What's the easiest and earliest way of hearing of these special deals on QR?

So many forums! Great - thanks for the tip.

As you can see on the premium fare deal forum at the moment QR have a good price to Adelaide so if you're flexible something will appear along these lines.

QR Valentine’s Deals from ARN/OSL - Adelaide from 1333 GBP pp

EK are stopping TT effective 25-Mar-18 (with the exception of SYD-CHC)
SQ are stopping CBR-WEL after April 30 2018

Regards,

BD

I believe you can upgrade the Gold to Plat and get a nice bonus! Perhaps a search here on on Head For Points will explain, or even just give Amex a call.

I understand Amex don't really worry about income anymore either!

So maybe refer your mum etc.....!

Hi everyone, thanks for your help on this - lots of good ideas to look at! :)

So I have spied the Chinese New Year deal on BA, and (for the first time ever) have been able to get the deal to work for our potential dates. Obviously this deal won't last forever, but seeing as one of our (my) stopover ideas was Beijing and the Great Wall, wondering if there's any inventive routings PEK/PVG to/from SYD/AKL?

If you want to visit the Great Wall, go to PEK. PVG is a long way away :)

CX (or KA, Cathay Dragon, their regional subsidiary) would take you PEK-HKG-AKL and several carriers would take you PEK-(CX/KA)-HKG-(various)-SYD

Of course - am thinking for the way back! :)

In both PEK and PVG you can do transit without visa (assuming you have a suitably powerful passport, UK will do), check the FT Destination China forum for the gory details. You do not need a single ticket for this, a separate onward flight is fine. The Chinese immigration authorities only check that you do not exceed the time limit and that you are generally not undesirable from their point of view; it's basically a rubber stamp exercise for most people. This alleviates the cost and time of getting Chinese visas if the length of the TWOV is sufficient for your needs. I will say that you can hit most of the highlights of Beijing in 2-3 days: Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Great Wall, walk around the hutongs, hit a few markets, eat a pile of Chinese food.

BA to PEK often has good fares, upgrade space, reward availability, etc. I've done BA to PEK followed by CX or JAL to HKG or Japan respectively a couple of times. Note that TWOV must be *transit* onwards to a third destination (HKG counts), no return trips allowed. However with both JAL and CX available within Oneworld for regional connections and QF onwards to SYD, it's rarely difficult to arrange for a transit.

Hello everyone, thanks for all your help!

Just bumping this to see if there's any other new deals that have surfaced in time for Easter that I should keep an eye out for? We're doing logistics this weekend so would be good to know if there's anything out there.

It's fair to say everybody concerned isn't exactly sold on a DOH stopover at the moment, so I suspect we might be more likely to go for CX in PE and try and upgrade post-purchase. a. is such an upgrade possible? b. I am open to being sold on the perks of a DOH stopover (including ease or otherwise of getting to DXB) if they exist... ;)

Air Chinas has deals from Germany (FRA/DUS/MUC). If you live with it not being a routing on OW, that you'll be flying CA via China (with all the drawbacks that come with it), and provided your traveling dates don't fall into the blackout periods, then you could fly to AKL for a mere 1,762€ (~£1,540).

I've checked random dates in August and they have the 747 (without saying whether it's their newer 747-8 or an aging -400) on the FRA-PEK leg and the 787-9 on the PEK-AKL leg. On the dates I checked, you'd have nearly 14hrs in PEK on the outbound and 9hrs in PEK on the inbound.

Personally I'd wait to see if QR makes another sale. The CA sale repeats itself every month (i.e. you wouldn't have to decide now as the offers likely to reappear towards the end of April).

CX also codeshares on NZ flights HKG-AKL (but you can only earn on CX on that). As another has said, QF codeshares on EK are available, and EK still flies SYD-CHC as well as DXB-AKL, so you can go T-T on a QF codeshare on an EK A380, otherwise there is no shortage of T-T flights on QF from AKL/WLG/CHC, but only AKL has A330s. LA also has a single SYD-AKL daily as has been mentioned.

Of course there is also MH if you dare (both KUL to SYD and AKL). Another option is JL, with good fares (and excellent product) from SYD and MEL through Tokyo, and of course JL, BA and AY through to LHR.