Author Topic: Australia (Besides Melbourne And Sydney) Master Thread  (Read 87721 times)

Offline ganizzy

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #160 on: May 24, 2013, 02:02:32 PM »
What are you interested in seeing? Sydney? The GBR? The ocean road? Ayers rock?

i dont know.
honestly australia wasnt on my list of places to go and i dont know much about it.
I read the trip reports and it seems beautiful

but i dont know whats practical with a family of 5 with younger kids. is it worth doing GBR if no snorkeling/diving?
if yes how much time should i budget?
the ocean road - good for 6 yr old, 7 yr old? they like nature to an extent, can sit in the car for a few hours but not a very long time and not a few days after flying for 14 hours

i have family in sydney so we will def be spending time there

another q is,
should i sell my chase points and buy 2 tickets thru AA (on quantas) and get 3 reward tickets
or best to get all 5 reward tickets and have the option of a free stopover. whether to cairns, melbourne.... and then to get a free one way to new york.
the maale of buying tickets is  - the 80,000 i sell will totally cover the flight price plus i accumulate miles (though on quantas u only get 50% credited)
if i buy thru argentina, i may be able to buy a ticket and still have $200 extra

thanks for ur help

Offline Devorah

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #161 on: May 24, 2013, 02:22:15 PM »
should i sell my chase points and buy 2 tickets thru AA (on quantas) and get 3 reward tickets
or best to get all 5 reward tickets and have the option of a free stopover. whether to cairns, melbourne.... and then to get a free one way to new york.
the maale of buying tickets is  - the 80,000 i sell will totally cover the flight price plus i accumulate miles (though on quantas u only get 50% credited)
if i buy thru argentina, i may be able to buy a ticket and still have $200 extra

thanks for ur help
aa doesn't let you stopover in australia on a reward ticket (although you could fly into one and out of the other and just use 4500 avios to get from one to the other). 

Offline ganizzy

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #162 on: May 24, 2013, 02:24:57 PM »
aa doesn't let you stopover in australia on a reward ticket (although you could fly into one and out of the other and just use 4500 avios to get from one to the other). 


thanks, good to know
does united?

Offline Devorah

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #163 on: May 24, 2013, 02:26:18 PM »
thanks, good to know
does united?
they do but trust me, you don't want to fly united in coach.  stick with qantas and use your avios.

Offline ganizzy

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #164 on: May 24, 2013, 02:37:41 PM »
they do but trust me, you don't want to fly united in coach.  stick with qantas and use your avios.

ok, that seems to be said often on here.
i would love to go business on quantas but they dont offer that for 5 tickets, just barely for one

right now i have about 270k aa points
i opened two citi cards for 45k bonus pts each, but they wont post for another few weeks.
i need a total of 375k to take the family

my options are
go one way on united and one way on AA
sell chase points and buy some on AA and the rest award
wait till the points post and hope there will still be 5 seats available

Offline Devorah

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #165 on: May 24, 2013, 03:48:13 PM »
ok, that seems to be said often on here.
i would love to go business on quantas but they dont offer that for 5 tickets, just barely for one

right now i have about 270k aa points
i opened two citi cards for 45k bonus pts each, but they wont post for another few weeks.
i need a total of 375k to take the family

my options are
go one way on united and one way on AA
sell chase points and buy some on AA and the rest award
wait till the points post and hope there will still be 5 seats available
with aa, you can book one way at a time, so book what you have now and you can put the seats on hold and keep rebooking it until your miles post.  do you have any starwood that you can transfer in? or borrow from family with same last name?

Online Yehoshua

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #166 on: May 24, 2013, 04:50:29 PM »
Where are you flying from? It's fewer miles from LAX to SYD if booked on ANA. The flight is operated by United, but when we flew from LAX-MEL on United we did not have any problems. In fact the flight was so empty that we got to lie down on 4 seats in coach.

Offline ganizzy

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #167 on: May 24, 2013, 05:10:23 PM »
Flying from lax. Want to go to sydney first, then melbourne, then home.

At this point I only have miles on united/chase and aa/starwood. With only 100k on starwood.
Nothing on ana

Offline Dan

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #168 on: May 24, 2013, 06:01:41 PM »
Worth remembering that LAX-HNL-SYD is 75K BA RT (versus LAX-SYD 100K BA RT)
Save your time, I don't answer PM. Post it in the forum and a dedicated DDF'er will get back to you as soon as possible.

Offline Devorah

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #169 on: May 24, 2013, 06:03:38 PM »
Worth remembering that LAX-HNL-SYD is 75K BA RT (versus LAX-SYD 100K BA RT)
Isn't there YQ?

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #170 on: May 24, 2013, 06:47:51 PM »
Worth remembering that LAX-HNL-SYD is 75K BA RT (versus LAX-SYD 100K BA RT)

+1, but saver awards on AA to HNL in the summer are very hard to come by.

Offline Dan

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #171 on: May 24, 2013, 06:59:24 PM »
+1, but saver awards on AA to HNL in the summer are very hard to come by.
LAX-HNL looks pretty good to me.
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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #172 on: May 24, 2013, 07:09:20 PM »
LAX-HNL looks pretty good to me.

I checked about 1 month ago. Could be seats became available.

Offline ganizzy

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #173 on: May 24, 2013, 08:42:11 PM »
seems to be plenty
on second thought maybe it is a good idea!!

Offline ganizzy

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #174 on: May 26, 2013, 03:10:06 AM »
hows the flight from hnl to syd on HI?

Offline Dan

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #175 on: May 26, 2013, 09:05:48 AM »
If using BA it would be on Jetstar/Qantas.
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Offline PETERP

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #176 on: May 26, 2013, 09:48:53 AM »
with aa, you can book one way at a time, so book what you have now and you can put the seats on hold and keep rebooking it until your miles post.  do you have any starwood that you can transfer in? or borrow from family with same last name?


How to you rebook something you have on hold . Can we do that on DL and UA ?

Offline ganizzy

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #177 on: May 26, 2013, 12:36:15 PM »
If using BA it would be on Jetstar/Qantas.
BA charges fuel surcharge.
If I book with AA  then its with hawaiian.

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #178 on: May 26, 2013, 12:44:16 PM »
BA charges fuel surcharge.
If I book with AA  then its with hawaiian.
Makes sense!
Still may be worth taking advantage of a stopover in both directions (LAX-HNL-SYD-LAX-JFK 6 months later, etc)
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Offline ganizzy

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Re: Australia Master Thread
« Reply #179 on: May 26, 2013, 01:00:14 PM »
Makes sense!
Still may be worth taking advantage of a stopover in both directions (LAX-HNL-SYD-LAX-JFK 6 months later, etc)

That's my plan though over shabbos availability dwindled.
Has anyone flown hawaiian? Is it good?
Also they charge for baggage to HI but not to australia. What would a stopover be considered?

And also about the stopover to jfk. Right now theres only with stops. If nonstop becomes available closer to the date, I would be able to change?