u/Ramiel69

My wife and I are planning a two-week trip to Australia in October or November 2027. We’re based in London and would prefer Sydney, as we have friends there, although Melbourne would also work if award availability is easier. Ideally, either our outbound flight would arrive in Sydney or our return flight would depart from Sydney.

I currently have:

• 490,000 Avios personally, or 517,000 across our Household Account
• 97,000 Amex Membership Rewards points
• One BA Amex Premium Plus Companion Voucher
• One BA Barclays Premier Account Upgrade Voucher
• One BA Barclays Cabin Upgrade Voucher

Our ideal redemption would be First Class in one direction and Business Class in the other. Premium Economy would be an acceptable fallback for one direction, although it wouldn’t be ideal.

What would be the best strategy for booking this while making the most of our points and vouchers?

In particular:

• Which airlines and routs should we consider?
• Would it be better to fly from London, another UK airport, or an airport elsewhere in Europe?
• Would an open-jaw itinerary such as flying into Sydney and returning from Melbourne improve our chances?
• Which vouchers would be most valuable for this trip, and can any of them be combined?
• Are there any tools that can track the relevant award availability and alert us as soon as seats are released?
• Is booking at T-355 likely to be essential, and how should we handle booking the outbound and return separately?
• Are there any taxes, surcharges, voucher restrictions or other issues we should consider in addition to what we need to pay for Avios/voucher redemption?

The amount of information and the number of different terms and conditions is becoming a little overwhelming. Are there reputable award points booking services that could review our points and vouchers, recommend the best options, monitor availability and help make the booking when the time comes?

Any advice from people who have booked a similar Australia redemption would be greatly appreciated.

Me and my family live in England and share the party wall for more than three years with the tenants next door who have an autistic non-verbal child (late teens or young adult). Mother of the family cares for the child, she hardly ever leaves the house because of it and they have another child of school age who lives with them in the same house. Since they moved in, their autistic child constantly screams shouts, slams with the doors, throws items around, hits the party wall and often there are sounds of physical struggle / altercation. The mother of the family did say once that the child gets abusive when they are upset and she was showing me scars and bruises.

This disturbance typically starts around 5:30am and goes on till 11pm and sometimes later than that. Also, we get woken up in the middle of the night by, sometimes shouting and screaming, but most commonly by the loud thuds and bangs against the party wall.  What makes situation worse is that I’m autistic, I have PTSD, some other medical conditions which are exacerbated by the situation, disturbance and anxiety this creates, inability to have rest and to feel safe in my own home and neurological condition which is causing seizures in cases of severe stress.

In my life, I had one autistic meltdown until the tenants moved in next door when my meltdowns became more frequent especially in the last few weeks when sometimes I have several meltdowns in a day. A few days ago, I had injured my head and hand as I was pushed into another meltdown by all the disturbance that is coming from their home next door.  Also, I had a seizure triggered by the same cause. My wife had anxiety attacks because she’s also been suffering due to the predicament we are in. On two occasions since they moved in, we have in writing informed the tenants about the noise and how it affects us, but they have done nothing about it. They are apologetic and aware how they affect people around them, but they are taking no action.

I have also spoken to the letting agent who also declined to do anything about it, saying that there is nothing they can do considering that the disturbance is caused by the person with disabilities. We reported it to the council twice, on both occasion they sent a letter out, but the situation has not improved. When they moved in, we spent £10k+ on soundproofing our side of the party wall, but considering how bad the disturbance next door is, it made very little difference.

There is no aspect of our life that is not impacted by this; our marriage, social life because we avoid having people over, we are constantly fatigued due to the disturbed sleep, my career also suffers because I’m constantly on the edge and anxious and I have issues at work because of it, I have been interviewing for jobs lately and the situation also interferes with that because I can’t get rest to prepare properly or disturbance from next door is heard during the interview which makes things awkward and I already have several failed interviews unfortunately, due to how the entire situation affects me.

Even our pets are medicated because the situation has traumatised them, made them reactive, fearful, they are hiding and afraid to go outside, they refuse to eat, do their business in the garden etc.

We have invested significant resources into completely refurbishing the property and making it our home and as we were completing the refurb, tenants moved in, so we never had the opportunity to enjoy our home. Every time we try to create happy memories, this is tainted by the tenants next door.  We have best friends living in the same street. Remortgaging is years away. We can’t even sell the property with them living next door as we have to disclose during the sale process the disturbance and dispute with the neighbours.

We feel stuck and imprisoned in our own home. Our health; mental and physical, is downwards spiralling. Every day is like living in a war zone; you know there will be explosion, but you never know when and how bad it’s going to be.

The entire situation is very sad, for all of us involved. What should I do?