Does booking multi destination flights work when you are using points? Or is it better to have just one destination to avoid any complexities? This will ultimately depends on two points – the first being how many points you have and secondly how travel-savvy you are with creating multi stops with your points.

If I am an average Australian who has accumulated 60,000 Qantas Frequent Flyer points but don’t know really where I can go – I go directly to the Qantas website and start doing some research and calculations. The site may tell you to fly from Sydney to Hong Kong costs 60,000 points on an economy return flight. Great you think! You then go searching for availability and find that there is no award seat available during the time frames you want to go. But you then see there are some flights that either fly via Melbourne or Brisbane.

You select those flights and find that it flies Cathay Pacific instead of Qantas. OK – you look at the points total and it comes out as 70,000 or even 80,000 points! Why? Well – you are not taking a direct flight so Qantas charges you – and then you are also not travelling on Qantas metal but a code-share – so you get slugged another few thousand points you don’t have! You could possibly use points + cash – but then find that the cash component and then adding tax may cost you $700 AUD!!!! When on special Qantas sells actual airfares from Sydney to Hong Kong for $788 AUD when on special! So therefore that means your 60,000 points are only worth $88!

This is one of the main reasons why so many people are turned off – they don’t know the routing rules of the different frequent flyer programmes and cannot take advantage of this. So you think to yourself – if I just want to get to Hong Kong from Sydney – but then I want to fly onwards to New York – how much more trouble and points are they going to charge you!

That’s why consulting with a frequent flyer expert helps in this instance will pay dividends as they will explain exactly how to get the most of your hard-earned points. If you want multi destination flights – maybe you need to use a different frequent flyer programme such as US Airways (US Dividend Miles) and have all your points credited to your USDM account when you fly Qantas instead. USDM generally has better routing rules which allow you multiple layovers (under 24 hours) and also one stopover.

Avianca Lifemiles is another frequent flyer program which allows you to fly to a city with an 8 hour lay-over in a city beforehand. But the best use of these points is to fly direct.

As we live in a world economy, there are so may frequent flyer programmes out there to take advantage of. Booking multi destination flights might be better booked with another frequent flyer programme other than Qantas depending on how many points you have. That’s why you can either take the time to research it all yourself or consult a frequent flyer expert to show you exactly the strategy and how to prepare yourself when booking a flight.

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