Overcome one of the biggest obstacles with the right tool

Finding and booking great value reward seats with Qantas and its partners, whether it’s a dream trans-Pacific business class holiday or a quick hop around the East Coast, can feel like a mix of art, science and a whole heap of luck.

But don’t stress! With the right knowledge and tools at your disposal, you’ll soon be redeeming points like a pro.

Step 1: Know your Qantas Points

First things first: make sure you actually have enough Qantas Points for what you want. The Qantas Frequent Flyer program has reward charts and calculators to help you figure out how many points you need for reward flights.

For any newbies, it’s also worth pointing out that you don’t need to redeem your Qantas Points for only Qantas flights. There are over 20 other partner airlines you can use, including Cathay Pacific, Fiji Airways and Emirates.

There are plenty of resources online on how to earn Qantas Points efficiently. Once you’ve done that, we’ve got all the tips on how to use them.

Step 2: Know your reward seats

Just to make things trickier, Qantas also offers two different types of reward seats. The first one is called Classic Flight Rewards, and this is what you should be aiming for! These show up on the website as a red ribbon.

Classic Flight Reward prices are fixed, based on the tables we mentioned above. If a seat is available, you should be able to book it for a set price. The good news is partner airline flights (i.e. non-Qantas) are only offered at Classic Flight Reward prices.

However, Qantas also offers Classic Plus Flight Rewards on Qantas-operated flights. These are variable cost and tied to the commercial cash cost of the ticket. Most of the time, you’ll want to avoid Classic Plus redemptions as they don’t offer as much value for your points. These will appear as a dark blue ribbon.

Finally, remember that taxes and fees are extra, so check these before you get too attached to any booking. They can range from under $100 per person (e.g. some Finnair flights) to over $1,900 per person (e.g. many multi-leg Emirates flights). Yes, that shower experience in the sky will cost you a lot of cash, even when using points!

Step 3: Be flexible with dates and destinations

It’s no secret in the frequent flyer space that you really need to be flexible on your travel dates and destinations. Reward seats are sometimes released in a predictable pattern, but most of the time they're released all over the place.

Then, we have supply and demand. Points seats are limited, and the demand for Classic Flight Rewards is astronomical. Add that together, and you can see why the average member might get frustrated with trying to redeem their points.

Here are three ways you can increase your chances of finding a reward seat:

• Have a range of travel dates (±3 days is a great start)
• Consider nearby airports (like flying out of Melbourne instead of Sydney)
• Check different cabin types and airlines

Step 4: Use tools such as Gyoza Flights (yup, that’s us 😉)

Sure, you can go straight to the Qantas website to search for seats. In fact, we recommend you do that first, because who knows? Maybe you’re lucky, and the perfect seat pops up.

But if that’s not the case, then that’s when tools such as Gyoza Flights come in handy.

Instead of searching for seats manually, we aggregate data to quickly show you availability over multiple dates and airlines. It makes spotting reward seats so much easier. You’re welcome.

With Gyoza Flights, you can:

• Quickly scan a calendar of availability
• Compare multiple airlines that you can book with Qantas Points
• Set alerts for when new seats open up
• Pick alternative routes you might not have thought of

Step 5: Head to the Qantas website to book

A common misconception is that Gyoza Flights is a travel agency. We don’t book flights for you – we just show you where seats are available. You still need to make the booking yourself with Qantas. Here’s the easiest way to do it.

• Check Gyoza Flights for seat availability and/or set alerts
• When you find a seat that works, note down the details
• Head to the Qantas website and log in to your frequent flyer account
• Tick ‘Rewards’ and fill in your search details
• If the same seats appear, then continue with the checkout process
• Congrats, you’ve booked reward seats with Qantas Points!

What if I can’t seem to find the seats with Qantas?

Remember how we said that demand for reward seats is very high? One extra thing to know: many reward seats you see via Qantas can also be available to oneworld partner airlines (and sometimes other partner programs too). That means you’re not only competing with Qantas Frequent Flyer members — you’re also competing with members of those other programs for the same limited pool of seats.

• Someone else booked the seat before you did (potentially through Qantas or a partner airline’s program).
• 'Phantom availability' on the Qantas website. Occasionally, reward seats display even though they aren’t actually bookable. This usually resolves over time.

Gyoza combines fast cached results with live refreshes. Popular routes are cached and updated regularly for instant results, and when you run a search availability is refreshed in real time — but because reward seats can be snapped up at any moment, you might sometimes need to consider another option.

But don’t stress out. Reward seat searching is often a waiting game and a whole lot of patience. If the perfect seats aren’t available now, they might be tomorrow or next week. So bookmark the search, set alerts, and try again later. You’ll get there!