Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

EXCEPTIONAL DEAL: Heathrow to Melbourne Class, Business, £1084 return

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This is almost certainly the best Black Friday deal out there, but it was kept very low key and I didn’t become aware of it until last night.

Garuda Indonesia is selling Heathrow to Melbourne for £1084 return in Business Class.

This is ludicrously low.

Garuda 777

Even better, Garuda is an impressive carrier with a very good business class cabin.  Here is my review of Garuda’s business class seating.

The details of this offer are:

London to Sydney / Melbourne for a headline price of £1111 (actually £1084)

First Class is also available for £2036 return

Book by Wednesday 30th November

Travel by 30th June 2017

The Garuda website has the details here.

Garuda Business Class

However ….. this fare is tricky to book.  Sydney has most people beaten.

Over at Flyertalk (the thread on this deal is here), one poster has the answer for Melbourne:

Use the Multi City booking option

First flight:  London to Melbourne, departing on a Tuesday or Sunday

Second flight:  Melbourne to Jakarta, departing on a Saturday

Third flight:  Jakarta to London, departing on a Sunday

You must select the Garuda flights, not the codeshares at every stage

I had no trouble getting £1,084 for London to Melbourne on my first try, selecting dates in April.

Garuda Indonesia is a member of SkyTeam so you can credit this flight to a variety of frequent flyer programmes including Flying Blue, the KLM / Air France programme.


best credit card to use when buying flights

How to maximise your miles when paying for flights (December 2024)

Some UK credit cards offer special bonuses when used for buying flights. If you spend a lot on airline tickets, using one of these cards could sharply increase the credit card points you earn.

Booking flights on any airline?

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold earns double points (2 Membership Rewards points per £1) when used to buy flights directly from an airline website.

The card comes with a sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points. These would convert to 20,000 Avios or various other airline or hotel programmes. The standard earning rate is 1 point per £1.

You can apply here.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

Buying flights on British Airways?

The British Airways Premium Plus American Express card earns double Avios (3 Avios per £1) when used at ba.com.

The card comes with a sign-up bonus of 30,000 Avios. The standard earning rate is 1.5 Avios per £1.

You do not earn bonus Avios if you pay for BA flights on the free British Airways American Express card or either of the Barclaycard Avios Mastercards.

You can apply here.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

Buying flights on Virgin Atlantic?

Both the free Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard and the annual fee Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard earn double Virgin Points when used at fly.virgin.com.

This means 1.5 Virgin Points per £1 on the free card and 3 Virgin Points per £1 on the paid card.

There is a sign-up bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points on the free card and 18,000 Virgin Points on the paid card.

You can apply for either of the cards here.

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

3,000 bonus points, no fee and 1 point for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Comments (53)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • fbrj says:

    I’ve just booked this on line and it went straight through.

    Routing is LHR-CGK-MEL

    and back MEL-DPS-SIN-LHR

    A couple of points which might be of interest to others:

    I bought this for my daughter and was concerned that it might “fail” as my credit card details would not match the passenger name (which it defaulted to) – this was not a problem

    All legs booked into I

    The return leg is after 30 June (in my case mid September) – so it seems trip does not have to be completed by then.

    The overnight SIN stopover has better timings as the flight to LHR departs SIN at 11.05am; whereas the equivalent CGK overnight stopover departs 6.00am

  • Will says:

    I love this website! Thanks for highlighting this deal I managed to book for £1080 for a month in Feb. Thanks also to those who posted guidelines in the comments on how exactly to get the deal to work.

    I’m not sure whether it’s best to credit the miles to Etihad or KLM – can anyone offer advice on which loyalty program would allow me to get the most out of them?

    • Rob says:

      Really depends on what you’d like to redeem for. If you’d have enough for, say, Etihad business A380 to Abu Dhabi then that is a great trip but you might not want to do that. More flexibility to spend via KLM across Skyteam. Both are Amex partners so easy to top up.

  • amanda says:

    Trying to book tonight before the offer runs out. would like to get a winter date here ie Jan/feb/march – any suggestions? also did anyone get Sydney working?

    thanks

    Amanda

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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