Melbourne to Los Angeles,
in business class, on points.

Business to Los Angeles costs 130,100 points one way, priced by the zone that runs from 7,001 to 8,400 miles. The sector computes to 7,927 great-circle statute miles, which places it inside that zone with a margin, though not a generous one. How much room a seat has before its next boundary is the quiet variable behind every price on this site, and on a journey this long it is the first thing worth reading.

Crossing 8,400 miles moves the trip into the zone beginning at 8,401 and running to 9,600, where business is priced at 151,800. Economy over the identical boundary goes from 48,200 to 58,900. So the step is charged in both cabins and charged far harder in the front one, and the distance between 7,927 and 8,400 is the whole of what stands between the two figures. Anything that lengthens the routing inside a single booking spends that margin.

Four cabins carry a price in this zone: 48,200, 97,600, 130,100 and 195,400, against 58,900, 113,900, 151,800 and 227,800 one zone out. Economy and business are the two published as seats for this city pair. Premium economy and first are priced by the table and absent from the cabin switch above, because a published price is not evidence that a cabin operates, and which cabins fly this corridor has not been collected.

One programme prices this seat, and the missing piece is named here rather than glossed over. Velocity organises its charts by operating airline, so a second figure for this corridor needs a sourced statement that a particular carrier flies it. That statement has been looked for and not found. The airline's own site serves fare cards for the city pair, and a fare card proves a ticket is sold rather than who flies the aircraft — carriers market seats operated by a partner and say so in their own fare terms. Until a route page, timetable or newsroom item states the service plainly, the comparison column stays empty, because a figure attached to a service nobody has confirmed would be worse than a blank.

Cash is unresolved here as it is everywhere on this site. Qantas states that taxes, fees and carrier charges sit on top of the points and are quoted at the time of booking, and publishes no per-route table anywhere. The points line above is therefore half of what this seat costs, and the other half appears on the payment screen and nowhere earlier.

Above, the crossover table prices 130,100 as months of ordinary spending per pattern, on each pattern's strongest card, counting a sign-up bonus only where the pattern clears its published hurdle. That ordering is the answer this page exists to give. A points figure on its own tells a reader nothing about how long it takes them to hold it, which is why the arithmetic runs against published spending patterns rather than against an average nobody matches.

Reward inventory is the constraint no table can price. Seats up the front of a trans-Pacific service are released against demand that no publication sees in advance, and a fixed set of dates narrows the odds sharply. What a reader can settle beforehand is the fair price, and on this corridor that is 130,100 plus a cash line nobody publishes.

Every figure came off the programme's published table on the date printed beside it, and the register above reports whether a person has re-checked the row since. What a chart says today is not a commitment about tomorrow. Read the source before points move anywhere.