Frequent Flyers............

Making enquiries for using Frequent Flyer points was actually quite easy. Research on the internet and a phone call to Qantas explained that I can book tickets up to 353 days before the dates I wanted to travel.

I then put together a rough trip plan - Singapore three days, England two weeks, Ireland one week, Orlando ten days, Las Vegas 5 days, Hawaii 4 days.

Working around the Orlando Canvention I did a lot of searching on the Qantas website for the correct connections etc. to make it all happen and when ready contacted Qantas with my plans. You are able to do all this on the internet yourself but for only 2500 points you can use a Qantas Frequent Flyer sales person to help you coordinate flights.

The only tricky part was when I phoned to book my flights I was told I could not book all the tickets for the trip until it was 353 days before the departure day of my last flight - originally to be the leg between Hawaii and Sydney. So I had to wait till the correct amount of days before this flight.

This worked out real well and the lady was very good at pointing out a few flight options I had not thought of and helped me with the problem with the Hawaii stop over section of the trip. I rang at 2pm on the required day and the lady informed me that there were no frequent flyer seats left for Hawaii - Sydney for that day or any days in the week prior. It seems this is the most requested Frequent Flyer sector for Qantas and you have to be very quick off the mark when the seats are released.

So I decided to spend the time driving between Las Vegas and Los Angeles and then get a direct flight home from LA to Sydney.

All this only took about twenty minutes on the phone and saved me a lot of hassles trying to do all the bookings on the computer.

Another point that had to be taken into consideration was that to book a round the world ticket you need to travel on three different airlines that are in the One World alliance with Qantas. This would not be a problem for this trip as Qantas do not fly from England to USA so I would be flying British Airways and the sales lady arranged for my flight Singapore to London to be with Cathay Pacific.

So in the end my flights Sydney - Singapore - London, London - Orlando, and Los Angeles - Sydney were booked that day.

I still needed to book London to Dublin return and Orlando to Las Vegas but they could be done separately online closer to the flying days to ensure that I got any flight deals that may be advertised.