Qantas Frequent Flyer - Advice re multi carrier award

I am trying to book an award flight from Brisbane to Sapporo later next year . I have read all the small print etc as to do this on line . However , i would prefer to fly QF to Japan and then JAL onwards .

This is not a "QF" award nor is it a "oneworld" one since 2 carriers other than QF are needed.

Is there any way of doing this itn on line .

Of course my problem maybe Qantas's legendery stingyness in allocating award seats in the premium classes and nothing comes up because there is nothing to access.

I am really despairing of currently holding some 500,000 qffpoints with little of value to do with them - my reason for getting an Amex visa was to generate qf points to travel with my wife in business class for skiing in the usa or canada or to visit friends in europe- this has been virtually impossible to book no matter how flexible my dates .

It makes you wonder if the CC companies who pay real money to QF for their points realise how frustrated their clients get.

I have taken the one option of Amex cards to transfer to Singapore Air points to date with a much better positive result than QF but it is early days and I have not decided for sure to stay with SQ . The other option would be to double transfer rewards points to SPG and then to virtually any ffp - eg United Mileage Plus thought the conversion mathematics are not the best . Still, it is better to use for points for a premium seat than to have them sitting your account doing nothing .

I have tried the tfers to UA with good success as i am elite with them but my family who have no such priority have used my miles to get them business class to san francisco at 2 months notice - but as I said the conversion rate is not as good as a direct amex to Qfffp tfer.

There is lots of BA availability SYD-BKK in First for February (or there was last week). This was showing on the QF FF award calendar. Perhaps you could get some of these seats and a UA award BKK-NRT.

If you use two carriers other than QANTAS, it has to be a Oneworld award.

See the points tables link - http://www.qantas.com.au/fflyer/dyn/program/usingPoints/pointsTables

Points only Award flights cannot be combined with Qantas International or partner airline Award flights.

This oneworld Award table only applies when your Award itinerary includes at least two oneworld alliance airlines other than Qantas.

If you want a partner award, you will need to fly on partner airlines online, i.e. JAL all the way, or Cathay, then JAL.

I didn't think JAL awards were available online. You can try booking the award using the multi-city option.

Otherwise you will need to pay the 2,500 Assisted Award booking fee, and do it via the phone.

Having just completed an award booking using the Qantas staff, I would say that it's definitely worth the 2,500 points to have Qantas arrange your award booking. They seem to be very knowledgeable about partner award flights and can often provide instant answers to many of your queries, plus organise your award trip with no hassles.

There are normally plenty of award flights out of Cairns into Tokyo and return. I have recently (last week) booked flights for May 2008 - Cairns/Tokyo/London and return Qantas/BA.

Looking at the availability now for 16 April to 16 May out of Cairns as an example there are only five days unavailable with award flights (no business seats). Looking at returning from 12 May to 11 June as an example there are seats available on every day with 27 of those days having business class available

Using the multi-city option will give you the best result and as has been mentioned if you want to book award flights on JAL you will need to do it via Qantas staff as the option to book on line is not in place yet. Some of the Cains to Tokyo flights are Qantas/JAL code share

Look for QF 60, 69, 167, 168

Regards

Thanks for that good advice - I'll get moving on the multi trip options.