dave87

Hi,

I´m David. I want to travel with my wife end of this year ( around 20th december) until january (around 11th january) to Australia. We´ll Visit a relativ in Melbourne and also want to see Sydney. So for us it would be okay to fly either to Melbourne or Sydney and back or one destination and from the other back. I leave near the lake of constance so all airports in switzerland, Friedrichshafen, Munich, Stuttgart and also Milan are okay. Also a goal would be to fly business home (or at least one part of the home journey).
I´m SAS Eurobonus Gold and i´ve got abour 135.000 Eurobonus Miles and i would prefeer a SAS Partner or Star Alliance flight.
Maybe some of you can help us with a flight cause i´m searching since weeks and not finding something propper for us. Also the Award booking Site from SAS is a horror...

Best
David

LondonElite

dave87

Hi,

I know. Plan is to pay the flights and try to upgrade with points.

David

Yoshi212

This trip is for 2018? This is going to be tough. You'll have to book an economy/Premium Economy ticket that is eligible for upgrading and then find availability or hope that availability opens up. The waiting game, for the upgrade availability to open up, common about two weeks before flight on such carriers as LH BUT if you're traveling during the winter holiday season (later half of December) revenue management may not open up any as they feel seats will be sold, may be your best bet but it's makes things far from certain and the fares that are eligible tend to be more expensive so you'll buying a higher fare for potentially no reason.

Check the rate for en eligible fare that would allow for an upgrade, check the rate of Star Alliance discount economy tickets, check the rate of Star Alliance Business Class and then compare that with the cost of any non Star Alliance flights so you can determine if it's even worth it.

Mwenenzi

dave87 Welcome to FT

Being close to Christmas & New Year, Wednesday 20 Dec & Friday 11 Jan are in the peak of the peak for travel to/from Australia. 1000's of Aussies living in Eu will be going home at those times. Airlines will be expecting to fill every seat with paying passengers.
People wanting to do that trip with ff miles would have started looking/booking from Jan/Feb 2018.

There are many Star Alliance airline that fly to Australia. More to/from SYD. Flights MEL/SYD are frequent and not that expensive.
But as above you do not have enough ff miles for 2 x business class awards. With SAS ff miles you must book via the web site for awards.
Premium economy may be an option for a cash ticket and/or award flight,

https://www.awardhacker.com/#f=MUC&t...=0&c=j&s=1&p=0

For Star Alliance cross airline upgrades you need to buy a very high priced Y/B/? fare booking class. So useless for most people
https://flights.staralliance.com/en/
https://www.staralliance.com/en/upgrade-awards

UA forum thread, but the process is the same--->How to upgrade with UA miles on Star Alliance carriers

chgoeditor

I'll move this to the SAS forum to get you the best range of responses.
chgoeditor
co-moderator, Info Desk

CPH-Flyer

The price of the fares that are upgradable for Eurobonus points on other Star Alliance carriers means that it is often a better price to buy a discounted business class fare in the first place

Potentially you could find a connection via Beijing or Shangai that would allow you to use your Eurobonus points to upgrade the SK long haul from Copenhagen to the Chinese connection point

RedChili

The dates and destinations you're looking at are probably some of the worst to find award and/or upgrade availability on. Basically, all flights to/from Australia are fully booked at or near to those dates. At this late date, it's difficult to find even paid seats.

If I were you, I'd book seats as quickly as possible, and probably from Milan. Tickets are often cheaper from Milan than from Switzerland or southern Germany.

On those dates on MXP-SYD-MXP, I can find QF (EK metal) at 1160 euros. For Star Alliance, you can fly AI for 1635 or SQ for 2195. In premium economy, it's CX for 2028 or SQ for 2917. In biz, the cheapest is AI for 3261 or TG at 3690.

BrianLeahy

FlyingMoose

I'd get 2x cash+points to a SAS APAC destination such as HKG or PVG and buy a cheap connection to SYD/MEL from those. It'll allow you to burn all your miles, fly whenever you want and minimise cost for the part not covered by miles. Since you'll be getting revenue tickets, you'll earn new miles as well.

highupinthesky

Try to contact the SAS sales office. I just returned from an award trip to Sydney. The amount of points I paid was way below the official amount according to the award price table. I'm EBD, but I have no clue why the the award tickets was so much below the list price, and I even made a 4 day stopover in Japan on the way out. This should not be possible according to the official conditions for the award tickets.

Be aware that if you want to do the trip on Award tickets, you have to be flexible on the dates, and it's almost only Thai you can get at this point in time. Almost all other airlines don't release the award tickets until a few weeks prior to departure.
Thai is using the old 747's on the BKK-SYD route, and strangely I was on HS-TGA (a 17 year old bird) on the outbound leg with the "new" first class cabin. It looked like it was falling apart, and the bird was squeaking and banging with every movement. On the way back it was HS-TGO. It's a 25 year old bird with the old first class cabin. It looked A LOT BETTER, almost unused, and there were no squeaking or banging noise from the plane when it moved.