Finally enough (QF) points for first class round world. Need Help!
 

This is my first post and am apologising in advance if I have posted in the wrong thread. I have been saving for 10 years to get enough points so I can take my wonderful husband on a trip of a lifetime. I was looking at the oneworld option and have rang Qantas a couple of times and keep getting different answers. This is the itenary I was hoping to follow,
SYD-LAX transit
LAX-SEA stopover
SEA-JFK stopover
DCA-EDI stopover
IST-DXB stopover
DXB-HKG stopover
SIN-SYD home

Does this meet the QFF rules? If I can't get a flight from LAX to SEA I was wondering if I could use some extra points to get an Alaskan Airways flight from LAX to Vancouver as we are boarding here to go on an Alaskan cruise. I know I have to keep changing my ticket to add each destination so I need some help in planning. We intend to go May 2011-return mid August 2011. Both times I have rang Qantas they were not overly interested in helping me they kept hinting that unless I was making a booking they couldn't really help me. I am trying to be organised so that the bookings do go ahead without any dramas. Thanks

You should find the OneWorld itinerary planner to be helpful:

http://www.oneworld.com/ow/flight-in...your-itinerary

You may want someone who has access to Expertflyer (http://www.expertflyer.com/) and can see the availability of award seats on the flights you are hoping for based on the OW itinerary planner shillard posted above.

I had read that there was a blogger who ran a business helping people redeem their miles - can't remember their name, maybe someone else reading can give details of who they are.

Congratulations and welcome to FT!

I'm not entirely clear from what you outlined. Which cities are your stopovers? E.g., how do you get from JFK to DCA, or EDI to IST?

Are the flights you outlined are the flights you want to redeem? You can redeem a series of one-way flights as per the route you listed, but that may not be the most economical way to go, as you'll have to get to the next city on your dime.

The other option is to get an OneWorld Award. Then you'll have to fine tune the route a little more, e.g., only using OneWorld airlines, which make SEA/YVR a pain to get to.

http://www.qantas.com.au/fflyer/dyn/...s/pointsTables

One sample routing can be:

SYD-LAX-DFW-YVR-JFK-DCA//IAD-LHR-EDI-LHR-IST-AMM-DXB-HKG-SIN-SYD

Now, I haven't checked whether if it complies with all the rules. Obviously some of the cities in the above route are just transits. E.g., if you're short on miles, you can take out LHR-EDI-LHR and do it yourselves overland.

The other factors are what class of travel are you planning and what QFF status do you have?

With regards to QF's non-interest, just keep trying. Some aren't interested if the routing is complex, just call back and try another agent. It is part of their jobs to find you the seat and work out the routing with you. After all, you'll be paying them to do this booking.

However, one of the biggest things is while you need to be flexible on your flights when trying to find seats, once you booked them, don't change. Changing with incur more costs, and that's assuming there'll be availability for you to change to.

Good luck.

You can also get a 5-day free trial, which might be enough to enable you to plan most of your flights. You'll have to use the trial at the right time, however, as award flights aren't made available until 353 days beforehand (when booking through Qantas).

There may be other services available, but the one I've heard of is http://crankyconcierge.com/

jet30d, a few thoughts -

Most airline reservations systems only load flights 355 days (or in some cases, 330 days) in advance. Accordingly, at the moment, flights will only be loaded through about mid-April 2011, so if you are looking to travel in May 2011 - August 2011, none of those flights will be loaded yet and therefore cannot be booked yet (which will make QF very uninterested in helping you, even if they were so inclined in the first place).

You indicate in your subject line that you want to go first class. One thing to bear in mind is that increasingly fewer and fewer airlines have first class any longer and those that do, are withdrawing it except on their key routes. QF, for example, will be removing first class except on its routes to LHR and LAX (both of which you want to fly, at least in part, so at least that is good). International first class is very much an endangered species - there just aren't that many people willing or able to pay for it.

Mileage (award) tickets in first have always been hard to get and will only become more so as the airlines remove first class cabins/seats and try to make sure they sell every single seat. First class SYD (or MEL) - LAX is probably the hardest ticket to get as an award. When the seats are loaded by QF (355 days out), there will be people with their fingers on the keyboard, ready to pounce on whatever award seats are made available. That is also true of business seats.

You don't say how you are planning to get from New York to Washington (train?) or from Washington to Edinburgh, or from Edinburgh to Istanbul. Are you planning on doing this by road/rail etc? You also need to bear in mind that the airlines (including QF and its oneworld partners) don't fly from/to everywhere, so you end up having to route through various places. I can tell you without looking there is no direct service DCA-EDI or IST-DXB and I think AA has only one flight a day SEA-JFK, so you may have to route through Dallas or Chicago.

If I understand what you want to do, you want to -
1. Get to SEA for a cruise
2. Visit New York and Washington in the U.S.
3. Visit Edinburgh
4. Visit Istanbul
5. Visit Dubai
6. Visit Hong Kong
7. Come home.

If you could perhaps explain how you are planning on doing the intermediate parts (Edinburgh to Istanbul, for example) that would probably assist everyone to provide advice as to how best to go about it.

Oh yeah, missed the First Class part. :) Agree with tt7 that, First Class, while nice, won't exist for many of the flights.

I booked a RTW in First Class award a couple of years ago, and looking back, it just wasn't worth while.

From my example routing above, not even half the flights have true first class.

Your routing is highly incompatible with a good F experience; most of the flights either don't have F, have an inferior F (sometimes worse than J), or have very high demand for F (making it impossible to get 2 F awards on the same flight). Either switch to J (which is better than F was not so many years ago -- flat beds in J now, for example, better than F seating was a decade ago). Or change the routing to be more realistic for F (e.g. SYD-HKG-YVR-JFK-LHR-IST-LHR-HKG-SIN-SYD). Presuming you aren't Platinum with QFF there is little chance in getting some of those awards on specific dates (you often need flexibility of a month or 2 to get F award seats). In practice RTW F awards are impossible now for 2 people without high FF status (many flights only have 1 F award seat, and require status to get a 2nd F seat released, for example). J is considerably easier and it looks like most of your routing is in J in any case.

I would really recommend the Oneworld forum. I did an AONE5 five zone RTW F ticket in 2008/9 and they gave invaluable advice as to how to get the best out of the investment. For example, CX fly YVR-JFK international F and we had the cabin to ourselves, it would be easy to get cheap internal flights LAX-YVR as you say. They know all the tricks.

That must have been a real effort to save up those miles :)

Thankyou to everyone that have posted a reply.Much appreciated. Rang Qantas at 1.30am last night and spoke to a lovely young girl. She stated that SYD-LAX QF F was possible , LAX-SEA not. She mentioned we could fly Air Alaska for 14,000 points each to Vancouver. After Cruise make our own way to Seattle and board an AA F to New york. We were going to train to Washington, fly BA F to Edinburg make our own way around Europe. I was thinking BA J from Istanbul back to London then straight onto a BA F to Dubai, but the Qantas girl said an Royal Jordan J flight would take half the time. Then CX J from Dubai to Hong Kong, make our own way to Singapore, then a BA F from SIN to SYD. The long distance flights which are SYD -LAX, SEA- JFK, WAS-EDI and SIN-SYD would all be F Class if I'm vigilant enough to keep changing my tickets on the release dates. I really would like my husband to experience a first class flight as we are an average working couple and this might be our only chance to experience one (it will take probably longer than 10 years this time to save more points). We anticipate being away 90 days (longest time we can get off work). Again thankyou for your help.

Can you clarify what you mean by this? Just to clarify, once the flights are released (330 days out), you can book if there's inventory in the award class. Once you booked, each change will cost more points and potentially more money, and that's assuming there's inventory in the new dates you want.

Unless you want to see SEA, why go there when your cruise starts in YVR?

Also, I don't think there's a direct flight from Washington to Edinburgh, let alone First Class. You'll have to go through London, which is why I suggested earlier that you London to Edinburgh by train.

Here's what I suggest, from my knowledge of F routes. No doubt others can improve on it.

SYD-LAX (QF)
LAX-DFW-YVR (AA)
YVR-JFK (CX - Very difficult to get 2 F award seats)
JFK-DCA (AA or make your own way)
IAD-LHR (BA)
LHR-EDI-LHR (BA, or make your own way)
LHR-IST (BA)
IST-AMM-DXB (RJ, you can go back to LHR on BA and to DXB in F, but it'll take much longer and more expensive, LHR taxes are high)
DXB-HKG (CX, no F here, I don't think, and only regional J, which can be quite poor for such a long flight)
HKG-SIN (CX, very few F here)
SIN-SYD (QF or BA)

This is the most direct routing, but be flexible in order to get to the places you want.

Hi jet 30d and welcome to Flyertalk.

Just a couple of things for you to note.

SEA-JFK will be Domestic US First class and as such is not very special at all. This is the same as Qantas domestic business class. In fact in terms of service, food and beverage quality it is LESS than domestic business class here in Australia.

Secondly, WAS-EDI will only be in F for the trans-atlantic sector - the connection from London to EDI will be regular domestic UK business, which is pretty much the same as economy class.

I think you were spot on wanting to fly IST back to London and then fly First Class on BA from London to Dubai.

Forget that Royal Jordanian is half the time (which it is!) - but you wll be missing BA First with all the perks of Heathrow - including the Concorde room - which is a great experience. Plus you get to fly BA F which is very very good.

Also - please be aware that certain flights operated by Cathay Pacific between Dubai and hong Kong operate with regional business class. Again, this is pretty much the same as Qantas domestic business class (but this time it is a little better with more leg room). By the time you wish to travel this may have changed, but at the moment, only one flight a day is showing with the new flat bed business class.

regards

lme etc etc

As mentioned SEA-JFK isn't really memorable (LAX-JFK does have real F service on AA, but SEA-JFK does not and it is worse than QF J MEL-SYD for example). CX J YVR-JFK would be far nicer, and you may be able to get CX F awards (they do exist, just scarce). IAD-LHR on BA isn't a nice route (have you considered DCA-MIA-LHR-EDI -- much nicer flight in BA F than IAD-LHR with extra flight time and MIA is fun to visit). DCA-JFK-LHR is also a possibility (that gets you the great BA Concorde Room at JFK with real dinner service, again much nicer than IAD).

DXB-HKG is pretty grim, on RTW tickets I always book DXB-LHR-HKG and there are no UK taxes on transits (only for stopover). LHR-HKG awards are easy to get (served by lots of flights, incl. BA/QF/CX). J on RJ is pretty good, so IST-AMM-DXB-LHR-HKG might be the best way if the award rules allow it. That would get you 5 good F legs (vs. the 3 you have in the original routing).

[QF Mod Hat]

I think we now agree the best place for this is the OW Forum...

[/QF Mod Hat]

Be aware that the QFF Oneworld award rules are completely different from the Aadvantage Oneworld award rules -- considerably more restrictive as well as more expensive for similar awards. Presumably the OP is redeeming QFF award, so many of the non-QFF Oneworld award routings would be illegal for their award. The primary limitation is max of 5 stopovers, only 2 transits in any city and 35,000 mile max (vs. the 50K mile max on AAdvantage), and surface segments count in the distance. The OP's base trip is syd-lax-sea-jfk-dca-lhr-edi-lhr-ist-dxb-hkg-sin-syd which is 28K miles.
The lhr-edi-lhr portion maxes out lhr, so ist-lhr-dxb or dxb-lhr-hkg is not allowed, for example. One solution would be stopover at lhr (train to edi or separate ticket), and do dxb-lhr-hkg as the 2nd transit of lhr. That would be 34K miles, so allowed distance-wise.