Originally Posted by
creampuff
It is not hard to do if you are (a) flexible or (b) lucky.
I have a return J LHR-SYD trip for two people booked for next week (I used my AA miles). I could have gone F but I didn't have quite enough points and didn't feel like buying them. In my case it was (b) - lucky because getting an award premium cabin flight just before Christmas is not easy, but at the time I booked there was both F and J.
F is often easier to find than J for the above reason.
The outbound is on BA and QF and the return is on QF only.
I don't use BAEC but from what I've read the award search engine is crap. I use AA or QF or ExpertFlyer to search. ExpertFlyer is limited usefulness as you can only search one airline at a time, but AA and QF will search everything. If you don't have a AA or QF account, then set one up and start searching. QF has better availability to higher tier (e.g. OW Emerald) flyers, so you just join QF you will be OW Zero for search purposes.
Hi creampuff....super advice....so much for my supposed efforts over the years. All makes good sense and I'm going to start looking at those options this evening.
Is a lot of layers in our planning. I have an insane amount of IHG points but never had time to use them properly. If we can secure the flight then wife is going to retire early and we will take about 45 days there. Been most places...never went there.
The flights for me have always been the stumbler but can see now a wealth of tools and options I frankly had no idea about. I need be spending more time on FT I think. Is super advice and will trying it. Cheers