The oneworld Classic Flight Reward is the reason I collect Qantas Frequent Flyer points. It's why a fat kid from St. Albans was was able to fly MEL-DXB-TXL-LHR-BOS-ORD-HKG-MEL and will soon be travelling MEL-NRT-FRA-ARN-LHR-ORD-DFW-MEL, all in business class, spending just ~$1800 (taxes) per trip on airfares.
To explain just how good value this ticket is, let's compare what else you can get for 280,000 points.
You can throw your points in the bin by redeeming 315,000 (fuck that's more than I thought) points for a MacBook worth $1799 at the Qantas Store. Or even stupider, get 280,000 points worth of Woolworths gift cards, which will result in a measley $1600 to spend on groceries. Seriously, the Qantas Store is where points go to be pissed away.
There's a plain ol' awards redemption: MEL-LAX-MEL in economy, for 1 adult is 96,000 points plus $610.92 in taxes. You can buy a flight from MEL-LAX return for only $1030 and earn points and status credits – redeeming your points for this trip is a total waste of time. As is MEL-LHR-MEL: $1228 straight up on Royal Brunei or 128,000 points + $846.12 on Qantas. Business and first class redemptions make more sense. Business class MEL-LAX-MEL is 192,000 points, $881.67 in taxes. The same flight with cash is $5600. Wayyyyy better use of your points. You're geting ~$4500 of value here vs. just $420 of value in economy. But as you'll see, there's better ways to spend those points you worked hard to get.
What about upgrades I hear you ask? Upgrades can be good, but they're still not worth it in the scheme of things. If you purchased a “Sale” ticket you won't get an upgrade. You need to purchase a “Saver” or “Flex” economy ticket in order to qualify for an upgrade, *if* some are available. An example: MEL-LAX-MEL upgrade from economy to business. $1798 for an economy Saver ticket, which allows upgrades. You'll need 144,000 points to upgrade that entire flight to business. You could have just redeemed the flight for 48,000 points more and saved $917 and you'll have a guaranteed seat, as upgrades are not always possible.
To summarise:
Now we get to the oneworld Classic Flight Reward. This used to be called an around the world ticket as its maximum value is achieved when you take multiple flights on the same ticket. Earlier this year it was renamed to a oneworld Classic Flight Reward, which is confusing as Qantas has its own Classic flight awards. From now on I'll refer to it as OWCFR. First I'll explain why this is such bitchin' value, then I'll get into the fine print of the conditions surrounding this fare.
If you want to read the fine print yourself, here's the terms and conditions for the ticket (starts at section 14.5). I've read it so you don't have to, so unless you're a fan of fine print, don't worry, I got your back.
A business class OWCFR ticket is 280,000 points + taxes. For that, you get to go on pretty much as many flights as you like, in a forward direction, as long as your travel distance doesn't exceed 35,000 miles. It's a bit more nuanced than that (airlines love fine print), but I'll get to that later. As an example, let's go SYD-DXB-LHR-JFK-LAX-HKG-SYD. To do this flight with cash, in business class, would set you back around $28,665. If you assume ~$1500 in taxes, that's $27,165 in value. Compare that to spending the same amount of points, to get an $1800 laptop. Why would you get an $1800 laptop when you can get a flight worth $28,000 for the same points spend? Ditto taking three MEL-LAX-MEL flights in economy – why take what amounts to ~$3000 worth of flight when for the same amount of points & taxes, you can go in business class to Dubai, London, New York, Los Angeles and Hong Kong?
Of course, there are other costs – you have to be able to afford the taxes which range from $1500-$2000 depending where you go. Gotta earn 280,000 points, which might not be easy depending on your circumstances. You'll probably need to take a few weeks off work to fit in all the cities versus a simple 1 week or 2 week holiday in a single city. Accomodation in all those places isn't free either – 6 weeks of hotels versus 2 weeks makes a big difference. If you want to go on a big trip to a few different cities, then the OWCFR is an awesome way to do it.
Got a load of points sitting in your account? Want to book the flights? Let's go through the criteria for the award so you can plan your route properly. First is a little glossary of airline terms so we're all on the same page.
Take this route example: MEL-KUL-CDG, LHR-DFW, DFW-DXB-DOH, DOH-MEL
You'll need 140,000 points for economy, 280,000 for business and 420,000 points for first. There's premium economy for 210,000 points, but not enough airlines have that class on their flights, so you'll end up in economy most of the time. If you've booked a business class trip and one of the segments or sectors doesn't have business available, you'll get bumped to economy.
You can travel a maximum of 35,000 miles. The distance travelled includes “surface segments” where you might take another form of transport between two places. For example, you might book MEL-HKG, HKG-LHR, FCO-DFW, LAX-MEL. As you can see, you didn't book a flight from DFW to LAX or from LHR to FCO. These are called surface segments. Good for when you want to make your own way somewhere. The distance between the two points counts towards your miles however. Lets say you go from London to Rome by train, via Paris, Munich and Milan. You will incur the milage for just what it would be to fly from London to Rome – 892 miles. I wouldn't worry about it too much, 35,000 miles is heaps.
You can take up to 5 stop overs in a single itineary. A stop over for the purposes of the OWCFR is when you get off the plane and stay somewhere for 24 hours or more. E.g: MEL-DXB (stop 1) DXB-DOH-TXL (stop 2), LHR-BOS (stop 3), BOS-ORD (stop 4), ORD-HKG, (stop 5), HKG-MEL (last flight isn't a stop over, it's the end). This means you can get 6 sectors in the one ticket.
Need to fly on at least two different oneworld airlines and one Qantas flight (i.e: Qantas, Cathay Pacific and British Airways or Qantas, American Airlines and Qatar Airways). Emirates and Jetstar flights don't count, even though they show up in Qantas flight searches as they're not part of oneworld. This is a list of oneworld airlines.
To re-cap:
Now that you know the rules, you have to find the flights where you wanna go and see if there's any seats available on that route. That's when the real fun begins! I'll write up a second post soon explaining how to use KVS Tool and tips for finding availability on the flights you want.
