This is the final installment in the three-part series on finding award tickets to Australia. I’ve lumped American and Alaska together here, because they largely have the same partner networks and award strategies. Generally speaking, I’d put them on par with Delta in terms of Australia/South Pacific award space. Delta used to be superior, but then award availability on Virgin Australia has started to dry up somewhat, and fuel surcharges are increasing too. This makes American and Alaska miles great options for a trip down under.

Using American/Alaska Miles to Fly on Qantas to Australia

This will probably be the main way that most award tickets to Australia on AAdvantage and Alaska Mileage Plan are redeemed- indeed the other options should only be used as a last resort. Qantas has a significant route network to North America, including:

• Sydney- Los Angeles- Sydney (Airbus 380, Boeing 747)
• Melbourne- Los Angeles- Melbourne (Airbus 380, Boeing 747)
• Brisbane- Los Angeles- Brisbane (Boeing 747)
• Sydney- Dallas- Brisbane- Sydney (Boeing 747)
• Sydney- Auckland- Los Angeles- New York- Los Angeles- Auckland- Sydney (Airbus 330)
• Sydney- Honolulu- Sydney (Boeing 767)

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Most people regard Delta SkyMiles as “SkyPesos”, and that’s partially true- it is a fact that Delta miles are harder to use than Star Alliance or Oneworld miles. Most of the complaints that arise from using Delta miles are in regards to low availability on domestic travel, and that is very true. Often the situation is that you have the international long haul flights all figured out, but then trying to get from Charleston to Atlanta becomes the final hurdle. But once you have the domestic segments tacked on, they can be one of the best miles to travel to Australia, and the South Pacific in general. Let’s find out why.

Using Delta Miles to Fly on Delta to Australia

Delta does fly its own aircraft to Australia, a once daily Boeing 777-200LR service from Los Angeles to Sydney. From LA they have built up kind of a focus city, in conjuction with their partner Alaska, so you can fly one-stop from most cities in the US to Australia. Their hard product is decent, being their flagship BusinessElite product featuring herringbone seats that recline flat.

The thing is, Delta is pretty famous for being extremely stingy when it comes to BusinessElite award space (with a couple of exceptions, such as Atlanta-Munich and Memphis-Amsterdam), and the Sydney route is no exception. Let’s take a look at the award calendar to see what I mean.

Do you see any green? No? Me neither. And the other months aren’t much better. So unless you’re prepared to fork out 240K miles instead of 150K (and the answer is, you shouldn’t), this is probably not a good idea.

But if you want to go with this idea (and miraculously do find low award space), the best way of booking it is simply using Delta.com. It is clumsy, but once you find the award space, should be pretty functional. They also allow two-day holds, so if you’re indecisive it’s best to hold the award first, then un-hold it if necessary, seeing how rare low price awards are.

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Delta’s now offering to sell people elite qualifying miles (medallion qualifying miles, whatever…) to people for fixed prices- up to 10K MQM can be bought in this way. Most people wouldn’t really be happy, as it further inflates the elite pools that are already pretty bloated due to the influx of Northwest Platinums from the status match a couple of years ago, and all the credit card MQMs on offer, but first let’s take a look at the pricing…

Now even at the cheapest pricing option, 9 cents per medallion qualifying mile is a lot to pay, considering that even in December most mileage runs can be had for 5-6 cents per MQM- and that’s not considering the RDMs one would forgo for buying miles instead of mileage running. A 5,000 mile mileage run for $300 would net 11250 RDM’s for a Diamond, which if valued at 2 cents per mile is $250 worth of RDM’s- thus you’re actually only paying $50 for the EQM’s. Factor in SkyClub access, complimentary upgrades etc. and paying $895 not to fly suddenly sounds like a very bad option.

Can’t fault Delta though, as the number of upgrades are finite and MQMs have no value in redemption terms, this is literally a pass to print money. But there should be no reason why one would “take advantage” of this offer.

(Sorry for the lack of posting recently, some school exams caught up to me- you should see increased posts in the next week or so.)

I was going to do this as one long post covering all three alliances and their options to Australia, however that would have gotten out of hand, so I’ve split them up into three for each of the alliances. This post will cover the Star Alliance. Despite being generally the best alliance out of the three, it is sadly the weakest alliance when it comes to flights to Australia. One of the most common complaints is how stingy United often is with its business and first class award availability on the routes to and from Australia. However, with some flexibility and a bit of ingenuity, there are some tips for booking that ultimate Australian journey on Star Alliance.

One of the most common complaints is how stingy United often is with its business and first class award availability on the routes to and from Australia. However, there are some tips for booking that ultimate Australian journey.

Book Your Tickets Well In Advance

Availability is often greatest at the 330-day window when award inventory is usually released by the airlines. Still, it is impossible to find award availability every day, but 330 days out you can pretty much guarantee availability +/- 2 days from intended date of travel. So as always a bit of flexibility is required when looking for award seats. There are a couple of exceptions- if you are looking for business or first class space during the Australian/New South Wales school holidays- so that’s typically all of January, your odds of finding relatively direct flights are practically nil. In this case, you’ll have to consider alternate routings.

Transfer your United miles to Continental

This really applies to all awards, not just awards to Australia- if you have not yet linked your United MP and Continental OnePass accounts, it is very wise to link them up immediately and transfer all your miles to Continental. There really should be no reason for one to use United miles over Continental, given the wider range of partners, more flexible routing rules, superior search engine and ability to mix and match Star Alliance and other partners.

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