zanzibar138
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2007
- Messages
- 5,623
I'm going to start with a little background info, in case it helps anyone else find good deals like we did
DH spends a lot of time on a frequent flyer forum, and has been learning about some tips, loopholes etc for good deals. He decided to try one of the tips, and found a great value package to Singapore ($1200 for both of us, return economy flights from Melbourne with Qantas, plus 3 nights at what turned out to be a lovely hotel). We decided to go for it, and before we knew it, we were trying to translate our booking confirmation (which came to us in Portugese ). I relaxed when the bookings appeared on our Qantas bookings. For a laugh, we thought we'd request an upgrade to business class for 40,000 points each per flight (so 160,000 for the whole lot ).
In the meantime, two things happened. The first was that AAdvantage (American Airlines frequent flyer program) sent us an offer. The offer was for a reduced number of points required to get to platinum level (which would give us all the benefits of being gold level with Qantas) for $200 each. DH worked out that we could make that work, and we signed up.
The second thing that happened was that DH found another tip to try for a great deal on premium economy airfares. We found a return trip with Qantas for $1200 each - the catch was that it was return *from* Singapore. That wasn't so much of a problem for us as we will be returning to the area early next year, so we can just use the return part of the journey then.
So we ditched the return part of our original Expedia flights, and booked the premium economy ones via Auckland (as DH had worked out that if we did a side trip to Auckland 'on the way' home, we would qualify for the AAdvantage offer). Are you still with me?
Now, with all this going on, we had kind of forgotten about our upgrade request (and we never thought it would happen anyway on $600 flights including 3 nights accommodation...). The day before our flight, we got a text from Qantas confirming that our upgrade had been processed! OMG we're going business class!!! We made sure that we quickly cancelled the upgrade request for the return leg of the journey!
So to summarise, this is what our flights looked like at the end of the day (I can't figure out how to strikethrough, so I've italicized the cancelled flights instead)...
Melbourne - Singapore (economy business)
Singapore - Melbourne (economy)
Singapore - Sydney (premium economy)
Sydney - Auckland (economy)
Auckland - Melbourne (economy)
Plus we've got these leftover flights for our next trip...
Melbourne - Brisbane (economy)
Brisbane - Singapore (premium economy)
Righto. Now that I've thoroughly confused everyone, on with the TR!
DH spends a lot of time on a frequent flyer forum, and has been learning about some tips, loopholes etc for good deals. He decided to try one of the tips, and found a great value package to Singapore ($1200 for both of us, return economy flights from Melbourne with Qantas, plus 3 nights at what turned out to be a lovely hotel). We decided to go for it, and before we knew it, we were trying to translate our booking confirmation (which came to us in Portugese ). I relaxed when the bookings appeared on our Qantas bookings. For a laugh, we thought we'd request an upgrade to business class for 40,000 points each per flight (so 160,000 for the whole lot ).
In the meantime, two things happened. The first was that AAdvantage (American Airlines frequent flyer program) sent us an offer. The offer was for a reduced number of points required to get to platinum level (which would give us all the benefits of being gold level with Qantas) for $200 each. DH worked out that we could make that work, and we signed up.
The second thing that happened was that DH found another tip to try for a great deal on premium economy airfares. We found a return trip with Qantas for $1200 each - the catch was that it was return *from* Singapore. That wasn't so much of a problem for us as we will be returning to the area early next year, so we can just use the return part of the journey then.
So we ditched the return part of our original Expedia flights, and booked the premium economy ones via Auckland (as DH had worked out that if we did a side trip to Auckland 'on the way' home, we would qualify for the AAdvantage offer). Are you still with me?
Now, with all this going on, we had kind of forgotten about our upgrade request (and we never thought it would happen anyway on $600 flights including 3 nights accommodation...). The day before our flight, we got a text from Qantas confirming that our upgrade had been processed! OMG we're going business class!!! We made sure that we quickly cancelled the upgrade request for the return leg of the journey!
So to summarise, this is what our flights looked like at the end of the day (I can't figure out how to strikethrough, so I've italicized the cancelled flights instead)...
Melbourne - Singapore (economy business)
Singapore - Melbourne (economy)
Singapore - Sydney (premium economy)
Sydney - Auckland (economy)
Auckland - Melbourne (economy)
Plus we've got these leftover flights for our next trip...
Melbourne - Brisbane (economy)
Brisbane - Singapore (premium economy)
Righto. Now that I've thoroughly confused everyone, on with the TR!