Extremely Rare: Qantas First Class Awards To & From The US

Qantas is one of the stingiest airlines out there when it comes to making first class award seats available, especially on their routes between the US and Australia. Often you’ll find that they don’t have a single first class award seat available between the US and Australia for the entire schedule.

That’s why some Qantas award availability at the moment is pretty noteworthy.

As noted by Spencer on God Save The Points, at the moment Qantas has fairly good first class award availability for travel between the US and Australia, especially in September through February.

Now, make sure you temper your expectations here. There’s good availability by Qantas standards.

Like I said, often you won’t see even a single award seat the entire schedule, so to see a couple of dozen dates with space at the moment is quite unusual, especially as there are two first class award seats on many of these flights.

From the US to Australia I see a good bit of space from Los Angeles to both Sydney and Melbourne, while on the return the most space is from Melbourne to Los Angeles.

There are two good ways to book these awards, and in both cases you can book online:

  • Through American AAdvantage, at the cost of 110,000 miles per person per direction
  • Through Alaska Mileage Plan, at the cost of 70,000 Mileage Plan miles per person, and you’re even allowed a free stopover (meaning you could fly from the US to Australia, have a stopover, and then continue to somewhere else, be it in Australia or New Zealand

To get a sense of what you can expect in Qantas’ A380 first class, see my Sydney to Los Angeles review.

Hurry, as this availability won’t last!

Anyone able to take advantage of this Qantas first class award space?

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Andrew Guest

Totally amazed to find two F seats for a few days before Christmas. It's normally the toughest time of the year! Unfortunately I can *ONLY* seem to book them direct with QF, I can't see them on AS. Perhaps I should call up?

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Spencer Bachus New Member

Hey Lucky! I managed to snag one of these unicorns for the 29th of November through Alaska Air but my dilemma is that I don’t arrive until the 1st of December which is when my tour starts. I didn’t factor in the whole two day thing. I have tried switching my departure to a day earlier but would have to give up my unicorn seats. Any tips? Check each day via Alaska?

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UWS Tony Member

I booked R/T LAX-MEL in first with BA Avios a few months ago for July, not the exact dates I wanted but close. I was surprised.

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Maria Makarski Guest

Yes. Two seats to Sydney from Dallas r/t from DTW with only one connection in DFW for Jan 2020. I was amazed! There were also several dates with business class availability

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Shaun Guest

Lucky, As a locally based QF flyer who has tried for years to snag first and biz class seats to America (without success), it's not news that QF is breathtakingly stingy when it comes to disbursing reward seats on those routes. For me, the real burning question is: why did they do it now for first class??? Increased competition? Falling demand? I no longer fly QF on transpacific routes (long shifted to Fiji Airways, Air New Zealand, Virgin Australia and Hawaiian Airlines), so I really don't know from experience what their numbers are like.

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