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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Thanks to @airlineroute on Twitter

Transpacific award availability on Star Alliance can be tricky at times- there are some tried and tested routes such as Haneda to Los Angeles and Seoul to San Francisco with good availability, but here’s another good option starting mid-next year. Air China generally have very good award space and their Boeing 777-300ER product is one of the best transatlantic featuring fully flat seats in business class, while ANA has angled lie flat seats on their Haneda to LA route, and United’s seats are 8-abreast in business class. Look out for this great redemption option set to hit our Star Alliance skies shortly.

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.