Aus/NZ in Feb 2024 for around 6 weeks

[yorkshireRich]

Firstly, I accidentally posted this in the American Express topic, but I feel this one is slightly more appropriate. If Rob is reading this, please feel to delete which you see fit. So, I’m just looking this morning and exploring best opportunities to plan ahead. We are looking at Aus and New Zealand (where family are) for Feb 2024. There will be 2 of us and hopefully an infant. We would in a perfect world go to Sydney and Adelaide and then fly to wellington and then back to home to the Uk from there, with possibly a stop off in Singapore. I am mindful I have travelled a fair bit, but never with an infant, so these plans may be ambitious.
As it stands, we currently have around 150k avios each at present, and will in a couple of months time, have a new style 2-4-1 voucher.
Is the best option, ring up on 365 days before at 10 minutes before midnight to get a 2-4-1 voucher. As it stands, I don’t think I have enough Avios to actually do that though. Is the other option flying Qatar? Have I missed anything glaringly obvious?. If all else fails, we will just pay cash for economy, but thankyou in advance for all suggestions.

[The Savage Squirrel]

355 days, not 365. Your Avios would serve you well flying between Sydney, Adelaide and Wellington on QANTAS in front-of-plane comfort with negigible cash cost, so don’t despair at all if you can’t end up using them on the trip out. Bear in mind there are no direct flights from Adelaide to Wellington (1/day to Auckland) so you may want to see if your itinerary can be made more efficient (Adelaide then Sydney?) if you want to minimise number of flights and transits.

[yorkshireRich]

Thanks SS. We are certainly going to wellington, that’s well our base would be. If it’s not great going to Adelaide then we would just swerve that. So from this, maybe a return from LHR to Sydney. Book the other flights separate?

[ToffeeTom]

yorkshireRich wrote:

Firstly, I accidentally posted this in the American Express topic, but I feel this one is slightly more appropriate. If Rob is reading this, please feel to delete which you see fit. So, I’m just looking this morning and exploring best opportunities to plan ahead. We are looking at Aus and New Zealand (where family are) for Feb 2024. There will be 2 of us and hopefully an infant. We would in a perfect world go to Sydney and Adelaide and then fly to wellington and then back to home to the Uk from there, with possibly a stop off in Singapore. I am mindful I have travelled a fair bit, but never with an infant, so these plans may be ambitious.
As it stands, we currently have around 150k avios each at present, and will in a couple of months time, have a new style 2-4-1 voucher.
Is the best option, ring up on 365 days before at 10 minutes before midnight to get a 2-4-1 voucher. As it stands, I don’t think I have enough Avios to actually do that though. Is the other option flying Qatar? Have I missed anything glaringly obvious?. If all else fails, we will just pay cash for economy, but thankyou in advance for all suggestions.

If you have 150k Avios each and struggle to secure the BA seats with your voucher, you could do economy one way (45k) and business the other (90k) with Qatar. These are their standard redemption rates – seats are also sometimes available for double the amount of Avios.

Assuming you are based in Yorkshire (by your username!), this would also have the advantage of flying from Manchester -> Doha -> your first stop (Adelaide, Sydney and Auckland are served by this route). The only issue with this is that there does not seem to be guaranteed or predictable levels of standard reward availability on Qatar. I have been checking Qatar’s reward seat release daily in recent weeks – reward seats are released until 01/01/24 at the time of writing, but as far as I can tell there have not been any standard reward seats released for the Auckland route over the Christmas 2023 period. I suspect that this is because it is a popular time to travel and you may have more luck for February (just had a quick look and there is still availability for Feb 2023).

Bear in mind that your Avios need to be visible in your Qatar account (by linking with your BA account) to search reward seat availability.

[_aDifferentSimon_]

keep saving until your have another 30k each and forget about the 241s this trip?
https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/10/14/how-to-get-to-australia-new-zealand-with-avios-points/

I lived in welly for 4 years and think feb is the absolute best time to visit.

Incidentally, if you have amex plat – some of the welly restaraunts may well sell a gift voucher over the phone if you wanted to use your 2023 overseas credit.

[marks7389]

You don’t say which cabin you’re looking to travel in, nor whether the 150K you have is each or between you.

In principle it is doable, if challenging. At the lowest Avios point for WT you’re looking at as little as 22,800 Avios return off-peak with a new style 2for1 (albeit plus £820 cash each). I can’t see what the pricing options are now for the other cabins as availability goes very quickly but you may find something that works in WT+/CW if you’re willing to pay enough cash and/or top-up your Avios in advance.

As you’ve recognised though the issue is that you have to be on it as soon as the availability is released. Personally I’d deal with it online setting up all the traveller and payment details before hand, an approach that I’ve found to be successful. If you call you may have a better chance of having an agent secure the seats but only if they are on it at the dot of midnight which means timing the call so they answer it in time without being too early. For the return flight you’re probably going to have to call them to use the voucher anyway (on the assumption you have insufficient Avios to book online and claim the 50% rebate afterwards).

[marks7389]

ToffeeTom wrote:

Bear in mind that your Avios need to be visible in your Qatar account (by linking with your BA account) to search reward seat availability.

That’s not necessary to book Qatar redemptions via ba.com. In fact in this scenario it’s unlikely to help much as, from what others have reported, I believe you can’t book a redemption including an under-two directly on the Qatar website.

[ToffeeTom]

marks7389 wrote:

ToffeeTom wrote:

Bear in mind that your Avios need to be visible in your Qatar account (by linking with your BA account) to search reward seat availability.

That’s not necessary to book Qatar redemptions via ba.com. In fact in this scenario it’s unlikely to help much as, from what others have reported, I believe you can’t book a redemption including an under-two directly on the Qatar website.

That is true, though it is also the case that you can search reward availability further ahead on Qatar than BA.com (notwithstanding the issue about infant bookings in this particular case!) I find Qatar’s website quite buggy and not particularly user-friendly at times.

[marks7389]

ToffeeTom wrote:

That is true, though it is also the case that you can search reward availability further ahead on Qatar than BA.com (notwithstanding the issue about infant bookings in this particular case!) I find Qatar’s website quite buggy and not particularly user-friendly at times.

Yes, par for the course it seems with aviation websites. I had problems attaching our BA Exec Club numbers to a Qatar redemption booked via their website – booked that way because I wanted to jump in at T-261 – which I could only fully resolve in the end by calling them. I still think I have a problem whereby logging into the Qatar app seems to lock me out of the website, which I think is something to do with failing OTP authentication. In theory I might be able to fix it by disabling the OTP authentication on every login, but the controls to do it were unresponsive in both Firefox and Chrome when I tried.

[yorkshireRich]

Thanks for all for superb advice, and as for the overseas credit been used as a gift card, this was extremely useful indeed.
I have never had to book a reward ticket for an infant also, so this is obviously alien to me. Then there’s the usual topic that pops up about infants in classes other than economy.

I find the qatar website horrific to use in truth. Also although Manchester is just over an hour away, I don’t mind using LHR as it’s more consumer friendly than Man, and the T4 reviews and experience seem to be quite good. Again, maybe that’s not with “parent” goggles on, as I may have to take things abit simpler.

[phantomchickenz]

For the Qatar website – log in, then click “privilege club” -> “Redeem my Avios” and use that search page. Pretty simple, shows what’s available, and doesn’t require the Avios in your account (unless booking of course).

[marks7389]

marks7389 wrote:

Yes, par for the course it seems with aviation websites. I had problems attaching our BA Exec Club numbers to a Qatar redemption booked via their website – booked that way because I wanted to jump in at T-261 – which I could only fully resolve in the end by calling them. I still think I have a problem whereby logging into the Qatar app seems to lock me out of the website, which I think is something to do with failing OTP authentication. In theory I might be able to fix it by disabling the OTP authentication on every login, but the controls to do it were unresponsive in both Firefox and Chrome when I tried.

If the whole OTP setting change thing is confusing anyone else, I’ve just worked it out…

Click on the “Change OTP settings” link within the profile page, which presents a pop-up in which it looks like you should be able to amend the settings. In a weird piece of User Interface design, you can’t. You have to first click on the Edit button (which I’d obviously assumed was for confirming the change submission when I tried it previously), then you can change the settings and confirm the change.

[phantomchickenz]

Out of interest what is the value in attaching an Exec club number to a redemption booking?

[JDB]

phantomchickenz wrote:

Out of interest what is the value in attaching an Exec club number to a redemption booking?

Inter alia, seat selection if applicable and occasional visitation by the TP/Avios fairy.

[marks7389]

phantomchickenz wrote:

Out of interest what is the value in attaching an Exec club number to a redemption booking?

Limited in the case of our Qatar business class redemption. Some additional baggage allowance in the unlikely event we need it, but it never does any harm to have status on a booking just in case they are looking for candidates to offload/downgrade or in the case of disruption – especially since our one way to the UK has no EC261 protection.

Seat selection is the big one for any BA redemptions, especially in Club World.

[james747]

Hi
I keep looking for NZ availability from London in business with Qatar at 180K avios each way but only ever seem to find Q2 options at double the rate. Does anyone have any tips on how to find these seats?
Cheers
James

[truthbetold]

james747 wrote:

Hi
I keep looking for NZ availability from London in business with Qatar at 180K avios each way but only ever seem to find Q2 options at double the rate. Does anyone have any tips on how to find these seats?
Cheers
James

Tip is to keep trying. You will eventually get lucky. Not sure if availability is now lighter given the Qatar flight from AKL no longer stops at ADL.

[truthbetold]

And I suggest you search solo one ways – you can always cancel if you don’t manage to build the itinerary you want.

[yorkshireRich]

Now this topic as been resurrected, I thought I would update.

For Jan 2024 I booked LHR to SYD on QR, then a week later flying BNE to NAN. After a week I will fly from Fiji to Wellington. We will be using Wellington as a base for a month.

We then will fly AKL to KUL on Malaysia Airlines then after 2 days fly to Singapore, where we will then fly back to Manchester on QR.

Even though this post was more a brain storming exercise, thanks again to people who helped me plan and gave me advice and info.

[zapato1060]

yorkshireRich wrote:

Now this topic as been resurrected, I thought I would update.

For Jan 2024 I booked LHR to SYD on QR, then a week later flying BNE to NAN. After a week I will fly from Fiji to Wellington. We will be using Wellington as a base for a month.

We then will fly AKL to KUL on Malaysia Airlines then after 2 days fly to Singapore, where we will then fly back to Manchester on QR.

Even though this post was more a brain storming exercise, thanks again to people who helped me plan and gave me advice and info.

I need to remember to read the initial date of posting. When you put “I am looking to go away in Jan 2024”. I thought the hopefulness is off the Richter. Enjoy your trip. Did you end up in Y or J?

[yorkshireRich]

The long haul flights on Qatar are in J which I’ve secured a bassinet for. I’m aware of aircraft changing though. The Auckland to Kuala Lumpur is in Y which I Cannot say I’m particularly looking forward but Im hoping all 3 of us sleep for a good few hours as it’s an overnight flight. Hopefully I can secure a Bassinet for it, but not overly confident.

The Fiji flights are economy but I noticed there was availability in J but the wife told me to save the avios for another day. Besides the aircraft isn’t an A350 from Brisbane as it is from Sydney/Melbourne etc. I’ve looked and we wouldn’t get lounge access either but as we have priority pass, that isn’t a massive issue.

[louie]

BNE – NAN…. morning flight I hope? The PP lounges are only open in the mornings so if you are on the late flight you will need to make other arrangements.

[yorkshireRich]

louie wrote:

BNE – NAN…. morning flight I hope? The PP lounges are only open in the mornings so if you are on the late flight you will need to make other arrangements.

yep, 11:20.

[truthbetold]

Did you manage to use a avios multi carrier rate? Frankly they seem almost impossible to plan

[yorkshireRich]

truthbetold wrote:

Did you manage to use a avios multi carrier rate? Frankly they seem almost impossible to plan

I hadn’t even heard of this until you posted it. I then did an extremely quick search and read the rules, and I’m undecided whether to look into it more as I may potentially be thinking I’ve messed up
Slightly. Having said, I’m happy with the flights I’ve booked and the Avios I’ve used etc. i say this because it doesn’t look 180,000 Avios to Sydney is anything like as easy as it was when I booked it.