It can be hard finding award flights to Australia, but Qantas’s new direct route has lots of availability.
Their San Francisco to Melbourne route is now bookable and flights begin on September 1, 2018.
The best thing of all is that there’s plenty of business class award space. Doing a search on the Qantas site shows this availability from San Francisco to Melbourne in October for two adults:
Flights are only operating four days a week, so that’s part of the reason for some empty days. The Melbourne to San Francisco leg is showing many more business class award seats in October. (n.b. not all the flights listed below are on this new route.)
If you don’t mind sitting in economy on such a long flight, there’s even better award availability for two adults.
The return leg has similar availability.
If you’re interested in these flights, you’d better book them ASAP as some of the flights in the screenshots above have disappeared since I started typing this post.
You can use 96,000 Qantas Frequent Flyer Points for one-way business class tickets. Qantas are a transfer partner of Citi Thank You, so that might be a good option if you have an overabundance of Thank You points.
Other options include American Airlines (80,000 AAdvantage miles one-way) and Alaska Airlines (55,000 Mileage Plan miles one-way.) These flights aren’t currently showing up as bookable on either of their sites, but Lucky reports that you can call American Alaska to book them, while Alaska American might still be unable to view these awards.
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When trying to book via the AA site, there is no availabilty in J and it forces me onto AA metal via LAX.
Presuming I could find availability:
What’re the fuel surcharges going to be on a Business Class miles redemption via AA miles for this Qantas flight?
It should be no fuel surcharges with AA, same as AS.
Anybody having any luck finding space?
I’m still seeing some limited availability on the SFO-MEL leg and plenty on the MEL-SFO leg in October / November.
You’ll need to do a search on the Qantas site to find it. You’ll need to register for their Frequent Flyer scheme to find award availability, but you don’t need any points in order to search.
If found, this can be booked with AA correct? How about AS?
Found on QF, but AA (phone agent) only shows in coach. Bummer.
I went to OMAAT. Alaska did not see any, while AA can see the award space.
You’re right. We’ll fix that. Thanks