Banking expired credits

[bradii]

Brains Trust, can you confirm I’m not making a mistake in my logic here.

I have QF flight credits expiring at the end of 2022, and wish to use these for an international trip in January 2024. Seats obviously aren’t available this far out.
I plan on using the credits now on Saver fares and pay the change fees once seats open up.
I’m not considering Flexi fares as the price differential between Flexi and Saver is greater than the Saver change fees.
My main concern is paying too much for seats now OR when seats do become available they’re more expensive and I’ll need to pay the difference, OR both of these things happen and it ends up being a very expensive trip.

Am I missing something? Extra costs perhaps?

 

[RichardMEL]

Have you actually checked the expiry date has not been extended til 2023? most credits, passes etc had been extended iirc.

 

[bradii]

You’re right! Thanks for the heads up.

 

[bradii]

Hi all, bumping this back up as I still plan to purchase 2024 flights but my credit must be used in 2023 and only on 2023 flights.

I would like to:
1. Purchase flights in 2023 using the credit - probably saver flights - this meets the conditions of use for the credit
2. Then change my flights to some time in 2024

Has anyone attempted something like this? Does anyone know if Qantas would block the change?

 

[RichardMEL]

As long as you book your flights before dec 31 (validity of the credit) you should be able to book flights into 2024 as is. So up to 355 days post Dec 31. I don't recall any stipulation on the credit extensions limiting that flights paid for must be taken prior to the expiry of the credit? Can you confirm that restriction on the credit(s) you have?

I've checked my own extended travel passes and they say nothing about flights needing to be completed by Dec 31, 2023. Flight credits, iirc, are the same (but I am obviously open to being corrected)

However with your query I see no reason why you couldn't do as you suggest EXCEPT

1) the validity of the booking will be 12 months from the date of booking - so for example if you created a booking now on say 14FEB23 for a flight in September 2023 with a plan to then change the date to say Sep 2024, you'd be limited by the ticketing date in that, as I understand it, the NVA (Not Valid After) restriction would be that travel must be completed within 12 months of the original ticket being issued - eg: 14FEB24.
see this page for details:

https://www.qantas.com/agencyconnect/au/en/policy-and-guidelines/fares-and-ticketing/qantas-ticket-validity.html

So therefore, depending on what you were trying to achieve, you'd really want to make your booking within twelve months of the flight, and I do feel that you should be able to make the booking for 2024 flights with an extended credit at that time without mucking around with changes.

2) change fees and probably fare changes would apply - so you'd almost certainly pay more - and even if a sale fare popped up, there'd still be a change fee applicable to change a flight to a future date as you suggest.

Happy to be corrected by others on this, but it's my understanding.

imo.

 

[bradii]

I had planned/hoped to use this ticket for Tokyo flights in January 2024. The ticket was originally purchased via our corporate travel agent based in USA, and who doesn’t know the answer to this btw. This is verbatim what it says on their system:

TICKET MUST BE REISSUED AND TRAVELED ON BY 31 DEC23 WAIVER MAY BE REQUIRED AND MAY NOT WAIVE FEE PLEASE CHECK WAIVER CAREFULLY

I’ve found the following info which seems to lock me in to using the ticket in 2023. My ticket number does start with an 81.
https://www.qantas.com/agencyconnec...ets-in-credit/frequently-asked-questions.html

https://www.qantas.com/agencyconnec...credit-redemption-additional-flexibility.html

It appears the departure date just needs to be in 2023, so I can still book the correct HND-MEL flight and just change the initial MEL-HND flight. But yeah, not sure if there’ll be a block on changing the MEL-HND ticket past 2023 into January 2024.

I understand this is a lot of hassle but it’s a AUD$2k credit that would go unused, so that’s why I’m OK with change fees as I’ll still come out ahead.

 

[RichardMEL]

Oh OK, this sounds like a very different beast to the usual travel credits we (as non corporate customers) are dealing with so I misunderstood the situation. I made some assumptions. apologies.

that wording seems pretty clear indeed. I would think that condition would follow through, so changing dates would violate that rule. However in practical matters you probably need a ticketing expert/TA to have more informed opinions.

Though tbh isn't this the job of your corporate TA to figure out? Yeah I get they don't now, but isn't that their job to find out if they issued the ticket that the credit is based on. Maybe if you want to use this for personal and not work travel that may make a difference, but I still think they should be able to contact QF at the very least to figure out your options - if any.