How I found and booked 2 Qantas First Class tickets to Australia

Welcome new readers!

We’ve been getting a lot of activity on Miles’ Instagram account and I thought I’d take a little time to describe the process of how I went about finding and ultimately booking tickets from the US to Australia in Qantas First Class with points. It’s one of the most difficult to tickets to find, but it isn’t impossible. In fact, I’ve noticed recently that Qantas is releasing seats a bit more frequently. I’ll do a full review soon, but it was an incredible experience, and I’d say one of the most under-rated first classes out there.

The Setup

It all started late last year when Qantas released a bunch of space between the States and Australia. It’s VERY rare that they do this, and at the time neither me nor my girlfriend had any plans of making a trip down under. I blogged about it, and filed it away in the back of my head as something to reinvestigate if I’d need to find tickets for an award booking client, or for my family. Here’s what the calendar looked like in December for this summer searching on Alaska Airlines:

 

Then, a couple of months later our plans changed, and we would need to get to Australia in April. Most of that inventory was gone, but the fact that it had once existed meant it could open up again. It’s also worth noting that Qantas First Class is the single best way to fly from the US to Australia.

Which program to book with:

In order to get the most value out of your miles you need to know which program offers access to the best cabins and routes.

In 2017, both my girlfriend and I switched our loyalty to Alaska Airlines from American. We were both top tier Executive Platinum, and matched our status into Alaska at their top tier status, MVP Gold 75k. The main reason was AA was making their program revenue based, and Alaska still gave a mile for every mile your flew. In addition to that, if you got to their top tier ( which I requalified for in 2018) you get a bonus 50k miles just for hitting that status. Not to mention the insanely generous partner earn rates that they have been running since early 2017.

To put it in perspective, here are a few programs that you can use to get Qantas First to OZ:

• Alaska is 70k miles.
• American Airlines is 110k
• British Airways is a whopping 200k ( and that would have only gotten us to Melbourne – we ultimately laid over there before connecting to Sydney)
• Cathay Pacific is 120k
• Japan Airlines 135k
• Qantas: a staggering 325k miles

How to get Alaska Miles

We both earned over 200k+ miles flying last year, but you can do it other ways too. In fact, I have two businesses, and both of them have Alaska Airlines credit cards from Bank of America. Each card got a 30k points sign up bonus after spending just $1k in 90 days. That’s almost enough miles for the ticket right there. Additionally, Alaska puts their miles on sale a few times a year. Typically they are close to $0.02 a point – meaning this $15k plane ticket could be purchased for around $1500.

Searching for availability: Qantas, Alaska, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, and Expertflyer

All of those websites will show you availability; however, I’ve noticed that Expertflyer has been a bit wonky, and if you’re going to use Alaska miles, it’s best to double check space on Alaska. Alaska isn’t given the same access to award space as the One World partners, so always double check.

If you’d like to read a more in depth description of how I found the space click this link

Since we would be using Alaska miles, I started the search on Alaska’s own site. There weren’t any seats available so I set alerts over at Expertflyer. Expertflyer is a subscription service whereby you can search for award space, seat maps, and have emails sent to you when seats free up that you’d like to book. If you’re looking for Qantas First Class seats, as I mentioned above, it has been a bit wonky. You’re still able to set alerts by following the below process…

Ultimately, I used the Alaska calendar daily to try and pin down any sort of pattern, and stumbled upon 2 seats that didn’t fly direct to Sydney. Instead, I found tickets that would route us via Melbourne. We ended up flying from LAX to MEL to SYD, with the long haul leg in First, and the intra-Australia flight in business ( on the A330 featuring their new business class).

These tickets were super easy to book online – just click and purchase. No need to call in.

This is just an example, but illustrates how easy it is. It’s also worth noting that you can cancel Alaska award tickets free of charge as long as you do so 60 days in advance of departure. If you have MVP Gold status, it’s free cancellation no matter what.

You’ll get an Alaska confirmation and a Qantas confirmation. Use the Qantas record locator and go to Qantas.com. We selected seats 1A and 2A

This meant we got to sit on the “A” line of the aircraft which is the most private. Only 5 seats share the aisle so you get much less foot traffic.

 

Any questions? Feel free to comment! Looking for help, don’t forget we offer award booking services – we do all the work, you enjoy the perks!

---