Travel & Holidays Anyone flown Business/First Class Flights?

Discussion in 'Living Room' started by TMNT, 16th Sep, 2015.

Join Australia's most dynamic and respected property investment community
  1. Tattler

    Tattler Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    18th Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    1,065
    Location:
    Sydney
    OK. Given you have 1.8 million QFF points, you can redeem 4 First Class Round the World OneWorld award (420K per trip). Maximum travel distance is 35000km for each trip.

    Or you can redeem 6 * Business Class RTW OW awards (280K per trip).

    Enjoy your points!
     
    TMNT and sanj like this.
  2. Tattler

    Tattler Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    18th Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    1,065
    Location:
    Sydney
    No point of using points for upgrades given you have so many points as your upgrade is very unlikely to be cleared unless you are Platinum etc. Just use the points to book Business Class or First Class awards. Not hard to do.
     
  3. TMNT

    TMNT Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    23rd Jul, 2015
    Posts:
    5,572
    Location:
    Melbourne
    280k business return sounds goood.

    Can you by any chance give me roughly what you recommed i can do naximise benefits

    And how much is the tax 280k seems good
    My friend did biz class to france recently and paid 280k in tax
     
  4. sanj

    sanj Well-Known Member Premium Member

    Joined:
    18th Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    3,461
    Location:
    Perth
    What was that line in the sopranos about an old lady with a virginia ham under her arm complaining about having no bread?

    Youve said you cant ever see yourself travelling on business class and youve got 1.8m points?? Just get it done.
     
  5. Tattler

    Tattler Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    18th Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    1,065
    Location:
    Sydney
    It all depends on where you want to go. Let me know what cities you are interested in.

    OneWorld award allows you to have 5 stopovers, 16 flight segments, with maximum travel of 35000 miles (not KM as I mentioned earlier) travel, and in your itinerary you need at least 2 non-Qantas OneWorld airlines:

    https://www.oneworld.com/member-airlines/overview

    Just to give you an example, you can do the following itinerary (select 5 of those cities as stopovers), and the distance is only 31000 miles, under the 35000 miles requirement:

    http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=MEL-HKG-NRT-LHR-NYC-LAX-SCL-MEL

    35000 miles is definitely enough to cover most continents.

    Taxes and fuel surcharges depends on the country travelled and airline flown as they all have different policies. I would allow $1000-1500AU for cash out (yes Australian Dollar has dropped a lot). But hey you are travelling Business Class all the way around the world and enjoy all the lounges worldwide etc.
     
  6. Ed Barton

    Ed Barton Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    18th Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    2,229
    Location:
    Brisbane
    Not that exciting. My brolly missed my flight and was loaded onto a Concorde so it arrived before I did.
     
  7. Ed Barton

    Ed Barton Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    18th Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    2,229
    Location:
    Brisbane
    Last time I looked Virgin Galatic was $250k. It's a hell of a lot of money but I'm thinking about it.
     
  8. TMNT

    TMNT Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    23rd Jul, 2015
    Posts:
    5,572
    Location:
    Melbourne
    nice!!
    sorry for hte dumb questions,
    so tax is 1000-$1500 for all those destinations?? does tax vary if I did say half those stops??

    280k is awesome, not sure why my friend got chared almost 290k points for 1 return flight to france recently

    so obviously you recommned doing 5 stops to maximise value?
     
  9. Tattler

    Tattler Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    18th Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    1,065
    Location:
    Sydney
    Obviously to maximise your awards is to have all 5 stopovers.

    The cash out is a combination of government taxes/fees and fuel surcharges.

    Obviously the more cities travelled/transited, you spend more miles in the air, and higher the cash out.

    Reducing the cities list only reduce the cash out somewhat as you are still travelling long way around the world, and you still paying the fuel surcharges.

    Also each airline determines what fuel surcharge they apply to their award ticket.

    Each of the country/cities have its own departure/airport/security taxes. So they are all different. Some countries have high taxes and some have regulation to low taxes and surcharges.

    For example, Hong Kong government regulates fuel surcharges and taxes for flights out of Hong Kong, so flights out of Hong Kong has lower cash out.

    Whereas any long haul flights out of UK needs to be avoided because UK government charges hideous APD which adds a lot of costs in cash component when redeeming awards.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Passenger_Duty

    The easiest way to avoid this is to either fly into UK, but then do open-jaw and fly out from outside UK (eg Paris, by taking Eurostar from London). However this would cost you 2 stopovers. Or you can just fly into/out of Paris, and take Eurostar to/from UK instead. Then only 1 stopover is used.

    So you really need to call Qantas to price cash component of the award ticket.

    This 280K Oneworld award rule only applies if the award includes 2 non-Qantas Oneworld carriers. Your friend may have say standard Qantas or Emirates (partner of Qantas, but NOT OneWorld) awards, hence this rule does not apply.

    One small thing, you need to pay 3500 QFF points by booking award over the phone but it is loose change in your case.

    So if you know the systems and rules well, and can book well in advance (or at last minute), you can easily fly business or first class internationally. I've done it for the last 13 years.
     
    Handyandy likes this.
  10. serendip

    serendip Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    18th Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    143
    Location:
    Sydney
    I used to fly to London a few times a year for work, work related to BA, therefore always flew business class & a couple of times was upgraded to first class. Very rude shock when I flew to the UK the first time after I changed jobs that I had to a) pay for my ticket & b) fly cattle class!

    IME business actually makes the most difference to your flight. Flat beds, decent food & service. First is lovely, but at the flight you don't actually feel any better than if you'd flown business. Business to cattle however makes a massive difference. Last time I took my son just before he turned 2 & had enough points to fly business. We shared a seat on the way up & it meant he could be sleeping while I was comfy watching TV & there was a little bench the perfect height for him to potter while he was awake. On the way back the plane was not full & they blocked a seat just for him, heaven, little guy slept about 14 of the 24 hours home :)
     

Buy Property Interstate WITHOUT Dropping $15k On Buyers Agents Each Time! Helping People Achieve PASSIVE INCOME Using Our Unique Data-Driven System, So You Can Confidently Buy Top 5% Growth & Cashflow Property, Anywhere In Australia