‘Points hacker’ reveals how to get business class seats for economy prices

Warren shared his six tips for planning a trip and securing free business class flights (pictured on board)

Step 1: Know the destinations you want to visit and the airline products you want to experience 

Warren said he knew he wanted to visit Bora Bora, the US and Japan, and they were flexible with what airline they flew with. The priority was business class seats.

Step 2: Find out what airlines get you from A to B

Warren used SkyScanner and Google Flights to research the flight options. He got the cash prices at the same time.

Step 3: Find out which type of airline points and how many points it costs to fly on the route you select 

Warren said he used a combination of Google Search for ‘[insert airline name] partners, [insert airline name] award chart and Great Circle Mapper to gather information on what and how many points they needed to get on the flights they wanted.

Step 4: Shortlist your flight selections

Warren uses spreadsheets and tables help him manage the large amount of information. After comparing the points required and routes on different airlines, he crafted an itinerary.

Step 5: Find the required points to fund flights

At the time, Warren had a small amount of Qantas and Velocity points, but he decided to also buy some American AAdvantage miles while they were on sale. He had to buy AA miles with two accounts as the amount of additional miles I required exceeded the annual limit for one account.

Step 6: Locking in the award seats 

He knew this was tricky and he’d have to time when to book. He added the dates of when to book to a separate column on the spreadsheet. For example, if he wanted to redeem a Qantas flight that fell on the 20 December 2018, and he knew that it opens its calendar booking 353 days in advance, he would have to be ready to redeem around 1 January 2018.

He knew some routes were more popular, and this is where performing dummy searches before when you need to actually book comes into play, as you will familiarise with the website interface and get a better idea of how many award seats are usually released. 

He booked the flights using AA miles and Velocity points on the dates the bookings opened up. He booked the first and last flight on our itinerary at the end because there is relatively more availability on these shorter routes (Brisbane – Auckland and Sydney – Brisbane).

Source: Point Hacks