Hmm, I thought it was pretty obvious from my first read of the OP's story:
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmask1
can I do Melbourne-LA-London-Melbourne
Certainly, you want to work out your itinerary and see what possible availability there is before you transfer over your points (although points only expire in the QFF after 3 years of absolutely no transactions, so that wouldn't be a problem for you).
I'm not a noted FF award points user guru, so can't really help with yoru question. But others here are a wealth of knowledge on this area.
__________________ FF Programs: QFF Gold (OW Sapphire) QC Life, LTSilver & 57.5% to LTG, AAdv (24.35% to LTG), NW. Hotel: PC Plat, Hyatt GP Gold, HHonors Gold, SPG, Marriott Rewards, PriorityGUEST. Car Rental: Avis Pref, Hertz No 1 Cards: Amex Plat, Visa Plat.
Flown 585 sectors totalling 821,765 miles since March 03, 1988 (ba97.com)
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The Qantas OneWorld Award is a little different to the regular Qantas FF award offerings. The standard awards are now calculated as a group of one-way trips, while the OneWorld Award remains a full trip calculation.
Your suggested minimum trip routing (MEL-LAX-LRH-MEL) is 23,880 miles so fits into the zone 10 range for OneWorld awards, costing 142,500 QF FF points in economy (282,500 in business class). This is up from 130,000 under the old points system before May 25th.
So for no more points cost, you can travel up to 35,000 miles, which may give you a chance to see some other interesting places or to be creative with the rounting to find availability.
A few points to remember with the OneWorld Award:
You need to use two OneWorld carriers other than QF, so look for AA, BA, CX etc.
You can have up to 5 stopovers. A stopover is a stay of more than 24 hours in a port or between ports when including a surface sector. Careful use of surface sectors can be make a very interesting itinerary.
Once you take the first flight, you cannot make any changes to the itinerary, so make sure you have suitable travel insurance to cover any missed flights etc.
Note that taxes, levies and surcharges can be high for a OneWorld award due to the possible number of sectors.
A few years back I redeemed 7 x OneWorld awards routing BNE-AKL-LAX//LAS-DFW-MCO//YYZ-LHR-KBP//KPB-LHR-NCL//TXL-HEL//HEL-FRA-HKG-SYD-BNE.
DFW and HKG were not stopovers, but we did stay overnight at DFW and had a whole day in HKG by selecting the right flights.
I doubt you will be able to book a complex OneWorld award routing on-line. Mine took at least 5 phone calls and probably over 3 hours in the phone with the QF reps, but finding 7 seats on the same flights added to the difficulty.
Thank you for your responses, they will all be extremely helpful in the coming weeks when I go through the process of booking flights/tours/blah. I wasn't sure if I had made my original post clear, but yes, my home base is sunny (today at least) Melbourne. The LA leg was a late addition to the trip, and if it is possible to add a another stop or two without additonal, then it's all a bonus.
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I booked 2 one world awards just before devaluation day on may 25th.It was a lot easier to phone.It took less than an hour.Flying Brisbane-bangkok-hong kong-dubai-london-paris-new york-brisbane.London just a transit.Your itinerary should be no problem.
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Yes the world is yours for the taking 35,000 miles is a long way - I managed to get in a booking before May 25 to go from MEL-Europe-South America(with numerous internal flights)-LAX-MEL. (Although must admit version 1 of the trip came out at 35,012 miles which was not allowed!)
But if you want to keep things simple the One World RTW itinerary is still the best option - and even without using Cathay via Hong Kong, it's fairly simple to include an extra one world carrier (assuming you'll use BA for the transatlantic crossing) ... by doing a short side trip from London on Aer Lingus or Iberian, or even by flying BA from London to San Francisco and then AA from San Francisco to LAX.
Note though for One World bookings, the points table already includes the 2,500 pts for phone booking, eg. the 35,000 mile OW redemption is 142,500 in economy which includes 140,000 for the redemption and 2,500 for the phone booking. I believe if you book it online (if you can) it will add up the separate one way bookings which is rather expensive.
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