Frequent Flyers
Now I wouldn’t call myself a frequent flyer – over the past few years I’ve gone on an average of one flight a year, which is not really enough to earn many points. However I have been a frequent spender, and since I have a cool credit card which pays 1.5 points per dollar spent I have managed to accumulate a healthy tally of QANTAS points (along with my unhealthy credit card debt…) Earning points then, is not so tricky – using them is a different kettle of fish…
Last year when we went to Africa we tried to use points to fly me and Jen across and then pay for the kids’ flights. What we found then was that we could get the flights we wanted to fly from Perth to Johannesburg, yet there were no return flights for at least six weeks after we wanted to come back. At the time I assumed that the lack of flights was simply because we were booking our tickets with only a couple of months before we planned to go and all the seats had been taken. This time it’s just me going on my own in October (the whole family is hopefully going in July – see here) so I thought using my points to get one return flight 7 months in advance should not be a problem. Guess again! I tried to book the flight on the weekend and struck the same problem – no problem getting the flight I wanted there, but simply no return flights from South Africa. Actually it was not quite as bad as last time – I managed to find a return flight 2 weeks after I wanted to come home, but an extra 2 weeks off work would cost me more than buying the ticket in the first place, since I don’t get paid leave (no work = no pay) and more importantly it’s leaving Jen alone with the boys for an extra 2 weeks, which would not go down well.
I can’t work out why this is a unidirectional problem – there are 5 flights a week to Johannesburg and 5 back. Why is it that there are no award flights available for the return journey but plenty getting there? Hard to explain. I’m not sure if they might release any more seats between now and October so I’ll keep checking the QANTAS website, but it looks like I’ll probably have to pay for the flights again, and in the process earn some more of these frustratingly unusable points.
Categories : Africa, Personal, Travel | 3 Comments
