Now you guys know how much I like to travel and you guys know how much I like
to fly as well but you know what I really like when I'm flying and
traveling? I really like getting upgraded to business class for free!
Today we're flying domestically from Melbourne Airport in Victoria all the way up to
almost the top of Australia on the East Coast place called Port Douglas up in
Queensland. Just out of interest there's a nice big high-pressure system just off
the coast of Port Douglas at the moment which as we know the southern hemisphere
goes anti-clockwise that's pulling all the moisture off the ocean and it's
basically dumping it right on top of our hotel. But we bought our economy fares
at normal full price and got upgraded to business class and that cost us
absolutely nothing and I'm gonna tell you how we did that. But first it's like
7:00 in the morning so it's early we need a coffee first.
One good thing about flying business with Qantas is you get to use the business
class lounge here at Melbourne Airport it's pretty cool, it's a lot
quieter, you can see there's hardly anyone here. The food service is a little bit different
you can make your own juices which is pretty cool we just grabbed a coffee and
some pastries because I think we're gonna get a breakfast on the plane as
well. Yeah it's just a nice place to kind of chill out before the flight.
So how come then we got upgrade into
business class and how did we get the upgrade for free? So what we did for this
flight was just do a really simple points upgrade through the frequent flyer
section on the Qantas website. It's actually a lot more straight forward than
it sounds and it is technically free I'll tell you how. So what we did is bought
the economy fair as normal went to the Qantas website go find your booking
click on upgrade and put in a request to upgrade your flight using points.
Now this isn't the same as the points plus pay option you get when you can bid to
upgrade your flight I know I've done that before and then you can select a
points amount but can also where you have to put in money as well that's not
what we did here. This is just a straight forward points upgrade. Now it will cost
you more frequent flyer points than doing the upgrade through the, making an offer,
but don't have to put any cash down so you're just using your points. And then
you might be saying well ok, but that's not free because you're still
using points. But the thing is if you haven't got one of these
a credit card that earns you frequent flyer points as well, then to be honest I
don't think we can be friends anymore. Because this is the one pro tip that I tell
everybody about traveling is if you're spending money on a credit card already, and you're not
earning frequent flyer points for every dollar that you're spending you're
really missing out. So I used points that I've been earning on my normal
credit card just by buying things that I would have been buying everyday anyway
and over the last year to be honest over the last 12 months both Jacq and I
we've earned more frequent flyer points by using our credit cards than we have by
actually flying.
One of the disadvantages of the older-style 737s when you have that
screen at the front you don't have the in seat screens that fold out so that
screen is on all the time and you can't help but look up. It's
like a TV screen in the pub. The trouble is I haven't seen this film. This is the
new Steve Carrell Emma Stone one about tennis. I know it's
based on a true story but I don't know what happens in the end
so no spoilers in the comments.
There's no crocodiles here? You know I was just thinking the same thing. Like you're just sort of thinking
oh is this connected to a creek somewhere and there's gonna be a crocodile? If anything rustles
let's move fast.
We've been in our hotel for a couple of
hours now mainly napping and swimming but we've just decided to come out and
try and catch the sun going down. There's a little walk you can do to the beach
it's only about five minutes from the hotel but we're both very nervous
because if we hear a rustle you're thinking there might be crocodiles
around. There's probably no crocodiles around is that... no that's a bird.
I'm not sure how good an idea this actually is.
It's a little bit dark it's hard to tell on film but it's actually it's just this
kind of after Golden Hour and it's also it's pretty cloudy at the moment so it's
hard to get any decent light. Every time the bush moves you just think it's like
a bird or well just a bit of wind but you just don't know.
Well made it back no
crocodile attacks which is good. There were a couple of close scares with two
birds and a very small dog but apart from that relatively unscathed.