Tag Archives for australia.
Right now there are roundtrip non-stop fares between the US and Australia as low as $462. That’s just amazing.
Dates are available February through May and August through end of year reportedly excluding October for Monday through Thursday flights.
Qantas roundtrips between the US and Australia as pricing as low as $639 roundtrip out of several cities including Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas, and Los Angeles.
It’s a long way to go in coach but at these prices you’d expect to fly to Sydney, Canada rather than Sydney, Australia. Qantas ‘O’ fares earn 100% of flown miles when crediting to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, just 25% of flown miles crediting to American AAdvantage.
United is offering up to 15,000 bonus miles for roundtrip flights to Australia from the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico or U.S. Virgin Islands from March 1 through April 30, 2006. Registration is required. 15,000 bonus miles for purchasing and flying a paid, qualifying roundtrip in United First® (F fare only) 10,000 bonus miles in qualifying United Business® (C, D fares only) 7,500 bonus miles in qualifying United Economy® (Y, B, M, H fares only) 5,000 bonus miles in qualifying United Economy (Q, V, W fares only) (No bonus miles are offered on the absolute lowest — S and T — fares.) Partner and code share flights don’t qualify for the offer. Tickets must be electronic. Miles should post 6 to 8 weeks after completing the return flight.
United is apparently offering coach awards between the U.S. and Australia for 45,000 miles. I say ‘apparently’ because though the terms and conditions suggest the promo should be active and redemption possible online, awards still seem to be pricing out at 60,000 miles. (Perhaps the web page meant to say that the award could not be booked online, which is also why the page says that the $15 award booking fee would be waived. That would explain why the website spits out a 60,000 mile price in spite of the promo. I’ve been too busy to call and find out the truth myself.) Flyertalk discussion of this offer is here.
Northwest is offering discounted award redemption from North America to Sydney for travel between February 1 and April 30, 2006. The offer is a 20,000 mile reduction in cost for coach travel (reduced from 100,000 to 80,000 miles) and a 30,000 mile reduction for business class (reduced from 150,000 to 120,000 miles) and applies to travel on Air Tahiti Nui one-stop flights from either New York-JFK or Los Angeles via Papeete. This still is an expensive award relative to competitors. United’s regular coach award to Australia is 60,000 miles and business class is 90,000 miles — 10,000 less than the usual Northwest coach award and only 10,000 more than the discounted coach award! But for folks stuck in the Worldperks program this is a good deal, and in my experience Air Tahiti Nui offers excellent…
Monday, June 6 1:50 pm Depart Bora Bora Motu Mute Airport Air Tahiti Flight 459 The night before we received a ‘departure letter’ with a printout of our folio, a Starwood Luxury Collection survey, and a departure time. We were scheduled for 11:30am which would have left us with 2 hours at the BOB airport – way too long with nothing to do. I went to the front desk and had them change our departure until an hour later, which I think caused them to make an extra airport boat run as there were a couple of other folks from our resort on the plane and they didn’t come over on our boat. After approaching the airport dock by boat, checkin at BOB took 2 minutes tops. There was no line and the airport was…
When I read the headline in the Phoenix Business Journal, “America West adds Australia to frequent flyer program,” I assumed that America West must have inked a deal with Qantas. Nope. They’ve expanded their partnership with Hawaiian Airlines to include Hawaiian’s service to Sydney via Honolulu. Oh well, any new award redemption option is a good thing.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
