My son is considering a Junior Year Abroad Program next year to Australia. I would like to visit him so I need to start earning those ff miles now. Any suggestions on rapid earning, promotions and which are the best airlines to fly from the east coast to Sydney?

Welcome to Flyertalk, JDC747!

United has the lowest point requirements from the US to Australia, I believe -- 60k miles for coach, 90k for business, and 120k for first.

From New York you can travel purely on United or on a mix of United, Air Canada, and/or Air New Zealand.

If you don't already have a United mileage account, there's a 3000 mile enrollment bonus.

The United Visa has a $60 fee but nets you 20,000 bonus points...

Y'know, you could upgrade that card to a Gold Class Visa for 5000 miles... and nab a Business Visa (if you don't have an ongoing business, just make it for Your Name & Associates) for 15000 miles. So far we're at 43,000 miles.

You can open up a NetBank checking account for up to 7000 miles... or an Ameritrade account for up to 25000 miles.. or an Etrade account for up to 75000 miles..

You can launder any of your Continental miles through Amtrak into United 1:1 up to 25000 miles.

You can transfer Hilton, Marriott, Priority Club, etc. points into United.

You can earn a whole mess of United miles from Sprint with cell or residential service.

Basically it shouldn't be too hard to be flying to Australia in at least business class!


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View from the Wing: A blog about Free Miles and Free Markets

My husband and I booked a trip for next March with American Airline miles - all earned from credit card use. One tip - book early - Seats go rather quickly - I booked in July 2003 for the end of March 2004 and had a hard time getting it to work - Although I did book business class.

I am going on AA BOS - LAX then Qantas LAX -SYD. Some days there are three flights to Sydney and other days only two - this may help with your availability.

Best of Luck.

cejkwj

You are amazing!!!
I wish I was in the US to get all these free miles!



[This message has been edited by tinkybelle (edited 09-29-2003).]

For help in finding the links to all of those wonderful opportunities gleff suggests, go to my web site below and click on the links to the appropriate pages of the site. Also consider all of the free credit cards listed there that produce points transferrable to United or whatever other airline you choose. Shouldn't take very long to get enough miles for a ticket.

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Free Frequent Flyer Miles

Look at the Alaska Airlines forum and check out their promotion for 100,000 mile bonus for flying 35 segments. If he has time to do mileage runs he can accrue the miles to fly in business class for less than the cost of an economy ticket to Australia. And often it is easier to get a business class award than an economy award.

Welcome to FT- you've already had a wealth of info from others, but we could probably help you even more if you provide any info that you wish to provide (current FF balances, whether you'll be earning the miles by flying or partners, if you have any mileage-earning credit cards, etc.) .

Good luck, and congratulations on planning ahead.

I, too believe that UA has the lowest requirements to Australia from NA, and UA can get you there on star partners via Asia.

For Qantas, you usually have to plan ahead, as they're tight on releasing award seats and they partner with the oneworld airlines (AA and BA among them), Continental, US Airways, Alaska (IIRC) and others so there's a lot of demand for award seats.

gleff's excellent answer above I concur with 100% especially re UA.

Qantas just hiked ENORMOUSLY the awards to USA from Jan 1, and you can logically expect AA will follow to this country as they use QF metal for the journey.

The UA Biz award for 90k to OZ in 747s nearly all the way from ANYWHERE USA is THE best bargain out there IMO.

Welcome to FT.

err not quite - just the upgrade awards (ie upgrading from economy to business, or business to first).

For a full award:
JFK-SYD is 275,000 in first class, 220,000 points in business class, and 110,000 in economy. That's using QF miles - the numbers are different using AA or US or CO miles.

UA does seem pretty cheap in comparison. Also keep in mind that award seats on QF are as rare as hen's teeth. If you're using AA miles to secure one of them, you're also up against the QF FFs (like me) who can access award inventory 355 days out - for AA miles this drops to 330 days out.

But if you fly QF, you will have a Skybed in business class by the middle of next year...

(edited for funny code)

[This message has been edited by willyroo (edited 09-30-2003).]

As willyroo says, the QF award chart is staying constant- it's upgrade redemption and accrual (mileage, status credits and upgrade credits) that are changing, IIRC (I have a ton of QF points via Starwood transfers, so I only pay attention to the redemption side of things).

AA, however, just went to a standard award chart for _all_ partners on 1 August:
http://www.aa.com/content/AAdvantage...ne_chart.jhtml

I assume this chart will stay more or less the same for at least a little while (although they only gave one month's notice, which really ticked me off), as I assume AA had to renegotiate partner contracts before instituting the new charts.

While some awards went down in mileage cost with the new chart, QF awards to NZ and Eastern Australia went up to 145K for F and 125 for J (from 135K and 105K)

So, for now, CO and US have QF awards that are less that QF's oneworld partner AA- this ticks me off, too, but is probably only a temporary issue given impending skyteam and *A membership.

Just my 2c -
We have a trip comming up this Dec/Jan flying into Syd and out of Akl.
I went through the hassle of acquiring Business Cl. award seats
I used 130,000 BA mi. for One World Alliance Award Tickets. We are flying American (First) Domestic,(from/return FLL and Qantas (Bus. Cl.) International (from/return LAX) during the very busy Holiday season.
AA domestic (connecting)flight times were more convenient (with more choices) than UA.
BA (One World Alliance) award ticketing was possible 350 days prior to OUTBOUND date and BA held the award seats until the RETURN date was in their computers (350 days prior)and ticketing was possible.
United requires you to wait for your award booking reservation until 331 days prior to the RETURN date is in their computers. They will not hold an OUTBOUND seat resevation.
With limited Bus.Cl. seat availability this makes it virtually impossible to get your OUTBOUND (award) Bus. Cl. seats on a specfic date -
If you are very flexible with your dates - United @ 90,000 mi. for the Bus Cl. Award is the "cheapest" way to go -
Flexible dating wasn't possible for us, the extra miles needed for the award tickets were very well worth the peace of mind knowing our seats were secure.
Traveling companions used AA Awards @ 105,000 mi. (Now raised to 125,000 mi.) They had a very difficult time getting the required dates.
FYI -Thanks to this wonderful message board, We acquired all the necessary mileage through credit card and other promotions - The Savings Bond purchase program was a blessing - too bad it's ending this year!
Good Luck with your plans - remember to start early!

[This message has been edited by ReneeMoss (edited 09-30-2003).]

My son spent 6 months of his senior year at the Univ. of Melbourne and his airfare and living accomodations were included in his package from the college he attended. I did not have to lay out one penny. Did you check into this?

Back to the thread poster's query, United with an anywhere USA award to OZ for 90,000 in Biz versus 125,000 on AA or 220,000 on QF is a no brainer.

Qantas charge 140,000 miles RT just to UPGRADE, and bear in mind, just to upgrade only SYD-LAX. Nonsense stuff.

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~ Glen ~ From exit row seat 15A on a United 747-400 near you SOON!

This brings back memories of my first trip to OZ 8 years ago when my son did a year abroad there. Besides the excellent suggestions you've already gotten here for getting miles on United, you can also buy 25,000 United miles for $696 thru end of December, and another 15,000 Jan 2, 2004. Look at his uni schedule in OZ--they usually have a long break in July, so you might want to go then. If you can only come up with 60,000, go Air New Zealand rather than United--their economy product is much better. It's well worth the trip. Enjoy!