140,000 Award Flight Help

[deka2]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

After a few visits to this site it didn’t take me long to realise how little I know and how much many of you know about the nuances and terminology of flying.

Looking at doing a 140,000pts RTW award trip next May using Qantas FF points. Our draft flights are

SYD-LHR-MUC, FCO-MAD-CDG-JFK-HNL-SYD.

The Madrid stop would be for less than 24 hrs.

Travel by train from Munich to Venice and then spend 10 days getting to Rome.

I have entered this into the FF site a couple of times and at this stage with maybe a little variation in the USA destination appears bookable.

Should I book now, or have I got a bit of time before the flights would start to disappear.

Do travel agents have an advantage in booking Frequent Flyer Flights in terms of number of available seats they can see?

Any comments or flight help would be appreciated.

 

[dragonman]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

After a few visits to this site it didn’t take me long to realise how little I know and how much many of you know about the nuances and terminology of flying.

Looking at doing a 140,000pts RTW award trip next May using Qantas FF points. Our draft flights are

SYD-LHR-MUC, FCO-MAD-CDG-JFK-HNL-SYD.

The Madrid stop would be for less than 24 hrs.

Travel by train from Munich to Venice and then spend 10 days getting to Rome.

I have entered this into the FF site a couple of times and at this stage with maybe a little variation in the USA destination appears bookable.

Should I book now, or have I got a bit of time before the flights would start to disappear.

Do travel agents have an advantage in booking Frequent Flyer Flights in terms of number of available seats they can see?

Any comments or flight help would be appreciated.

This kind of booking is one you have to make yourself, using the tool on the qantas website. A travel agent would not do this (no revenue for them). I cannot see a real problem with what you want to do in the USA, other than perhaps availability of seats. Personally I would book sooner rather than later.

Oh and welcome to AFF!

 

[MrHyde]

Coming May is only 6 months away. From the routing you have shown, I can't tell which airlines are being used on what routes. Having recently completed a OneWorld trip, I booked around 5 months before the trip and found that the QF flights were the hardest to book, especially on the Australia - SE Asia sector. There just didn't seem to be any seats available. BA seemed to have seats available on most sectors on any day, as did CX. Have a look at how many days of the weeks award seats are available. If you find they are only available every three days or just once a week, I would book now. If they are available every single day of the week, you've still got a bit of time before they all start disappearing.

You can always book now and then change later with a 2,500 pt change fee. We had to do that when we decided to add a complete new route in just a month away from the trip.

 

[Bundy Bear]

If you are fairly sure of the routes and dates then I would book it now; you only need one sector not to be available and it could cause some trouble.

I booked a 140,000 point Qantas award in April 2008 for November 2008, and I was able to change 2 of the flights in October 2008 less than a month out.

Travel agent won't be able to help on a points redemption.

If the trip gets completely changed then you could just cancel the booking and only loose the 5,000 points, you just have to wait a few months for the credit card to be refunded.

Book it.

 

[deka2]

Many thanks for the comments. Yesterday afternoon I entered in the same dates and flights only to see those from JFK-HNL on AA disappear before my eyes, leaving nothing for the whole week.

I thought I might leave it a few days and try routing through ORD, DFW, SFO or LAX. They appear to be the only mainland airports oneworld airlines fly to HNL from.

Lesson learned.

If you can get your desired routing first time then book it.

 

[Bundy Bear]

Many thanks for the comments. Yesterday afternoon I entered in the same dates and flights only to see those from JFK-HNL on AA disappear before my eyes, leaving nothing for the whole week.

I thought I might leave it a few days and try routing through ORD, DFW, SFO or LAX. They appear to be the only mainland airports oneworld airlines fly to HNL from.

Lesson learned.

If you can get your desired routing first time then book it.

I would keep plugging away with different combinations.

Another option is ring Qantas and they can sometimes find extra availability or different combination's.


Example; try the sectors individually; JFK-ORD stop; ORD-LAX stop; then LAX-HNL; it might be available on slightly different days; so you might have to overnight somewhere.

 

[deka2]

Having trouble finding direct any flights on the day we want for FCO-CDG.

There are several flights FCO-MAD/MAD-CDG available both on IB.

What is a reasonable time to leave in Madrid between arriving from Rome and departing to Paris.

Also if we decided to have a short stay in Madrid, ie. less than 24hrs ( so doesn’t count as a stop) am I correct in saying that our scheduled departure time must be less than 24 hrs after our scheduled arrival time.

 

[serfty]

There are no oneworld flights between FCO and PAR. Obvious transits may be via HEL (AY), MAD (IB), LON (BA) with MAD the least travelling.

I had a booking last year where exactly 24 hours between LHR arrival and LGW departure was not assessed as a stopover - that was with AA.

Keep MAD to less than 24 hours and there will be little doubt it will get assessed as a transfer.

We're doing FCO-MAD-TLS (Toulouse) in September and are allowing 2:50 minutes mid afternoon.

 

[NM]

Having trouble finding direct any flights on the day we want for FCO-CDG.

There are not any OneWorld flight direct between FCO and CDG

There are several flights FCO-MAD/MAD-CDG available both on IB.

What is a reasonable time to leave in Madrid between arriving from Rome and departing to Paris.

Without looking up the actual MCT (Minimum Connection Time) at MAD, I would aiming at 90 mins minimum.

Also if we decided to have a short stay in Madrid, ie. less than 24hrs ( so doesn’t count as a stop) am I correct in saying that our scheduled departure time must be less than 24 hrs after our scheduled arrival time.

If scheduled departure is less than 24 hours after scheduled arrival, its not a stopover for the purpose of fitting the 5 stopover limit in the Qantas Frequent Flyer OneWorld Award.