How do I make a booking to Australia with oneworld partner reward chart?

[aussieinworcester]

Hi,
I need some help please after recently reading this article (https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/01/29/avios-multi-partner-reward-chart/) about getting to Australia using AVIOS Redemption points on the multi partner reward chart.

Do i achieve this by phoning BA directly and booking over the phone or is it possible to search all of the partner airlines reward flight availability in one location online somewhere ?

Seatspy only covers a few of them.

Thanks
Brad

[memesweeper]

You can search for availability on BA or Cathay sites, but you’ll need to do it sector by sector. Once you’ve sorted your flights and dates phone BA.

[ZoeB]

It can be a tedious process finding the flights you need depending on which cabin you want to fly in. We are going at the end of Feb. London – Doha – Hanoi (husband requested stop here for 8 days) Hanoi – KUL – Adelaide. Then on the way home Melbourne – Perth – KUL (48 hours break) -Mumbai – London.
These are all business except Hanoi – KUL and Mumbai- London
We weren’t over run with Avios and by booking the longest leg in Premium Economy it all prices for Premium Economy .
I couldn’t make sense of how they calculated the taxes as they came to more than all of the flights redeemed individually.
If we hadn’t started in London it would have cut the taxes.

[Mikeact]

As has been said before on here….do a search…it is NOT for the feint hearted in my opinion, having done it twice now.
You need a call handler that knows his/her way around
You need paper/pen…and all your tech bits open…phone, tablet, PC etc.
Have ready your alternatives when the call handler tells you…too late..seats gone. Quickly refer to your open phone to double check
And as for the final payment of ‘taxes’….just pay..as they don’t make sense
One small/bigger point…the whole itinerary will be charged at the longest segment, ie If Economy is the longest, then that’s how the whole lot will be charged…regardless of how many Businees sections you can book at the same time
I could go on..but these for starters
Good luck…and if you have a heart problem…forget it….the stress will get to you.
ps Oh, and don’t leave any mileage over….try and get a short weekend break somewhere, to use up the absolute maximum if you can.

[Colin MacKinnon]

Now if I book the whole ticket – except the final flight – in F or Biz, and the final, and longest keg is in Economy, would it be worth it to stop the last leg? Interesting thought!

[phantomchickenz]

Or just book via Qatar. I’ve just booked Melbourne for next Christmas for 180,000 return.

[MilesOnPoint]

@Phangomchickenz can I ask how you have managed that?

I’ve been closely monitoring Qatar redemptions in Business class LHR-DOH-MEL and MEL-DOH-LHR and I’ve not seen a single seat at the standard 90,000 Avios pricing (very few J seats and any being released are 2x Avios, so 180,000 Avios each way) for Xmas this year. The last “90,000 Avios J seats” I saw were for 8th December 2023.

In the end I booked on BA for the outbound (flying 27th December 2023 to SYD). Hoping to get Qatar back from Melbourne in mid-January but not feeling very optimistic…

[Mikeact]

Colin MacKinnon wrote:

Now if I book the whole ticket – except the final flight – in F or Biz, and the final, and longest keg is in Economy, would it be worth it to stop the last leg? Interesting thought!

Difficult to work out how to do that as presumably last leg would be to get back home and the whole point for us is J all the way…unless of course, you’d be happy to go down the back.

[phantomchickenz]

MilesOnPoint wrote:

@Phangomchickenz can I ask how you have managed that?

I’ve been closely monitoring Qatar redemptions in Business class LHR-DOH-MEL and MEL-DOH-LHR and I’ve not seen a single seat at the standard 90,000 Avios pricing (very few J seats and any being released are 2x Avios, so 180,000 Avios each way) for Xmas this year. The last “90,000 Avios J seats” I saw were for 8th December 2023.

In the end I booked on BA for the outbound (flying 27th December 2023 to SYD). Hoping to get Qatar back from Melbourne in mid-January but not feeling very optimistic…

I’m outbound on 8th December 😉

The Christmas period itself is likely to be tough, but if your return is flexible into January ‘23 you should be okay

[ZoeB]

I had originally hoped to go out over this Xmas but after many hours spent try to string a set of flights together gave up and pushed it out a few months.

[carpentr]

Just to add my own data point I have just booked a trip LHR-DXB-HKG-PER-SYD BNE-KUL-CAI-LHR

Mostly in J, but with the longest leg in PE and one in Economy. The actual ticket prices for the two of us would have been north of £20k, but the actual taxes/charges came to just over 2K. (No idea how that was calculated – I think they just throw dice). Because the longest leg is in PE (it’s a daytime flight) it priced at 360000 avios. I make that almost exactly 5p/avios.

The process was tortuous – it took three attempts to get anyone who know what they were doing, but this seemed to be because the telephone system was misrouting me. Once I used the 0800 number (and waited – I’m Blue) for the executive club I quickly got someone who was completely on top of the process and dealt with it very well. They sent it to fares who emailed and called back within a few hours. Ticketing was straightforward – the longest bit was listening to a list of all the flights and times! It was definitely worth double-checking all the availailities immediately before calling up – I would not have wanted to find alternatives sine it’s already quite late – this is for Augest this year.

So very well worth it!