Last year, my partner and I flew to Europe, Japan and Hong Kong in Business Class on a oneworld Classic Reward redemption fare. This year, we again flew around the world in Business Class and stayed in 4- and 5-star hotels, using points almost all the way.
Thanks to lessons learned here on Point Hacks, we travelled for six weeks and spent less than $10,000 on all our transport and accommodation.
Case study: Hacking around the world in Business Class for less than $10,000
- Part 1: Accumulating and using points for Business Class flights
- Part 2: Redeeming points for hotel stays
- Part 3: Comparing the Business Class products
Accumulating the points
I have written previously that I am fortunate enough to run a small business, so most of my points earn comes from paying tax, primarily using RewardPay. The remainder of the points for this trip came from:
- The double Qantas Points on credit card spend promotion which ran from April to July 2017
- Purchases through the Qantas Shopping portal
- A bonus Qantas Points offer for buying the Samsung Galaxy S8 phone;
- The Caltex Starcard promotion run through Qantas Business Rewards
- A Deliveroo sign-up bonus
- The Qantas Money Premier Mastercard sign-up bonus
Note these bonus points promotions contributed nearly 140,000 points (about a quarter of the total) for the booking. Keep an eye out for double- and triple-point banger offers such as these—they are a quick and easy way to boost points for expenditure which you may incur anyway.
We saw Mount Everest on our way from Bangkok to Helsinki
Where did we fly?
The full itinerary of the Qantas oneworld Classic Reward, all in Business Class, ended up as follows:
- Sydney – Hong Kong (overnight) – Singapore
- Singapore – Bangkok (overnight) – Helsinki
- Helsinki – New York – Orlando
- Orlando – Los Angeles (overnight) – Honolulu
- Honolulu – Osaka
- Tokyo – Sydney
The overnight stays were carefully planned to count as transfers (less than 24 hours) rather than stopovers (24+ hours).
The three P’s
In my mind, the key to booking any multi-leg redemption itinerary is planning, practice and patience.
- Planning: Our route was specifically designed to avoid flying British Airways and Qatar Airways as these airlines have amongst the highest fees and taxes of Qantas’ partners. Compared to my previous trip in 2017, I saved a total of $560 in fees and taxes by keeping British Airways out of my itinerary—this was well worth the research
- Practice: It is important to avoid surprises when booking a multi-leg itinerary because it is easy to panic and make a bad decision when your preferred itinerary is not available. I ran trial bookings in the Qantas engine so I was entirely clear about availability and fees before I booked
- Patience: The golden rule is to wait and book all your flights in one transaction, however, I did break the rule to grab rare Business Class seats on American Airlines and then added the rest of the itinerary about two weeks later. This meant I incurred a 5,000-point change fee per passenger
Do not forget your seats
SeatGuru has seat maps of just about every airline and aeroplane combination, so it is possible to check if the booking engine has automatically allocated a good seat.
The Finnair A350 seat map from SeatGuru. We changed out of Row 1 after seeing that this helpful site said they were not good seats
You can change your seat from the one allocated by Qantas by managing your booking on the respective airline website using the six-character passenger name record (PNR). The PNR allocated by Qantas is valid on the British Airways, Finnair, Cathay Pacific and American Airlines websites. For any flights on Japan Airlines booked through Qantas, you must call the local customer service line to change your seat allocation. You can reach out to some airlines via direct message on Twitter.
Summing up: is it worth all the effort?
Absolutely! The retail value of this itinerary was $40,000+ per passenger. Instead, I paid 280,000 Qantas Points (plus a 5,000-point change fee) and $820 in fees and taxes per person (Qantas RTW will increase to 318,000 from 18 September 2019 onwards). That gave me a whopping redemption value of nearly 14 cents per point!
The oneworld Classic Flight Reward is surely one of the best uses of Qantas points.
In the next instalment, I go on to explain how I redeemed points for hotel stays.
I have over one million points and have been going crazy trying to find available business class seats for an RTW for my wife and I. I tied using the Qantas RTW multi city flight and without any joy. I understand that you can get Qantas to book an RTW redemption trip for a small fee do you know if this is correct? I have emailed and called Q but cant get a clear answer.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say ‘approximately’, but if you made a slight change to the itinerary, I would suspect that you be violating one of the conditions of the oneworld classic redemption, and therefore prices as an addition of the individual segments.
I know when I try to create these itineraries, there are many times I think I’ve satisfied all the conditions, only to realise I accidentally violated one of them (eg more than 35,000 miles, or transited more than twice in the same city etc) when it comes back as 450,000+ points!
Make sure you comply with all the conditions of the oneworld Classic Reward. Without seeing what you are typing in, I suspect you have more than 24 hours between flights which I have labelled as overnight.
For example, we arrived into Hong Kong at 17:00 and flew out at ~15:00 the next day. If you depart Hong Kong after 17:00 the next day, the system will count it as a stopover. You are only allowed five stopovers in a oneworld itinerary.
Or you have selected an airline (like Emirates, China Eastern or Jetstar) which is not part of oneworld. Although Jetstar is owned by Qantas it is not part of the oneworld alliance.
I hope that helps.
This is a good question. It all comes down to personal preference – read the linked article in part 2 of my case study about valuing points.
In my opinion, redeeming a $40,000 itinerary in return for $10,ooo in RewardPay fees is a good deal. If so, you saved yourself $30,000 by converting spend you would have done anyway into points.
Online is the best approach for both (1) and (2). You will be charged a fee in points to complete a booking via phone.
Unless you have Iberia or LATAM points you will not be able to book directly on their websites.
Using the Qantas booking engine it is possible to book on these airlines. LATAM seats seem to be quite rare but I have flown Iberia as part of a oneworld Classic Reward.
Unless you have Iberia or LATAM points you will not be able to book directly on their websites.
Using the Qantas booking engine it is possible to book on these airlines. LATAM seats seem to be quite rare but I have flown Iberia as part of a oneworld Classic Reward.
What are the mechanisms for 1 – looking up the rewarda flights and 2 – booking the rewards ticket?
Phone or online or something else?
Thanks
How many transits (less than 24 hours) are you allowed in this type of redemption?
I am aware that this redemption allows 5 stopover cities.
Thank you
The number of transits is not capped, however, you are allowed only two transits at any one city in your itinerary.