Perhaps one of the most exciting things you can do in the world of travel is using your hard-earned points to book a reward seat. If you’ve taken out one of the many Qantas credit card sign-up bonuses on Point Hacks, you’re probably ready to start planning your next holiday.
It’s not too complicated if you know what you’re doing. Here is a step-by-step guide to booking your next journey with Qantas Points, whether that be a domestic jaunt or somewhere further abroad.
How to book a Classic Flight Reward seat with Qantas Points [step-by-step]
For those who have a simple one-way or return itinerary, and already know what they want to book, here are the quick steps to get you on your way.
- Head to the Qantas website and log in to your frequent flyer account.
- Enter all your travel details, including origin, destination and dates.
- Select ‘Rewards’ on the booking screen and click ‘Search Flights’.
- Choose your desired flights with Classic Flight Rewards available (the red ribbon).
- Check out as usual to reserve those reward seats.
Qantas now offers Classic and Classic Plus reward seats. Where possible, always look for Classic seats (red ribbon) as these are usually better value than Classic Plus (blue ribbon).
That’s it! You’ll receive an itinerary by email within a few hours. If you need to later change or cancel those flights, a fee of 5,000 or 6,000 points applies, respectively.
How to plan a Classic Flight Reward with Qantas Points
Of course, booking reward seats is easy. Finding reward seats is a whole different matter, and may require some extra planning. Here are some pointers to help you plan your next journey.
Stage 1: Plann your journey with reward tables
We are assuming that by this stage, you have already amassed enough Qantas Points and are now ready to make it all happen. Read some of our other guides on how to plan your perfect journey.
You first need to know how many Qantas Points your proposed route will require. You can check this on the Qantas website – all you need to know is:
- the operating airline, and
- the total distance flown between all the airports in your itinerary
The choice of airline is important, as the number of points needed will vary between them. There are 4 Qantas Classic Rewards points tables, and all partner airlines will fall under one of them.
- Qantas Classic Flight Reward table: travel on Qantas, Jetstar (when mixed with other airlines on this table), Airnorth, Fiji Airways, Air Vanuatu and American Airlines.
- Jetstar Classic Flight Reward table: standalone travel on Jetstar (JQ), Jetstar Asia (3K), Jetstar Japan (GK) and Jetstar Pacific (BL) on the same trip.
- Partner Classic Flight Reward table: travel on Air Niugini, Alaska Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, China Airlines, China Eastern, Cathay Pacific, EL AL, Emirates, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qatar Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Royal Jordanian, S7 Airlines and SriLankan Airlines.
- Oneworld Classic Flight Reward table: When combining any 2 or more oneworld member airlines, excluding Qantas, and does not include any travel on non-oneworld member airlines, such as Jetstar and Emirates.
Stage 2: Check the distance you’ll fly
For the distance, I suggest you head to the Great Circle Mapper website (no affiliations) and enter your airport codes in the search box. For example, Perth to Brisbane to Los Angeles would be PER-BNE-LAX.
As long as the transit between flights remains under 24 hours (international) or the same calendar day (domestic), you can add up the total distance and pay the points applicable to that distance travelled. This is better than pricing per flight, which usually works out to be more expensive.
The combined distance of PER-BNE-LAX is 9,407 miles. Assuming we are flying Qantas and are just having a short transit, then go to the first Qantas Classic Flight Reward table and look up that distance.
In this example, our travel distance fits within Zone 9, so you would need 51,200 Qantas Points in Economy, 94,900 in Premium Economy, 126,500 in Business, or 189,800 in First.
But what if you wanted to fly from Perth to Los Angeles via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific? The distance would be much higher, at 10,993 miles.
You would also need to consult the more expensive partner award chart in Zone 10, which requires 66,200 Qantas Points in Economy, 124,800 in Premium Economy, 159,000 in Business Class, or 227,500 in First Class.
Instead of paying 126,500 Qantas Points on Qantas, you’d need to pay 159,000 Qantas Points on Cathay Pacific due to the quirks of distance travelled and different pricing tables.
Stage 3: Look for reward seats
When you’re ready to book, head to the Qantas website. Ensure your account has enough points to book for everyone in your party. You can move points around with Family Transfers. A reminder: you can only book for yourself and family members, not unrelated friends or colleagues.
Start by switching on ‘Use Points’. Enter all your search parameters, including origin, destination, one-way or return, number of passengers, travel class, and dates. You can also switch on ‘Flexible with dates’ to see a calendar of seat availability.
Once you’ve selected a day to check, any available results will show up. Switch on ‘Classic Rewards’. You’ll now see a list of Classic Reward seats with taxes included. Some partner airlines may also show up. Qantas flights are normally prioritised at the top, even if there are partner airlines that offer non-stop flights.
From here, follow the prompts to check out and book.
How to book multiple reward flights with Qantas Points
Booking a more complex multi-city trip is basically the same steps as booking a single flight, but you need to search sector by sector and find available reward seats for all flights.
Make sure you’re aware of all the rules of mixing and matching different airlines (e.g. a oneworld reward can’t contain Emirates or Jetstar flights), or the pricing can get messed up.
Learn more about the Qantas multi-city booking tool in this separate guide →
Frequently Asked Questions
Call Qantas and mention you can’t book your itinerary online. They should waive any phone booking fees and help you book it.
There may be a mistake somewhere in your booking. For example, you could have stopovers longer than 24 hours between flights, or you may be mixing airlines between 2 different Qantas Classic Reward Tables, meaning the numbers quoted will be off.
Ask us in the Point Hacks Community if you keep on having problems.
Yes, it costs 5,000 points per person to change an itinerary, or 6,000 points per person to cancel. Everything else will get refunded back after a week or 2. No cancellations can occur after the first flight on the itinerary has been travelled. (Note: this may be waived during the COVID-19 pandemic).
We don’t recommend you use more points than you need, especially for Points Plus Pay. That process converts your points into cash at a very low rate. You are better off saving them for another trip.
Don’t pay more Qantas Points than you need. Keep the slider as low as possible!
This article was originally written by Evin Tan Khiew. Latest updates by Brandon Loo.
Could you tell me whether use Qantas points in qantas.com only?
Not sure where to leave this comment. I used PH pre COVID and it was really helpful to learn how to book flights etc. Recently I have been looking for business flights and they are almost impossible to find and also the Qantas site has gone backwards big time in that it doesn’t show where business flights are. Any comments?
Thank you.
Does anyone know if we can use our flight credit to pay taxes on award flights? To be clear, I want to book the flight with my points and pay taxes with my credit.
Thanks
When looking at the flight options, take note of the alerts to advise that the selected cabin is not available for one or more of the flight sectors on your itinerary. For example, you don’t want to find that you are in business from PER to SYD and only economy from SYD to LAX.
Search return trips as one-ways.
Search the longest or hardest to find sector first (e.g. SYD-LAX before PER-SYD).
Set multi-city search to flexible dates (unless you have already identified available award sectors). Dates can be tricky passing through time zones!
If award space is not immediately obvious, search sectors including the hub cities of the various partner airlines.
Use the 24 hour rule to break up the journey – e.g. CNS-BNE//overnight//BNE-AKL-PPT for a more relaxing trip.
Whereas the booking can indicate “confirmed”, it’s only yours once ticketed! That email is the output from the e-ticket (rather than itinerary as cited in the article). Enter the APIS data during the booking process so the airline has no excuses not to ticket the booking. A friend just booked SYD-YVR last week and it hadn’t ticketed after several days, so had to rebook – the call centre agent was hopeless – he’s now paid twice for the carrier charges and taxes with QF sitting on his cash.
Always research what you want before speaking with a phone agent. Some agents are fantastic, but IME increasingly QF agents are woefully trained for their role.
Not only do I not have all the drive to the airport and park issues, jump through all the hoops to get on the flight, get off and wait for my bags, then pick up my rental car with over priced insurance reductions. So what if I don’t get points when its easier to drive to Brisbane than to book a points booking.
But essentially, just do your flight search as normal. You’ll see both cash and points options on the same page, now. Reward seats will show up on the right, if available. Then it’s a simple matter of logging in and checking out to use your points. Hope that helps.