I was hoping someone who has a Krisflyer account with lots of miles can help me out here. I’m planning a trip from Sydney to Seoul next May for a family of 2 adults, 2 children and 1 infant and currently have enough Westpac points for 250,000 krisflyer miles. Now this is not enough for business class award seats for the whole family - I need 527,000. But there is the option of points plus pay but I can’t see how much extra I need to pay - there is no calculator of sorts.
Would someone who has sufficient points be able to give me an estimate of how much I would need to pay extra if I chose the points plus pay option?
Or any other ways I can get my family on the business class flights?
Thanks in advance!
Firstly, to redeem that many seats in business will be difficult. You will need to be extremely flexible, by that I mean be prepared to split up, i.e. possibly be on different flight and you need to book super early as well. \r\n\r\nNow, let’s assume you found 4 business seats in one flight, don’t try the point plus pay option. That’s similar to Qantas’ version in which your KF miles is worth about 1 cent each and is used to offset the RRP of business class ticket. So your 250000 points is probably enough for $2500 and for a family of 4, you will need to fork out extra $15000-20000. You need to click on “Redeem flights”.\r\n\r\nAs others have said, forget upgrades, it’s as expensive as redeem out right, and the inventory is the same as award seats, so not worth it.\r\n\r\nYou will need more KF points to achieve your goal. Unfortunately there is no quick and cheap way of “buying” KF miles. Depends on when you need to book the trip, but if you have time to wait, then consider:\r\n1. Sign up other credit cards that can be converted to KF that comes with big sign up bonus. Eg. Amex platinum charge card, you will receive 100,000 MR point = 100,000 KF points. \r\n2. Do you have any VFF points? Do any of your family have lots of VFF points? You can convert VFF points to KF.\r\n3. Wait for SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest, a hotel chain) sale, which should be due in Dec. Enrol all your family now. When the sale comes, it will sell SPG points at 2.65 cents USD each. Buy the maximum 20,000 per account, which can then be transferred to 25,000 KF points. So with your family of 4, you will get an extra 100,000.\r\n4. Consider buying other FFP miles such as Lifemiles. The next sale is also due in Dec, and you can use it to redeem Asiana SYN-ICN cheap at 40K one way (=$600 USD when LM is on sale). But you must have a pre-existing LM account to buy sale fare. So register now. It’s free.\r\n\r\nThere are many other ways, but for now, I think that is enough.
Thank u so much for this. Really helpful as I’m just starting out. At this point there are actually 4 business class seats - I have gone through the redeem flights option on the website and found the flights - although times aren’t the best, there are 4 seats. I will definitely be doing what you’ve suggested re spg and already applied for platinum charge card. I guess I’m running the risk that by December or Jan next year if I do get enough points, there won’t be any seats left… Grrrr I wish I started this earlier…
You can buy them for US$40 per 1000 mile block, up to 50% of the total miles required.
In your case, this means you’d need a few more Westpac points to get you to 263,500 Krisflyer miles, then to buy the remining would cost you US$10k+. For that sort of money, you could probably get close to buying business class tickets. In fact, since you seem prepared to takea stop, if you’re creative with your routing, you could probably do it easily. Air Asia X has a surprisingly good hard product in J class for instance. Soft product and ground services are basic, but the price is good.
I think I have this awkward number of points where I can’t do much with it, esp not for a family of 5. Thanks for your help so far - might just save up more for the next holiday.