Sydney is a popular target destination for using frequent flyer miles, probably because the sheer length of the flight means that people are keen to do what they can to avoid travelling in economy.
Ironically, redemption tickets to Australia and New Zealand are often poor value. Mile for mile, buying a cash ticket to Australia in a premium cabin can be relatively cheap. You can often find a business class ticket to Sydney for around £2,000 – although you may end up starting your trip in another European country and flying on an airline you wouldn’t usually consider.
In contrast, an Avios ticket in business class to Sydney is 200,000 points plus taxes. Even assuming that you can find availability – very difficult since the service was switched from 2 x daily 747s to 1 x daily 777 – it is not the best value.
As per the last couple of pages of this Flyertalk thread there are some good British Airways prices currently available out of Oslo. This obviously involves you flying to Norway – at added cost – and then flying back.
The current price at ba.com (book by 8 September for departures in January-March 2015) is 21,547 NOK or £2,059.
The fare rules actually allow up to five stops on your routing. The Flyertalk thread shows, for example, how you can do Oslo – Heathrow – Singapore – Sydney – Perth – Brisbane and back for £2,102. Throwing in Auckland as well gets you to £2,173.
You would also earn a huge amount of Avios points from the flights and probably British Airways Silver status as well, depending on routing.
You can find more details in the Flyertalk thread above – apologies in advance if you find some of the acronyms confusing!
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to see our latest articles on earning and spending your points and click here to see our list of current Avios promotions.)
About Head for Points
Great!
On a side note. Anyone that has the following problem on FT:
I am subscribed to +/- 60 threads, but get only 15 mails maximum per day with updates. Does the software stops sending you mails when you do NOT visit topic for some days?
No, we all have a life.
how to book this with few stops by ba phone?
Phone or with a travel agent – or try the BA and Expedia multicity options
Anyone else stopped receiving the daily emails with blog posts in? Mine haven’t come through since Friday (not in spam folders etc.).
There are occasional issues like this, either accidental or because a different blog – mailed from the same server – has something in it which gets the server blacklisted temporarily.
In September I plan to move to a dedicated mail service which will give me more control.
Is this available from Bergen, too?
I’ve not kept up with discussions on this route but interestingly the BA web site still says that one of their new 380s will be on the Singapore route from October 2014. However, BA are still selling the route as if it is a 777, as mentioned above. Does anyone know if the 380 will be flying return to Singapore in addition to the 777 continuing the through route to Sydney or will the 380 peform the whole trip to Sydney instead of the 777. This LHR-Singapore-Sydney route seems to suffer quite a bit of plane churn and the capacity implications of the above options are considerable for people looking for reward tickets.
I thought the 747 and A380 were mixed up on one rotation (LON-SIN-LON) whilst the 777 would remain daily and continue on to SYD.
Tony, it would appear that the couple of dates I looked at were both 777 and so my picture was distorted, however, based on your comment above I tried a couple more and found the 747/380 mixture you mentioned. Having done LHR-Sydney twice I’ve always found the bottle-neck to be Singapore-Sydney so I guess that won’t change as they continue to phase out the 747 on this route.
I did this sort of fare last November to SYD. I went out to Oslo from LHR the same day, but on an earlier flight than I probably could have, in order to minimise the chance of any delay into Oslo – or retrieving my luggage – causing me to miss the flight back. So year I wasted 12 hours of my life but the savings more than covered my apartment rental in sydney. Anyone doing this trip, please note that at check-in in Oslo, I was asked to present the credit card used to book the flight (not a problem for me, so I dont know what happens otherwise)
I’m looking at flying out to New Zealand starting in Oslo. The flight would mean changing at LHR then HKG then onto AKL. On the way home it’ll fly back the same way. Can I just go home when I get to Heathrow and not use the return leg to Oslo (I will have luggage)? Or do they stop you doing that? Would save me flying to Oslo only to come straight back.
They might stop you doing it. The usual way to get around this is to book the last leg from City or Gatwick so you must reclaim luggage at Heathrow. Unfortunately, BA only flies to Oslo from Heathrow.
Plan B is to book the Oslo flight the next day (but less than 24 hours from landing). This makes it easier to convince check-in staff to just tag your bag to Heathrow ‘because you need it for your overnight hotel’.
I had a massive fight in Bangkok once trying to get a bag tagged to Heathrow and not wherever. They relented in the end but it was a struggle involving various airport staff.
I booked my trip online and placed the final leg a few days after arrival at LHR. When I got home I rang BA and politely informed them that my office required me to be in Paris on the day of my LHR-OSL leg and unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to take the flight…..I would rather do that than simply be a no-show.
The other time I did an ex-EU fare, I booked the ticket as a multi-city, starting in CPH and ending in AMS. The fare was just as good as a CPH-return. The thing is, I actually did want to go to AMS to visit a mate, but was not sure of the date at the time of booking, so I booked the last leg as LGW-AMS for the day after landing at LHR. That way I could pick up my bags at Heathrow, and then when I got home, I rang up and moved the LGW-AMS leg outwards to suit my plans.
Having booked a flight from this thread (Thanks Raffles) after a bit advice on which scheme to claim the miles. Although my wife and I are infrequent flyers through the year we have flown to Oz often. We are currently both gold with Qantas and use our miles for internal reward flights, however with the changes to the Qantas earnings I am looking at other options.
We will probably ‘earn’ more miles with BA Avios than Qantas, even starting at blue, and should hit silver which will bump the miles. We would probably struggle to retain gold with Qantas if I understand the new tier earnings. Another option would be to use my gold Marco Polo, but my wife does not have this status.
Our routing is outbound: OSL-LHR-SIN-SYD-DRW, return: ASP-SYD-SIN-LHR-OSL
I have estimated earning as circa Qantas 36k and 500 tier points, BA 39k and 750 tier points, MP 32k. Do these sound about right, if so BA seems to be the one to go for?
If you won’t redeem Qantas status it may be better crediting to BA. One year of Silver and then a year of Bronze which gets you free seat selection 7 days out.
Your only issue is having miles split across both schemes but that can be ‘managed’, eg booking one redemption using Qantas and the other leg using Avios. Having Avios also lets you access low tax Reward Flight Saver European redemptions.
Thanks, I think the Avios route will be the best