American and Qantas recently announced an expanded partnership with flights to Australia from the United States.
- American will add a once-daily Los Angeles to Sydney flight
- Qantas will add a 5x weekly, increasing to 6x weekly Sydney to San Fransisco flight
Ordinarily, Qantas and British Airways members have the leg up with access to award availability, since they have approximately 30 days extra time before the space is available for American Airlines AAdvantage members to book. However, because Qantas is adding the Sydney to San Fransisco flight, and it’s new to the schedule, space is available to all oneworld partners at the same time, which is making for some readily available Business Class awards that otherwise wouldn’t be as available. Service to SFO begins December 18.
The flights to and from Sydney are operated by a 747, with a Business cabin, Premium Economy cabin and Economy Class. I’ve reviewed the Business product from New York to Los Angeles as well as Los Angeles to Brisbane.
I picked a sampling of dates in 2016 to try out. In addition to these, there’s plenty of others available, from what I can see.
San Fransisco to Sydney – Leaves 11:25p, arrives 7a (+ 2 days)
On April 10, there’s 2 Business Class (“U”) seats to Sydney.
March 15th also returns 2 Business seats as well.
Sydney to San Fransisco – Leaves at 3:00p, arrives 9:30a (same day)
March 15 returns 2 Business seats.
Also April 12.
If you want to know how to view Qantas Business Class award availability on ExpertFlyer, you can read my how-to guide here.
The cost, each-way, is 62,500 and approximately $5 in taxes. For myself, a few weeks ago, I was able to find a LAX-SYD flight in First, and was now able to find a return via San Fransisco.
Some notes:
- Currently, it appears as if the non-stop San Fransisco to Sydney and Sydney to San Fransisco flights are not viewable on AA.com, however a call into reservations will find the space.
- Not every day has space, though there is a decent amount of it onwards starting December 18. For many days, there are 2 seats (that’s the maximum I’ve seen), though a fair amount with one as well.
- Once you cancel a Qantas award seat, the trend is that it is usually placed back into award inventory, so be careful when canceling reservations.
Have you been able to book an award flight from San Fransisco to Sydney or vice versa?
Jamie Larounis is an avid traveler, blogger and miles/points educator. Traveling well over 100,000 miles a year and staying in hotels for over 100 nights, he leverages miles, points and other deals to fly in first class cabins, and stay in 5-star hotels. The Forward Cabin shares his experiences, musings, reviews, tips, tricks, resources and industry news with you, the fellow traveler.
nice find. No availability around the year end holidays.
Yeah. Busy season.
Hi Jamie, Thanks for posting this! I currently have held SFO-SYD r/t in April. But the fees are $114 per person. Not that I am complaining…it’s still fantastic. Do you think I can change the return to come back from New Zealand and connect in Sydney-SFO? It’s not booked yet.
Yep, they can protect the SYD-SFO flight in the reservation and just add on the other segments. The problem is that if you aren’t an EXP and you make a change after ticketing, they’ll charge you for it, so you’ll be want to sure you book the right flights to begin with. BTW – check TAM airlines from Auckland to Sydney. It’s a fifth freedom route with lie flat seats. 😉
Refresh me please on fifth freedom…also how are the seats in Bus on Qantas?
If fifth freedom should be kept discreet…fb msg me instead. 🙂
http://theforwardcabin.com/resources/fifth-freedom-routes/
Fifth freedom is a route that’s within another country or between two countries that aren’t normally operated by that airline – like the Cathay Pacific JFK to HKG for example. The seats on Qantas are very comfortable in my opinion. The food and service is top notch.
Thanks – so it looks like it’s LAN between AUK and SYD. And I assume then that this should be no problem (as long as there is availability) for me to tack on AUK-SYD to my SYD-SFO return?
I have this held until 7/21…should I just wait until Ann Arbor and have some experts tweek this more for me? 🙂 I’ll call back today and add AUK-SYD though.
You should really be getting more credit for the tip on this availability!!!
Ah, sorry. I meant LAN. Good catch! I’d suggest adding it on. You can make changes for free up until the hold ends, so might as well grab the seat while it’s there.