Aus to Aus *A
 

I was just wondering what options I have for Aus - Aus award tickets.

Specifically I would like Perth to Melbourne. I'm guessing my only option would be via AKL on NZ.

Does anyone have any experience with booking an award like this, is it possible on the one ticket or is it counted as two (ie. Per-AKL and AKL-MEL)?

You can get PER-MEL for $149 on Virgin - why would anyone waste points/miles on such a trip?

Agree it would be a waste of miles and also not allowed with NZ as it's backtracking so no can do.

or time... I'd definitely go for $149 and 3.5 hours flying, rather than 10 hours flying plus connection time :)

AUS-AUS is huge weakness for star alliance coverage

concur to fly virgin, or if desperate, tiger...

I agree: buy the ticket and save your miles for something reasonable.

Thanks very much for your input. I guess I am quite new to all this and figured, it might be possible to do it this way and essentially get the two trips. I.E have a stop in AKL and MEL for the price of one ticket. Not to mention get J on both legs.

That depends on the program rules. Of course something like this can be done depending on which miles you use.

It's very unlikely to be allowed. But you'll never know unless you call and ask the FF program.

I am with SQ. At one time, I was trying to make a booking SIN-LAX-KOA(Hawaii). It is the only routing possible between the origin and destination. They told me it was backtracking and I needed to make 2 separate bookings.

IMO, backtracking is not so straight forward to define. Because SQ allows award routing like MEL-SIN-DPS. So, although unlikely, ANZ may allow PER-MEL-AKL. No harm calling them and check.

For example some programs have distance based award charts so they don't care whether you fly from HND via JFK to NRT. It will just cost a lot of miles.

Thanks very much for your input guys, I guess I will stop being Lazy and call them up.

I still do not understand your (IMHO silly) desire to burn your miles in this way...

Try BKK too. :D

SIN is closer then BKK and SQ is a better airlines. Try PER-SIN-MEL.:p

I don't have a huge amount of miles and I think 70000 for 2 business class return tickets to Auckland from Perth is a pretty good redemption on it's own, but if I could sweeten it to include Melbourne as well it would be all the better.

Different strokes for different people I guess.