Before I became an attorney, I was in management consulting. I worked for KPMG Consulting from 1994-1998 and again from 2001-2007. In between, I worked for a smaller firm. During my first stint with KPMG, I traveled quite a bit for work and we were all required to use a Diners Club credit card for all flight, hotel and car rental expenses. Citi (which owned Diners Club at the time) was a client and thus, we gave them a lot of credit card business across the firm in both the accounting and consulting divisions.

Because I traveled quite a lot for work, I joined all of the airline and hotel loyalty programs. I became Marriott Gold, which was a pretty useful status back then, although having to go to different places from my then home airport of Fort Lauderdale meant that I flew different airlines rather than earning meaningful status on any one airline.

Using the Diners Club card earned me lots of points. I don’t recall what, if any, category multipliers there were for the various travel categories, but I had racked up around 100k points by 1998. When I first left the firm that summer to join a startup, I had about 30 days to use or lose my Diner’s Club points once KPMG closed the card. In researching the options, I stumbled across an annual transfer bonus to British Airways available each July. You could get 2 for 1 on Diners Club transfers. I ended up sending my 100k points to BA and wound up with 200k BA points.

Around 2000 or so, we had a one-year old and decided we would try and get away somewhere exciting for our 5th anniversary in 2001 before our family grew again and while we had a willing babysitter in my mother-in-law. I got obsessed with trying to go to Australia and New Zealand for some reason. I’m not sure why as we hadn’t been anywhere outside of Europe internationally at that point.

I started researching how to use those BA points and discovered Flyertalk. I was excited to find a website forum where people talked about flights, hotels, points, and travel. I looked into the BA program and realized that they partnered with Qantas. Around January of 2001, right after I returned to KPMG, I decided to book a trip for that summer. I found open-jaw business class flights from LAX to Auckland, Auckland to Sydney, and Sydney to LAX all bookable on one ticket for 95k BA points. This was on a Qantas 747. We grabbed seats for all the flights on the upper deck business class cabin.

I booked the rest of the trip mostly using hotel points with a two nights in a smaller city in New Zealand booked with cash. We did five days on the North Island of New Zealand, three days in Sydney, flew to Cairns, spent three days in that area before ending with one more night in Sydney before we flew back to the US. A few months before the trip, my wife got pregnant so we had to scrap whitewater rafting and a few other adventurous things in New Zealand. When we took the trip she was about four months along, which if you’re going to fly across the world while pregnant, is probably the best timing you can get.

We flew to LAX on Delta on a crazy cheap $200 round-trip economy ticket, and I hit Delta Gold status the week before the trip so our upgrades cleared from FLL-DFW-LAX (a route you can’t fly these days on Delta as they have long since closed their small hub at DFW). We arrived at LAX early in the day and rented a car. I made a reservation at Spago in Beverly Hills and we enjoyed our lunch there before heading over to the Getty Museum for the afternoon. We returned the car at LAX in the early evening and checked in for our Qantas flight at the Bradley terminal. The lounge we were sent to before the flight was basically a room with a bunch of chairs and a few snacks and soft drinks. Even the most basic lounge today would be much better.

Our flight on the upper deck on Qantas was by far the longest flight we had ever taken to that point at 11.5 hours. The seats were comfortable, but not lay flat. They were basically recliners that would go about 75% of the way to flat. We also had seven TV channels on the screen that played movies on a continuous loop. I remember thinking the food was pretty good. This was the first time either of us had ever flown international business class.

In Auckland, we took a taxi to our hotel, the Hilton. It sits right on the harbor and back then, it was brand new. I had some sort of status with Hilton (I think Gold) and booked with points for two nights. We got a bit bored with Auckland after exploring for a day, so I picked up our rental car a day early (thanks to Hertz Presidents Circle status) and we did a day trip to the Bay of Islands further north. We had a great cruise around the bay there and then got back to Auckland for the night.

Early the next day, we drove to Rotorua where we spent two nights at a B&B. We explored the area, including Mount Taupo and the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, before driving back to Auckland airport on the last day to return the car and fly to Sydney.

Our Qantas flight from Auckland to Sydney was on the same upper-deck seats on a 747 and I remember that flight fondly. I don’t remember the Qantas lounge in Auckland so that probably tells me it was not as memorable as the flight. It was a three-hour dinner-time flight, so I had drinks with a very nice meal and watched a movie, then we landed in Sydney.

We spent three nights on points at the Sydney Renaissance near the Harbor. It might now be a Marriott, although it could also just be demolished by this point. We had nice views from our upgraded room and we had club access thanks to my Marriott status. We had a great time in Sydney exploring the city, going to the opera and visiting the zoo and various other sites.

We flew from Sydney to Cairns on Ansett Australia. If you’ve never heard of them, I’m not surprised. They went out of business a couple of months after our trip due to 9/11 reducing travel demand. I was actually able to book these flights on points using a convoluted (even for now) method. Mexicana (another long forgotten airline) had some sort of promotion where you could sign up for their loyalty program and earn 20,000 United points (don’t ask me why they were United points). This was in the beginning of the Star Alliance, where a bunch of airlines were combining the ability to book on each other’s planes with points from different loyalty programs within the alliance. Anyway, I was able to take those United points and book round trip tickets on Ansett from Sydney to Cairns for two of us in economy.

In Cairns, we used Marriott points and stayed at the Courtyard Great Barrier Reef Resort, which was legitimately a resort, despite being a Courtyard. We explored the village of Kuranda via cable car and took a reef cruise to snorkel. We also did an outback tour via 4×4 where my wife had to sit up front to avoid pregnancy motion sickness.

We flew back to Sydney for one more night and stayed at the Hilton (again on points). I actually rented a car on our last morning and we drove out to Featherdale Wildlife Park and the Blue Mountains before driving back to the airport to return the car before our 5pm flight to LAX. This flight was even longer at 13 hours. We were once again in our same upper deck Qantas 747 seats. I remember the Qantas Lounge in Sydney being pretty decent. On our flight, I actually was able to visit the cockpit and chat with the pilots. Any ability to ever do that again mid-flight ended about 11 days later on 9/11.

At LAX, I remember we had to rush to make our connection on Delta. I also remember Delta was in a different terminal than they are today. I vaguely remember rushing around LAX to get to Delta and check our bags. We flew from LAX-ATL-FLL and this time my upgrade didn’t clear (the more things change, the more they stay the same in ATL). We were crammed in to economy for those flights and got to FLL around 1am. We got home around 2am and our 2 year-old was very happy to see us, even at that hour.

I was pretty impressed with myself that I was able to book that trip mostly using points and miles. After that trip, having two young kids, we mostly stuck to trips to see family, Disney or cruises from Florida. I didn’t get heavily back into points and miles again for another 12 years or so while the kids grew up. I always kept up with my points balances and didn’t let anything expire, but we mostly used Chase points for things like cruises and cash back cards for our regular spending. I know a lot of people travel all over the world with young kids, but it wasn’t for us.

I hope you enjoyed this trip through memory lane. I thought about this old trip when I booked our upcoming return to New Zealand next March. I look forward to going back after such a long time.

If you have questions about this post, let me know in the comments or send me an email at emptynestermiles@gmail.com. If you are thinking about opening a new credit card, please use one of my links. I also recommend using CardPointers to track your credit card spending discount offers.