Hi guys,
Chasing some advice regarding return flights to/from Darwin and Europe (London or Amsterdam).
The wife and I currently have over 310000 Qantas F/F points and over 260,000 Velocity Rewards points.
We need to be in Madrid on/by 14 December 2016 but are keen to spend a week or so in London beforehand. We also need to be in Paris for NYE. Doesn’t matter where we fly in/out from in Europe because train travel is so easy.
Need some advice…
More than happy to fly economy from Darwin to Singapore with Silk Air using 20000 Velocity points plus around $90 each, both ways.
Question is how to fly in/out of Singapore to/from Europe on business class. There’s a stack of options that I can find but would appreciate your assistance.
You have a good amount of points which should be easy.
You have enough QFF points for 2 to fly business class to Europe from DRW. However, from what I can see, Malaysia airline is the only OW carrier that offers J out of DRW. It will take you to KUL where you can connect to other OW carrier and MH is the most obvious choice.
However, I can understand if you are a bit reluctant to be on a MH flight. In that case, you can combine Jetstar to Singapore and from there connect to Europe. BA out of Singapore is the most obvious choice but there are other OW carriers that also serves Singapore, you will just need another stopover to get to London.
Inside Europe, as you said, it’s probably better to get a Eurorail pass. But if you have to fly, try to see what the cost of economy class ticket is before thinking of using up your points. There are many budget airlines that sell tickets very cheaply, but even legacy airlines like BA sometimes have very cheap fares making award booking not worthwhile. There is little value in redeeming J class in Europe as the seat is same as economy, just with middle seat blocked. But if you really want to use up the points, there are several OW partners in Europe including BA, Iberia, Air Berlin…etc.
Coming back it’s best to avoid coming out of UK as they charge a expensive APD for premium cabin passengers that usually costs $200+ pp. The sweet spot is to convert your VA points to Krisflyer and redeem Singapore airlines from AMS to SIN, which costs 51000 KF in J (or 68850 VA points)! That would only use up half of your VA balance and you get to fly one of the world’s best business class in their brand new A350! I tried to combine SQ bookings with Silk air but somehow I can’t do it online. Maybe call KF and they might be able to do it. (Don’t forget to ask for the 15% online discount as you can’t book this online).
You can do a bit of shuffling, eg. Use Qantas points to fly Jetstar to SIN (or just buy the ticket if it’s cheap) and use all your VA points to fly Singapore air and you will hardly touched your QFF points…etc.
But, whatever you do, try not to redeem Singapore airline or silk air directly using VA points. It’s very poor value. Best to transfer to KF points and redeem Singapore or Silk.