Stephen is an established voice in the credit card space, with over 70 to his name. His work has been in publications like The Washington Post, and his Au Points and Awards Consulting Services is used...
Edited by: Keri Stooksbury
With years of experience in corporate marketing and as the Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Qatar, Keri is now Editor-in-Chief at UP, overseeing daily content operations and r...
& Kellie Jez
Kellie’s professional experience has led her to a deep passion for compliance, data reporting, and process improvement. Kellie’s learned the ins and outs of the points and miles world and leads UP’s c...
24 comments
Marilyn B
August 27, 2018
Have seen your posts on OMAAT. This is an absolutely awesome post! Will help me tremendously.
Tim
June 18, 2019
I just wanted to let you know that your rates need updated…..badly. It says on the article that it was updated on May 10th of 2019, but it is obvious that it is not updated at all for current redemption rates. United Business class round trip Base Business fare is 200K each way, you have listed 80k! It is 90K business class with saver availability…..each way. Round trip is never under 180K. Please update.
Stephen Au
June 18, 2019
Tim,
Thanks for reading. You are incorrect in saying that business class is 90,000 United miles on United metal. It costs 80,000 miles each way on United Airlines-operated flights and 90,000 miles on Star Alliance partners.
BV
July 10, 2019
“As the only Star Alliance carrier operating nonstop flights between the U.S. and Australia, you will have limited opportunities to use your United MileagePlus miles. United operates 2 flights to Sydney (SYD): 1 from Houston International (IAH) and 1 from San Francisco (SFO).”
The above statement is incorrect. United flies to Sydney from LAX, SFO and IAH daily (except in the northern hemisphere summer, when they decrease service to 3x (LAX) and 4x (IAH) weekly). There are also daily flights from LAX and SFO to Melbourne (SFO service starting 10/2019) – uncertain on the seasonal variance in these flights. Hope that helps people.
Just scored some 4 award tickets to SYD 12/30 —- and there looks to be plenty to open (elite) business class award space (IN and PZ class) to Australia.
Stephen Au
July 16, 2019
Hey Brent!
Thanks for reading. We appreciate your feedback and we’re in the process of updating this piece.
Hahm Burger
November 16, 2019
You wrote: >>>….the importance of flexibility and being open to positioning flights can’t be understated. <<<
Should be: cant be OVERstated.
Stephen Au
November 18, 2019
Hi Hahm,
Thanks for the feedback. We changed the language accordingly.
Brando
December 19, 2019
FYI, the mileage cost from Hawaii to Sydney on Hawaiian (booking through Virgin Atlantic) is not accurate. It’s 40k economy each way
Jarrod West
December 23, 2019
Hi Brando,
Thanks for pointing this out. We have this post in the queue for editing and will have that corrected as soon as possible.
Thanks for reading!
Julian
April 15, 2020
Yes, I just spent an hour on hold with Virgin trying to book the hnl – syd flight at 40k in biz only to find out it’s actually 65k. Needless to say, I was disappointed.
In general, love your articles, but I hope these inaccuracies are updated soon.
Stephen Au
April 15, 2020
Hey Julian,
Thanks for the feedback. The accurate prices have been updated to reflect this.
Please visit Virgin Atlantic’s Hawaiian Airlines page to confirm your information in the future.
Steven
January 19, 2020
Excellent article! Thank you! What about using Aeroplan points for AC or United? AC will have fuel surcharges but not if you originate out of Australia.
Stephen Au
January 22, 2020
Hi Steven,
Yes, this is definitely a viable option. Air Canada releases decent award availability, especially for their Vancouver (YVR) – Brisbane (BNE) route. That requires origination in Canada, as opposed to the U.S. Thanks for reading.
Scott
May 11, 2020
How early/late out does Avianca start to show business award space for the Sydney-LAX/SFO routes? Is it just hit and miss? I’m not seeing any for business class for next March/April so far.
Jarrod West
May 25, 2020
Hi Scott,
Avianca usually releases award space 360 days in advance for all of their routes – so award space for those dates should have been released already.
With that said, those routes are extremely popular for award flights and usually, very few seats are released for award bookings. This does not mean that all hope is lost though, you can continue to check back periodically to see if any new seats are released or set up an alert via a platform like Expert Flyer.
Yuval
April 05, 2022
Hello,
I love your emails and articles! They helped me in the past with booking flights to Hawaii with miles.
This is a tricky one: there’s the British Airways Avios promotion at American Express. However, I don’t know how many miles will it cost me to book Qantas or American Airlines via British Airways website (unless if there’s another way to do it that I didn’t think of. I am a beginner here! lol)?
Since I only have 105,000 points and it’s the two of us, we’ll focus on economy flights.
Oh yes, the flights are for the end of the year to Sydney and it’s super expensive! I hope the miles can help us here. Also, how do I know if the dates I need are available for award miles? Are the black out dates?
Also, my wife has 75,000 miles with Alaska Airlines and 50,000 miles with Discover Miles. Maybe it can help as well?
Are there better options than the promotion of Avios? I am open to suggestions.
Thank you for all the help here! Keep up the good work! 🙂
Stephen Au
April 14, 2022
Hi Yuval,
If you are trying to figure out how to use British Airways Avios for a flight on Qantas or American Airlines, we’ve written a guide to walk you through how to redeem BA Avios for maximum value:
/travel/airlines/how-to-redeem-british-airways-avios/
The number of Avios you will redeem depends on the flight distance of your itinerary. The longer you fly, the more it’ll cost in Avios.
You can also redeem Alaska Airlines miles for flights on Qantas or American Airlines.
Discover Miles are best used to offset travel costs since their value is pegged to 1 cent.
Caleb Govoruhk
August 28, 2022
Where are you seeing these prices? The round-trip United flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne is $2,900, and when click on the option to use points, the price goes up significantly. Definitely not the 1:1 ratio Amex says.
Jarrod West
August 29, 2022
Hi Caleb,
The prices shown in this post are the award prices for the respective airline award charts. If you look solely through the Amex Travel portal the price you will be shown is directly tied to the cash price. This is why we recommend using transfer partners.
Richard
August 29, 2022
Great article but I can’t seem to find any reference to Chase Ultimate points on the United Mileage Plus pages. Have I missed something? I have 149k points I’d like to redeem.
Thanks!!
Jarrod West
August 30, 2022
Hi Richard,
You have to transfer your Chase points to United first, read through our guide on the Chase transfer partners for assistance here.
Kyle
April 10, 2023
Great article.
I was trying to look at ANA for flights from IAH or LAX, SFO or YVR to SYD but from their site following your steps it would only pull up flights that made you fly to Japan and then to SYD?
Did I do something wrong?
Thanks!
Chris Hassan
April 10, 2023
Hey Kyle,
If you are flying on ANA from the U.S., they will always fly to Japan as that is their hub. If you want to use ANA miles to fly a direct flight (on United for example), United would need to have available partner award space.
jeff r
July 30, 2023
jetstar flies hnl-mel nonstop a few days per week
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