Articles on how to fly across the planet in 1st-class or business-class luxury on points are just about everywhere. Such articles will walk you through how to use credit cards, gift cards, and insurance promotions to rack up anywhere between 50,000 and 300,000 points to take a single flight in business or first. This article isn’t that.

It takes a certain amount of dedication to farm that many points, especially without a credit card. What you value for redemption is a personal thing, however, in terms of bang-for-buck, I don’t think you can do much better than a quirk of Qantas’ Oneworld Classic Rewards that allows you to do a round-the-world trip (or any multi-stop trip within the rules) in economy for just 132,400 points.

The Rules

The redemption tables and T&Cs set out the following conditions:

• You must fly on at least two non-Qantas Oneworld member airlines, and cannot fly on non-Oneworld airlines (therefore Jetstar is not allowed)
• You may visit up to 5 cities
  • This does not include transfers, ie. any time you have less than 24 hours in a city
  • This does include cities you reach via surface segments (any form of travel not part of your main booking, eg. trains or flights booked with other airlines)
• You can cover a total distance of up to 35,000 miles (56,315km). This includes any ground legs.
• You may fly up to 16 sectors (this is your total flight count, including flights to/from layover cities)
• All itineraries should be round-trip (ie. finish where they started). If an itinerary is not a round trip the miles flown will include the distance to return to your initial departure point, potentially putting you over the limit if you’re near that point.
• You may not return to your country of departure until the conclusion of your trip (not in your main rewards booking, at least)
• Your trip must span no more than 1 year
• You may only visit any given city once as a destination, and up to twice as a transfer city

Provided you meet all the above criteria and fly exclusively in economy (more on that later), your total is capped at 132,400 points.

Even though the most common use for this quirk is round-the-world and similar bookings, it can technically used for any multi-stop booking within the above parameters. Unlike offers such as the Oneworld or SkyTeam round-the-world programs, you are permitted to double back on your route.

How to Book

Bookings with up to 7 sectors can be booked via the Qantas website via the multi-stop tool. Ensure you have enabled the option to use Rewards, and suffer through the awful experience Qantas serves up for you. There’s no need to do anything else - provided you do all the right things and meet all the requirements for this quirk, the tool should automatically spit out your total of 132,400 points.

If you need more than 7 sectors, you’ll have to call Qantas to book. This can be a bad experience, especially if you get someone who hasn’t done this before, but if you call at the right time (usually first thing in the morning or mid-afternoon) and get lucky you should be ok. You’ll also be charged an AU$70 service fee when booking this way, which doesn’t apply when booking online.

However, before doing any of the above, I strongly recommend planning out your flight on seats.aero (that’s my referral link btw, but it won’t cost you any extra). The Pro subscription for 1 year is well worth the time you’ll save battling with Qantas’ booking tool, and the advanced search capabilities are incredibly powerful.

Example Itinerary

Australia → East USA → London → West USA → Australia

This is the most recent itinerary I flew using this program. I booked this fairly last-minute (just 2 months in advance), hence the weird route and the return to Sydney instead of Melbourne. I also booked a SYD-MEL flight on points, but neither the website or phone support agent’s software would let me include it in this itinerary, despite it technically being within the bounds of the redemption, so I booked it seperately.

This itinerary totals 27,050 miles - well within the limit of 35,000 miles, despite doubling back on itself. All together, this cost me 132,400 Qantas Points, plus AU$981.24 in fees and taxes. Not bad for a 2-month trip!

A Touch of Luxury

Though more difficult due to limited availability, a similar itinerary with a fixed points price is also possible in premium economy, business and first class. Naturally, this offers a higher cash-per-point value than the economy variant, but with a higher barrier to entry due to the much higher number of points required. All the same rules apply as in economy.

• Premium Economy: 249,600 points
• Business Class: 318,000 points
• First Class: 455,000 points

If you’re looking to snag any of these, I’d suggest booking exactly one year in advance. This is when schedules and most rewards seats are released (though this varies on some airlines), meaning you’ll see the most availability possible. Certainly, if you can shell out the points for business or first you’ll be doing extremely well, with some business class reward seats costing upwards of 80,000 points, up to 16 sectors for 318k points is an absolute steal (avg. ~20k points per sector).

Why Does This Exist?

While it’s impossible to fully understand why Qantas has structured its rewards program like this, this quirk is a result of an abnormality in the last row of the Oneworld Classic Rewards redemption table.

You’ll notice that for most of the table, the zones generally go up in 1000-3000 mile increments. That is until you get to zone 10, which is a whopping 15,800 mile interval. This is what we’re using to our advantage.

To put into context the range of trips you can do, both of these will cost you 132,400 points:

• Sydney → Singapore → Hong Kong → Tokyo → Los Angeles → Dallas → Sydney - 22,600 miles
• Sydney → Dallas → Tokyo → Los Angeles → New York → Dallas (transfer) → Melbourne - 33,000 miles

Now, whether there’s availability etc on those flights is a whole other issue (and as such it was difficult to get a price estimate on either), but it remains impressive that a 11,000 mile difference costs you no more in points. Happy searching!