The Qantas App has a brand new feature that alerts customers to ticketing issues with their bookings.
Qantas added the feature to its App in its most recent update on 29 January. It could help resolve common issues that leave customers without a valid booking unless they take action.
Unfortunately, the Qantas App won’t (yet) alert customers to ticketing issues with partner airline Classic Flight Reward bookings. But it’s a positive step in the right direction, and the airline could expand this feature in the future.
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The difference between a reservation and a ticket
To understand why this is a useful feature, you first need to understand the difference between a reservation and a ticket.
When you book a flight, the airline will first make a “reservation” for you. At this point, the airline will reserve the seats you want to book for a limited time and create for you a PNR (usually a six-letter booking reference such as TR4F8R), sometimes known as a record locator.
But just having a PNR does not necessarily mean that you have a ticket that is valid for travel. That only happens once your reservation is “ticketed”, which is when the airline collects payment and issues a ticket number. The ticket number is a 13-digit number, of which the first three numbers are the IATA code of the airline that issued the ticket. Qantas ticket numbers always start with “081”.
Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, a reservation might not get ticketed correctly. For example, this could happen if the customer doesn’t pay within the ticketing time limit or if there’s some sort of issue with the booking, like incomplete information.
It can also be possible that a ticketed booking might get cancelled if it needs to be re-ticketed down the track, and this doesn’t happen within the ticketing time limit.
If a reservation does not get ticketed correctly, the customer won’t have a valid ticket and won’t be able to check in for their flight. That’s why it’s so important that customers are both aware of any ticketing issues and able to resolve them.
How the Qantas App Ticketing Issue Alerts work
The new Ticketing Issue Alerts work by alerting Qantas customers to any ticketing issues with their bookings.
If the Qantas App detects a ticketing issue, it will provide simple steps to resolve it. This could include self-service options or connecting the customer directly to the Qantas Contact Centre. When a customer calls Qantas through the App, this will also pass on the context of the call to the call centre agent.
What kinds of ticketing issues will the Qantas App flag?
Types of ticketing issues that the Qantas App might flag include:
- Payment issues with credit cards
- Reward bookings that can’t be processed because the passenger has insufficient points
- Missing Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) data, which is necessary for bookings to some countries such as the USA
- Issues with alternative payment methods like Zip or BPay, e.g. if Qantas hasn’t received a BPay payment by the deadline
Partner airline ticketing issues not currently supported
In recent years, numerous AFF members have encountered ticketing issues with Classic Reward bookings on partner airlines. Some passengers even lost their bookings completely after Qantas failed to issue or re-issue their tickets within the partner airline’s time limit.
Qantas has since taken steps to try to fix these ticketing issues, including the creation of a dedicated team that monitors partner airline reward bookings and a new email inbox for customers with ticketing problems. Since then, far fewer Qantas customers have had issues with partner airline reward tickets.
But there have still been occasional problems, like one last year that affected some Qantas points bookings on Malaysia Airlines. Often, customers are unaware of these kinds of ticketing issues unless they keep a close eye on their bookings. In the worst case scenario, they might not even realise they don’t have a valid ticket until they get to the airport and can’t check in for their flight.
The Qantas App Ticketing Issue Alerts, in their current form, will not monitor or flag problems with partner airline bookings. That said, we understand that Qantas’ IT team is looking for additional ways to improve its ticketing processes. Perhaps this could be something that’s added in the future.
Qantas has been investing significantly in its App
Qantas has been putting a lot of effort into improving its App over the past year or so. Other new features added include checked bag tracking, easier in-app upgrades and inbound plane tracking.
The Qantas App even integrates with the new digital Australia Travel Declaration, which is currently in a trial phase. This will eventually replace the paper Incoming Passenger Card and is already available to passengers flying from anywhere in New Zealand to Brisbane.
