Good afternoon,
I am seeking some guidance on redeeming altitude points to fly from Sydney or Melbourne to South Africa and return in June/July - particularly in relation to actually finding availability of flights that can be purchased with points/miles. Ideally I would like to try emirates, but it appears that booking them directly through Altitude with points (as opposed to simply transferring points across to one of the aligned airlines) requires a significant premium in points spend. I note your comments in relation to the potential for obtaining better value for points through booking Business or First class, so would be looking at that option.
Regards, Andrew
Hi Andrew,
It looks like it costs less Altitude points to transfer to Enrich (MAS), Krisflyer (SQ), Asia Miles (CX) to fly to South Africa.
Also I can’t see Emirates being a partner of the above. Maybe you were thinking of Etihad?
It is generally advisable to transfer credit card points to frequent flyer programs before making redemptions as this usually costs the least amount of points/miles.
Thankyou for your reply. Whilst I have some point/miles already in some of the airline frequent flyer programs, the majority are in Altitude and it would be my intent to use these as required to top-up the relevant airline frequent flyer points as required for a flight redemption.
The main issue I have is the apparent lack of seat availability for redemption with the various altitude partner airlines with the possible exception of Singapore which does offer seats - however generally on a stand-by basis ( I am informed that confirmation of a standby booking is likely to be forthcoming only shortly before departure, making it difficult to rely on for trip planning.
In relation to Emirates, is it possible/practical to use Qantas frequent flyer points to book Emirates flights? I believe my credit card type allows transfers to QFF.