How to get the best value deal for business class award flights to China in January?

Hi all,

I am hoping to go on a one week trip to China (Beijing) in January. I would like to find business class tickets. I have velocity/kris flyer points, but I have also seen that this type of route might be quite accessible with buying points when they are on a special offer.

I would appreciate some advice on how I go about getting the best value deal for this trip.

Thanks a lot!

I forgot to mention I will be departing from Melbourne.

I just booked J Beijing Sydney next July. When I factored in the conversion cost 61,625 Krissflyer pts (which is just a little under 83,000 Velocity points) plus $436 AUD it worked out about 2.3c a point to just fork out the full 102,000 Velocity pts for the flights and zero fees so I just booked with Velocity. There was of a lot availability for the time I was looking.

I am new to all of this so my figures may be wrong. I did have trouble with the Velocity website so I called up and organised on the phone. They did wave the phone booking charge.

 

Hi Skafhold,

Flying to China in January to be completely honest, you will find it difficult to get the availability of award seats that you need. It may be possible if you have an absolute ton of points, as most frequent flier programs offer schemes where you use your points essentially as if they were cash (but at a substantially devalued rate) and thus whether or not award seats are available becomes irrelevant.

Airlines make seats available for frequent fliers as a way to supplement the number of full fare-paying customers and to make sure their planes are full. So generally speaking, during periods where the airline could be fairly sure that their flights will depart basically full of people willing to pay for it, you won’t find many/any seats opening up for redemptions. They don’t need to let you have them for points, when if they leave it they know eventually someone will buy that seat.

January being the school Holidays in Victoria it’s a super peak season for travel and airlines know this. China is also a very popular place for both leisure travel and visiting family/friends, as there is a huge expat community in Melbourne. I’d say both Velocity and Krisflyer being two of the big ones that many flyers are members of, you will struggle to get anything.

Could definitely be worth buying a full-fare ticket, and then using your Krisflyers to upgrade? Just because if you wait and hope that availability will open up, you will face the risk of not getting anything at all and having to buy a hugely expensive last minute ticket.