Australia is a major draw card for birders and should be on most eco-travelers dream trip list. Unfortunately, being so far from everywhere else, it can be very expensive to get there whether you use miles or cash. Let’s look at a few options.
ONE WORLD ALLIANCE
For most people, joining American Airline’s AAdvantage will be the best option. They have quite a few credit card options to quickly build your miles stash and a few partners such as E-Rewards and various hotels where you can transfer points in. This is my first choice for travel to/from Australia as you can book your award to anywhere Qantas flies domestically and not be dependent on gateway cities only. Example: Dallas-Los Angeles-Honolulu-Sydney-Alice Springs.
These figures are one-way so double if you want a round trip. The nice thing about AAdvantage is the flexibility, you may choose to go one way in economy and one way in business, or do an open jaw where you fly into Brisbane (BNE) for example and out of Perth (PER). Australia is in the South Pacific region so you can see the miles required for most departing cities.
USA and Canada: Each way is 37,000 economy; 62,500 business; 72,000 first. You can use Qantas, Hawaiian Airlines, Air Tahiti Nui or Air Pacific but there are no stopovers allowed. AA no longer allows you to use Hawaiian Airlines between mainland USA and Hawaii and if you want to travel beyond Hawaii to the South Pacific you will pay 2 awards – USA-Hawaii + Hawaii-South Pacific.
UK and Europe: Each way is 45,000 economy; 60,000 business; 80,000 first. You can use British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, Etihad or (coming soon) Malaysian Airlines and SriLankan Airlines; or use Finnair, Air Berlin or Iberia to get to Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong or anywhere Qantas flies.
STAR ALLIANCE AIRLINES
No matter where you live, the best programs to use in Star Alliance is United. With United, you can book partner awards online, book one-way awards and get lots of miles via several Chase credit cards; but if you can’t get these cards it can be hard to get miles in United Mileage Plus. Depending on where you live, Avianca/Taca Lifemiles could be useful too, but it is hard to use their booking engine for complicated routings so I suggest saving them for USA-Central/South America where they offer better value and ease of booking. Singapore’s Krisflyer also offers Star Alliance awards.
UNITED AIRLINES (can book one-way or round trip.
The award chart is too big to copy paste here so please follow this link to see the whole chart.
USA and Canada: (each way) Economy 40,000; Business 62,500; First 80,000. You can use United, Air Canada, Air New Zealand (hard to get) or sometimes take the “scenic route” via Asia using Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, Asiana or ANA (All Nippon Airlines). You can easily see the routings via their online award booking engine.
UK and Europe: (each way) Economy 55,000, Business 75,000; First 90,000. Most people try to get routings using Singapore, Thai, Lufthansa, Swiss and Turkish Airlines. You can easily see the routings on their online award booking engine but be careful if you are looking at business or first class awards as sometimes they offer mixed class awards and the long-haul section could be in economy with a short sector in business or first.
Here’s an example of London to Perth, as you can see they quote both the miles and taxes and the business class award are “mixed class” and if you hover over the fare, you can see which flight is in which class.
You can see how much cheaper it is to fly from Brussels due to the very high UK departure taxes.
These are just a few examples, please feel free to ask questions in the comments.
If you need ideas on how to acquire frequent flyer miles, please see the Resources tab and Miles and Points tab. which I will update with new offers for free or cheap miles.
OTHER AIRLINES
If you are from the USA, you may also want to try Virgin Australia awards booked with Delta miles or Qantas awards booked with miles sourced from the Citibank Premier Thank You card. It is virtually impossible to get J class awards these days on QF with AA miles as members of Qantas Frequent Flyer have access several weeks earlier and snap them up.