Ideas for Most Efficient Award
 

G'day, everyone.

I'm off SYD-JNB in December, and was wondering what the smartest way to do this as a o/w F award would be.

Sure, I get get the QF points from Amex MR AU, but it's a painful number of points.

Any suggestions for which program has the best bang for the buck (ie the program that will allow me to trade on CC for a member's points for the least number of my own points (Amex, UA, and DL are preferable))?

Let me know if my question is horribly unclear.

Cheers,

Steven

Yes horribly unclear :confused: :confused:
Are you wanting or have an award flight or want to earn miles on a credit card or freq flyer program?

Whats you defintion of effecient ?
Very few airlines offer one way awards. QF does

If I understand the OP correctly, looking to make an award F SYD-JNB one way. Looking for the cheapest option (using a trade if necessary from UA DL or Amex).

If it costs lots of points using Amex then it will likely also cost a lot of Amex points to trade into another program (eg AA).

That said, if the OP is travelling December 2008 (rather than 2009) I think the bigger issue is whether there are any awards available at all. When I've looked at this route in the past for awards I've seen very minimal availability in F or J.

Kiwi, I was shocked by the availability, which exists on the exact dates I was hoping for.

And, yes, you interpreted my post correctly.

I could trade for AA points - not a good deal b/c of the RT requirement.

Amex AU for me translates to 80k US points (approximately). I'm wondering if you can think of any reasonable way to get myself the necessary points (ostensibly using CC, but can do SPG transfers, etc.) from any program to get this o/w flight that would have a total final cost to me of less than 80k US Amex MR points.

There are unlikely to be any F award seats on Qantas available next month. edit -oh yes on Dec 3,4, 10,11, 24,25. But at QF's horribly high rates you would have to cough up a colossal 126,000 miles for the one-way F journey. That's a "QF classic" award of course, not the laughable million-point "anytime" award.

Have a look at the BD forum, you don't have to fly on British Midland to be in it. You can join BD 4 times and immediately buy up to 80,000 miles for your (real) account for £255 per 20,000. (Or trade on CC for someone to do this for you.) Then you can book awards, one way miles+cash, for eg
SYD-ZRH 50,000 miles + £340 cash + tax (or use your orphan QF miles)
ZRH-JNB 25,000 miles + £170 cash + tax
(Sadly Lufthansa F is out-of-bounds to BD miles+cash, unless you encounter an uninformed operator at the BD ICC.)

For a slighly shorter route there's an SQ SIN-JNB but no F class on it, a one way business class award SYD-SIN-JNB via the BD program would be 37,500 miles + £255 cash + tax if you could find a seat.

edit- Don't even bother looking for an award seat on SAA from Perth, there aren't any. And there's no F any more. But if you did find a C award PER-JNB it would be 30,000 miles + £200 + tax on the BD program.