Flying to Australia

those membership[ fees a are way off

BA card is 300
Amex Pt is £575

Airmiles is the way to go but needs quite a bit f work and I would also be wary of devaluation / rule changes such as Virgin have just done
You missed the part about cancelling and claiming a pro rata refund
 
You missed the part about cancelling and claiming a pro rata refund

the end of that is due at any time so I wouldn't rely on that

though last time I wen to cancel they offered me 40k not to so I accepted and then cancelled anyway about a month later :P
 
With Amex you can switch to monthly billing for the card fee, meaning you can cancel whenever without losing out.

...speaking of Amex it's about time for my yearly 'I'm leaving' discussion with their customer service!
 
I just signed up for the Amex Platinum 80,000 point for £10k in 6 months offer. I should be able to put a work business class flight and trip on it in Jan so with any luck I can close it and get the pro rata refund within a couple of months. That said the benefits look OK.
 
A steam deck revolutionises flying long haul :p

Recently fly Qantas:

LHR > SIN - A380
SIN > MEL - A330-300

Took off at 8pm and wasn’t that tired, so decided to try and get on Australia time straight away to beat the jet lag I usually get.

Managed to play Factorio for almost 10 solid hours, if you need a long flight to go fast, get yourself a Deck and try and make your green circuit production more efficient :cry::p

Sat in 80K on the A380, which is the row behind an exit, but doesn’t have a seat in front of you, and luckily no one was sat in the third seat in the row so had a thoroughly good time overall!

The A330 was obviously a bit smaller and older, but had an exit row so wasn’t too bad!

Would highly recommend Qantas, they couldn’t have kept us fed and watered enough, on the a380 they had a little self serve drinks and snacks area at the back which was nice when you got up for a stretch and a wander!
 
There's no way anyone could convince me to pay for business seats for what amounts to a single journey.

Maybe practise sleeping in loud uncomfortable positions leading up to the flight?
 
There's no way anyone could convince me to pay for business seats for what amounts to a single journey.

Maybe practise sleeping in loud uncomfortable positions leading up to the flight?
The point of this thread is getting into business class without paying for it.
 
Yeah, I am well into it now not just for this Australia trip. I've learnt a lot since starting the thread.

Tell me about it - I started learning about it all in 2019 and by the end of 2022 we’d taken 4 business class holidays all using Avios.


Now have a 10 month old so holidays have taken a back seat but the Avios and vouchers are still building!
 
I’ve had a BA card before but even after spending (for me) a fair amount on it, I want never anywhere near having the points needed to fly anywhere long haul in anything other than economy with a slight discount.

Is there a way to easily work how much you’d need to spend to get 1 x business seat to X destination.

So say I want to fly from LHR > SYDN in March 2026, how much would I need to spend on a BA Amex card to get a “free” ticket (I know you have to pay taxes)?
 
I’ve had a BA card before but even after spending (for me) a fair amount on it, I want never anywhere near having the points needed to fly anywhere long haul in anything other than economy with a slight discount.

Is there a way to easily work how much you’d need to spend to get 1 x business seat to X destination.

So say I want to fly from LHR > SYDN in March 2026, how much would I need to spend on a BA Amex card to get a “free” ticket (I know you have to pay taxes)?

Just put it into the BA website under the ‘book a ticket using Avios’ menu. There does need to be a free seat for you to get through and see the spend but it’ll give you a rough idea. I’m sure there’s websites out there too that have all the Avios costs listed…
 
I’ve had a BA card before but even after spending (for me) a fair amount on it, I want never anywhere near having the points needed to fly anywhere long haul in anything other than economy with a slight discount.

Is there a way to easily work how much you’d need to spend to get 1 x business seat to X destination.

So say I want to fly from LHR > SYDN in March 2026, how much would I need to spend on a BA Amex card to get a “free” ticket (I know you have to pay taxes)?
You'll probably never do it that way, you need to make use of the different promotions like the current Amex platinum 95,000 point one if you want those kind of miles. IIRC it's 270k miles for a biz class return to Sydney with BA.
 
I flew economy with Malaysian from Glasgow. GLA > AMS on KLM and then AMS > KUL and then KUL > SYD. I got very drunk the night before and basically vomited the whole way to KUL and a few more times on way to Sydney. TLDR, do NOT get blind drunk and then fly literally half way around the world in a tin can with recycled air! Luckily there were spare seats next to the toilets so I just sat there and managed to avoid annoying the other passengers.

My other half was delighted as she got 2 seats to herself the whole way and didnt have to listen to me talk rubbish either! The cabin crew were great, they gave me every remedy you could imagine that they had access to as they thought I was genuinely ill from flying rather than just being a muppet for getting hammered the night before.
 
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