AROUND THE WORLD ON POINTS – BUSINESS CLASS

# AROUND THE WORLD TRIP – 10th JULY – 10TH OCTOBER, 2019 – How to fly business class around the world using Qantas frequent flyer points

After a year of planning, the day has finally arrived! We are on a rather dated Cathay Pacific A330-300 plane and are on the first leg of our round-the-world trip. The business class seats are not flat beds, are narrower than most business class seats and also have less storage space than more modern fleets. None-the-less, it IS business class and it’s a daytime flight so it is not a disaster. Given that we will be flying on a total of eight different airlines on this trip, I have decided up to give a brief critique of them all. This whole trip came about because I stumbled across an article that outlined a method by which it was possible to fly around the world business class using Qantas Frequent Flyer points for little more, or even the same amount, as it would cost for a return trip to Europe. Using the ‘oneworld award’ you can fly up to 35,000 miles with five stopovers, including round-the-world if you wish. If you have no interest in learning how this is done, don’t bother reading this post but wait for the next one which will be written from our first stop, Amman, Jordan.

It took a bit of research as the means by which this is achieved isn’t readily available by simply browsing the Qantas website. An invaluable article was ‘The ultimate use of Qantas Points: fly round-the-world in business class’ by Kris Brankovic.

For the oneworld award you need 140,000 points in economy and 280,000 in business class and 420,000 points in First Class. Business Class is the sweet spot because first class itineraries are very hard to book (due to lack of flight options) while economy doesn’t represent a high value of points. We took the business class option.

Since you could easily spend 280,000 points on a return business class fare to Europe or the USA, flying round-the-world with give stopovers for a similar price represents great value.

It might seem that 280,000 is a daunting amount to earn but by using Qantas American Express cards that give double points for every dollar spent to pay for absolutely everything, including groceries, utilities, petrol, insurance, rates, etc., the points quickly add up. Very few of our points actually came from flights. Most of them accrued from our everyday expenses over a two year period.

There are certain oneworld rules that needs to be followed:

• a maximum total distance of 35,000 miles
• a maximum of five stopovers
• a maximum of 16 individual segments (ie individual flights and any land segments you make on your own, which are counted towards the 35,000 mile maximum. For instance, on our trip we fly into Copenhagen but rather than fly out from there, we are going on a cruise and will disembark in Sweden and fly with a non partner, Air France, to Paris. The only reason that I elected to fly with a non-partner any therefor incur an additional charge, was that there were no direct flights to choose from and had no desire to turn a three hour flight into ten hours travel time. So the number of miles from Copenhagen to Paris count towards the 35,000 miles maximum allowed.)
• no more than one stopover and two transits through a single airport
• you must fly with at least two oneworld airlines that are NOT qantas (in fact, you don’t have to fly Qantas at all- just two or more other oneworld airlines- see the list below
• you have twelve months to complete the travel
• you can’t return to the country of origin until the end
• you must finish booking all the flights in the itinerary before the first flight takes off.
  

You can fly in anywhere in any direction you want, so long as you comply with the above rules. There are no restrictions on how many continents you can visit or whether you can backtrack (which are limitations in most paid round-the-world fares).

Here is the itinerary that I used : Melbourne, Jordan, Copenhagen, Paris, Marrakesh, Mexico City, Salt Lake City (to visit Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks), Las Vegas (to visit the Grand Canyon), then transit through Los Angeles to get back to Melbourne). I didn’t use up all my 35,00p miles so could have visited more places if I’d wanted to. As I said earlier, I saved a ‘stopover’ by catching my own flight from Stockholm to Paris and then another by booking an independent flight from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas.

There’s actually no need to fly around the world at all, though that’s how most people use this award. You can loop around a specific region or criss-cross between continents – its totally up to you.

HOW TO BOOK

Here’s the big catch: it is a very time consuming process and requires lots of patience because finding business class seats using points can be tricky and requires multiple calls to Qantas. Each call will cost points but is worth it. I tried to book everything independently but it was next to impossible.

The only way to achieve your desired itinerary you need to start planning 12 months in advance and to add seats as soon as they become available. It also helps if you are flexible about dates and departure/arrival airports, especially out of Australia.

• it is impossible to book this on Qantas’s website in one go, as the site isn’t capable of handling complicated bookings. Even if it was, airlines release their frequent flyer seats at very different times in advance, so if you wait until all the seats are made available (the days ahead varying from 362-330 days), the chances are that those seats available from 32 days earlier will be gone. The days ahead for booking with Qantas are quite generous at 353 days (for gold members), so that’s where I started and booked the segment to Jordan by myself online. To do this I used the multi-city tool, not the RTW trip planner, which is only for paid fares. Royal Jordanian, the oneworld partner that I would use to fly to Copenhagen were even more generous, allowing bookings 362 days in advance. Yet I discovered a glitch: I couldn’t add this flight to my original ticket, to do that, I had to call Qantas. So after your initial booking, it is necessary to call Qantas each time you’ve reached the necessary days that are required to book more flights to your itinerary. Each time you make one of these calls you will be charged an additional 5,000 points.
  

To calculate the total miles flown use the Great Circle Mapper tool. Just type in the airport codes separated by hyphens (MEL-HKG-LAX-JFK-MEL). You can search for the codes in the site.

You don’t have to finish in the city you started, but the booking system will calculate the distance back to the origin in determining whether you’re within the 35,000 mile limit.

• As I said earlier, airlines release reward seats at different times. Here’s how many days in advance you should start booking:
• Qantas – 353 days, for gold members and 308 for others.
• Cathay Pacific – 360 days
• British Airways – 354 days
• Cathay Pacific – 360 days
• British Airways – 354 days
• American Airlines – 330 days
• Japan Airlines – 330 days
• Malaysia Airlines – 354 days
• Royal Jordanian – 362 days
• Finnair – 361 days
• LATAM – 331 days
• Sri Lankan – 361 days
• Iberia – 361 days
• S7 Airlines – 330 days
  

I watched the calendar and calculated the days very carefully so that I could act immediately that seats became available. My only glitch was arranging my flight with American Airlines who only release their seats 330 days in advance out of Mexico. The problem was that to hook up with a flight out of LA with Qantas, who release their seat 353 days in advance proved impossible because all the seats were already gone. Not to be perturbed, we simply chose to stay in the US an extra two weeks and decided to use that time to visit some National Parks. Win-win!

As you can see from the above list, the oneworld alliance doesn’t include some Qantas partners, like Emirates, so pay attention to which airlines come up in search results on the Qantas website. You can only use oneworld airlines.

If you mix different classes the highest class will be used to calculate the cost – ie just one first class flight will make the cost jump to 420,000 points, so don’t do it.

If you want to minimise taxes and fees, avoid Qantas and British Airways as they have relatively high surcharges, and avoid flying long haul out of any airport in the UK.

As flights out of Australia will be the hardest to find (because of demand) check availability for all capital cities and add a domestic Qantas segment if necessary.

IN SHORT

Booking the oneworld award is quite complex, it definitely worth the effort given what you get to enjoy: that is, flying round-the-world in style and visiting a range of destinations.

If you find that booking this award is too time consuming or difficult for you, there are some companies that offer award booking assistance for a fee, like iFLYflat and Award Flight Assist.