littlenick

Hi everyone! Newbie here in the miles & points realm. I live in the south Seattle area in WA and planning a vacation to Sydney in the near future. I have started to look into flights but have not yet set a date. Checking google flights, I saw that a one way to Sydney would cost around $850-900 (economy on non peak months) and around $4-5k or more for business class which is way over my budget which is why I would opt to redeem miles and points from credit cards that I have (Citi, Chase and Capital One).

1)Is Aeroplan the best travel partner for this points exchange? If not, which one is?
2)How much typically in points is business class if I get lucky to snag one?
3)Any tips to get the price down with connecting flights and such?

Any input would be appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

YOWgary

With your first post, welcome to Flyertalk.

North-America-to-Australia is consistently among the toughest business-class awards to get with nearly any airline; under Aeroplan's old fixed-price model it was simply never available, under the current dynamic-pricing model it regularly clocks in north of 400,000 points one-way.

If your goal is a one-off trip - as opposed to perks for regular, consistent travel - then you really have no incentive to stick too closely to any one program, at which point you could really just play around with combinations of dates and airlines on Google Flights until you find one you like.

littlenick

"400,000 points one-way."- Holy cow!! Good luck to me if I ever amass that many. Thanks for replying to my post! Tinkering on google flights I shall do then.

TheCanuckian

As the other individual said, it can be a very tough route to get for a reasonable number of points in business class. It can be easier and more reasonable in premium economy and economy. So it just depends on whether you’re willing to endure 15 hours in something other than business.

angetenar

If you can open a United credit card, you get access to additional economy award space which can be really helpful. I routinely see such award space available on traditionally difficult routes. Of course, whether or not you are willing to do 15 hours in economy is another question.

ZenFlyer

I just took an award trip to Australia in March (in business), and agree that these are expensive and sometimes hard-to-find awards on any airline. If Aeroplan is regularly 400,000 for a one-way ticket though, then I do think United may have more offerings of interest to you. My award tickets (obtained in October) were half that price, and a super quick search of current awards shows many around 250,000 one way (again, in business). However, a lot depends on what time of year you are going -- our summer in North America is their winter and vice versa, which affects demand. Be sure to compare different arrival points in Australia, including Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, among others. If you want/need to stick with Star Alliance, New Zealand Airways may also be an option, with a connection in Auckland. They have something called "Skycouch" on certain flights by which you can reserve an entire row in economy in order to sleep. It's obviously more expensive than a single economy seat but usually less expensive than business.

Although getting a bit far afield of Air Canada-related discussion, I'll mention that Virgin Australia recently resumed flights to the US and has some kind of partnership with United now (though I don't know if you can redeem United miles for their flights). And that Fiji Airways can be a good bargain for business class seats between Australia and LAX. Good luck!

Edited to add: While Virgin is *marketing* flights to the US, all of them are currently codeshares operated by United.

angetenar

UA business awards to Australia start at 80k I believe (I or IN); 250k is the dynamically priced award availability (JN). Economy awards start at 40k (X or XN).

Do you have a source for the Virgin Australia US flights? They don't have any widebodies anymore and they did recently resume HND but on a 737. You can redeem UA miles for VA flights.

Adam Smith

Since the answer to the OP's question seems to be "no" and this is likely a more wide-ranging discussion than AC/Aeroplan, I'm moving this thread to the Oceania forum.

Adam Smith
AC Forum Moderator

ZenFlyer

I had read something about service resuming, but was just going by their website, which is advertising flights to the US: https://www.virginaustralia.com/en-a...-united-states But looking at that more closely now, I can see that all of those "Virgin Australia" flights are actually operated by United. My apologies for the incorrect info above.

Mwenenzi

littlenick Welcome to FT & Aussie
As posts above, business class awards USA/Canada<---->AU/NZ have been one of the hardest award to get over the years. And more so now with less capacity and a lot of demand from AU. Cash prices are higher than 2019 and many people are wanting to travel.

Just looking for SYD restricts you options a lot and then some. Australia does not equal Sydney. BNE can have award availability when SYD and MEL does not
Are often threads in the airline sub forums about USA/Canada<---->AU business awards. AA & AS have dedicated threads. No one airline or frequent flyer program is "best" for USA/Canada<--->AU.

From another thread
Airlines that fly USA/Canada to/from Australia.

Following the pandemic, routes are being re-established and some new routes. Schedules can change. Route restart dates subject to change.

• Air Canada AC YVR – SYD BNE [Star Alliance] .
  
• Air New Zealand NZ LAX ORD SFO IAH JFK YVR – AKL – Australia various[Star Alliance]
  
• Air Tahiti Nui TN LAX SEA via PPT Tahiti & AKL. Last segment on QF codeshares. (AA AS partner) [SEA new route March 2023]
  
• American Airlines AA LAX-SYD [OneWorld Alliance]
  
• Delta DL LAX – SYD. [Skyteam Alliance]
  
• Fiji Airways FJ LAX SFO HNL YVR– NAN - BNE SYD MEL ADL. (OneWorld Alliance connect.)
  
• Hawaiian HA HNL – SYD. Pre CV19 also used to fly to BNE ( AA VA partner)
  
• Jetstar JQ HNL – SYD. Pre CV19 also used to fly to/from BNE & MEL.
  
• Qantas QF SYD - LAX DFW HNL YVR*; BNE - LAX ; MEL- LAX DFW. {* seasonal}. SYD – SFO due to restart 22 May 2023. SYD-AKL-JFK planned from 14 June 2023. [OneWorld Alliance]
  
• United UA MEL - SFO LAX, SYD - IAH* LAX SFO, BNE-SFO (new route 2022) {* seasonable}.[Star Alliance]. (VA partner)
  
• and others via Asia, South America & Middle East