Tips and tricks to get the reward flight seat you want!

Hi all,

As some of you know, having a large frequent flyer point balance doesn’t necessarily mean you can pick and choose whatever reward flight seat you want. This is due to airlines only releasing a small number of reward seats on each flight, and reward seats in the premium cabins generally are booked well in advance.

Though using some of the tips and tricks l have learnt over time, you might be able to find a way to get to where you want (possibly with a few detours along the way!).

• Check all airlines
  • I have points / miles in different programs, such as Qantas Frequent Flyer program, Virgin’s Velocity and Singapore Krisflyer. This allows you to mix and match across different airlines. For example, if you want to fly Sydney to London, and there were no reward seats with the one program, you could break it up into two programs – such as seeing if you could book a reward seat from Sydney to Perth with Virgin, and then if there is a reward seat from Perth to London with Qantas.
  • When you are booking with programs like QFF, you can also book flights with their partner airlines such as Emirates, American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and a range of other Oneworld partners. Or if you book through Velocity, you can use your Velocity points for reward seats with Etihad, Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and some other airlines

• Book early if you can, but keep checking!
  • If you can, try and figure out where you want to go, and when you want to go. This is because airlines generally release their flights within one year of the departure date. For example, Qantas release seats 353 days before departure, Velocity release theirs 330 days beforehand and Singapore Airlines release seats 355 days before departure. So as you can figure out, the earlier you book when a seat is released, the higher the chance. I know of some people who will book as soon as a seat is released because they want to fly in first and business!
  • Though contrary to this, some airlines do release reward seats during the year. So do keep checking if you can (l find Qantas and British Airways do this often).
• Be flexible with cities and airports
  • Being able to be flexible with the ordering of which cities / destinations you would like to visit can be handy. For example, l wanted to go Singapore, Hong Kong, then London and just straight back to Sydney (mainly to prevent jumping between timezones as much as possible!). But l couldn’t find reward seats, so l went Sydney to Hong Kong (Qantas), Hong Kong to London (Cathay Pacific using Qantas points), London to Singapore (Singapore Airlines using Velocity points), Singapore to Sydney (Qantas). A good example of mix and matching between programs as well!
  • Remember to include all airports in your search, and be flexible with which airport you arrive at. For example, you can fly to either Heathrow or Gatwick Airport in London – l prefer to fly into Heathrow (personal preference!), but l have flown into Gatwick due to reward availability. Similar with New York (JFK, Neward and LaGuardia).
  • Don’t forget some cities are very close together. For example, if you want to get to London, you can fly into Paris and hop on the Eurostar to get to London, or you can fly into Manchester and get the National Rail to London.

• Last but not least, change the date!
  • You might want to fly out on Saturday, but so do most other people! So if your leave and / or plans are flexible, try a weekday. Also, if you can avoid the school holidays / festive season, then this will also improve the odds of getting the reward seats you want.

Hope these tips and tricks come in handy – let me know if you have your own tips and tricks which you can share with everyone.