Qantas has started selling seats on its new A380 service from London to Dubai.
I got an email yesterday saying that it was offering 380 seats at £380 each:
We’re offering 380 seats from £380 return economy to Dubai!
From 31 March 2013, you can fly the award-winning Qantas A380 to Australia via Dubai and start your trip in style and comfort. Choose from double daily flights departing London Heathrow and arrive refreshed and ready to start your adventures.
To take advantage of this introductory sale fare to Dubai, depart from London Heathrow between 1 April and 31 May 2013. Offr is valid until seats are sold out.
Flights to and from Dubai are subject to Government and regulatory approval.
As a reminder of the background to this story:
Qantas is dissolving its partnership with British Airways to ‘move in’ with Emirates. Qantas will now route all of its flights to Europe via Dubai, instead of Hong Kong / Singapore / Bangkok, with passengers changing to/from Emirates services where necessary.
The other upshot of this is that BA will have reduced capacity to Sydney from 31st March, since it also used to sell tickets with BA flight numbers on the Qantas services.
If you want to try to grab a £380 ticket to Dubai, the link is here.
Another upshot of this move, of course, is that you will also be able to redeem Avios to Dubai on the Qantas services – although you won’t be able to use an Amex 2-4-1 voucher. As of yesterday, though, redemption flights were not loaded into the Qantas system – indeed, Dubai is not even showing as a destination!
About Head for Points
I have found plenty of availability on SYD-DXB and MEL-DXB in all premium classes, but not the other way round! And as you say, nothing yet on LHR-DXB.
I stand corrected – I have now seen reward flights on BAEC on QF on the LHR-DXB route in October 2013.
Excellent news! Gives us another option for when there is no availability on BA award inventory!!
It will be interesting to see how much the taxes are. I just tried to do a dummy booking and it’s coming up with this:
Error
Sorry, we cannot currently book the journey you have chosen. You may wish to reselect a different cabin, try again later, or call your service center.
Also, they only seem to be a maximum of 2 seats per flight offered which is annoying as I always need 3!
Taxes are pricey….. the same as revenue rates. I priced up a DXB-LHR and it was in the region of £180 in business class for the one way. This would be avoided using AA miles.
I’m not familiar with AA miles, can you book tax free with them?
I don’t know, to be honest. You can certainly use AA miles on Qantas but no idea about tax. Try a dummy booking on the AA website.
Plan B to Dubai is airberlin. Berlin to Abu Dhabi (a one hour bus ride to Dubai) is just 50,000 Avios plus £48 for Business, half that for Economy.
AA website made my head explode. I’m only just getting to grips with using exec club to book with Iberia/lingus and now airberlin. Airberlin could make a very nice stop over and onward business class journey to some far flung regions!