Best way to book multi destination CR trip?

[DrGear]

I'm booking our next holiday and looking to do Sydney to Hong Kong, onto Japan then return to Sydney. Finding flights is an absolute nightmare, not necessarily due to time or availability (bronze status), rather the search function is hot garbage. I'm looking to book all CR using points for my partner and I.

Basically, I've found all the flights I'm after through mangling the search function and searching individual legs as they don't come up unless the search function feels like it (IE, search one date and it comes up with SYD-MNL-HKG QF/CX, but another date you have to search each leg individually and they show as available).

Is this the kind of thing I should call up and get them to book as one whole itinerary, or just do multiple bookings through their site?

The whole itinerary all in J is;

SYD-MNL-HKG
HKG-cough
NRT/HND-MNL-SYD

I've found dates and there are seats available on each leg but using multi trip they don't all come up, but they all come up on individual searches.

 

[goldenhorn]

I'm booking our next holiday and looking to do Sydney to Hong Kong, onto Japan then return to Sydney. Finding flights is an absolute nightmare, not necessarily due to time or availability (bronze status), rather the search function is hot garbage. I'm looking to book all CR using points for my partner and I.

Basically, I've found all the flights I'm after through mangling the search function and searching individual legs as they don't come up unless the search function feels like it (IE, search one date and it comes up with SYD-MNL-HKG QF/CX, but another date you have to search each leg individually and they show as available).

Is this the kind of thing I should call up and get them to book as one whole itinerary, or just do multiple bookings through their site?

The whole itinerary all in J is;

SYD-MNL-HKG
HKG-cough
NRT/HND-MNL-SYD

I've found dates and there are seats available on each leg but using multi trip they don't all come up, but they all come up on individual searches.

Is there any downside to booking them all individually? That’s how I book my CR trips but not sure if you’re trying to achieve something by doing them all at once.

 

[DrGear]

Is there any downside to booking them all individually? That’s how I book my CR trips but not sure if you’re trying to achieve something by doing them all at once.

Not sure, that's why I'm asking for the wisdom of those who know better than me. I suppose I'm a little wary of Qantas after the absolute nightmare we went through earlier this year (there's a whole thread on that). I thought individual ticketing would be the way to go but I'm wondering how it would work with itineraries that have a transfer?

Basically the flight from SYD-HKG goes via MNL, but there's only a 2 hour difference between the flights and I'm not sure if I need to go through customs if they're on a different ticket in order to collect my bags rather than having them transferred?

 

[kangarooflyer88]

Is there any downside to booking them all individually? That’s how I book my CR trips but not sure if you’re trying to achieve something by doing them all at once.

Potentially. You cannot make use of the Qantas OneWorld award which caps the points you have to pay based on distance. However, this requires your flights are operated by Qantas and 2 other OneWorld carriers. Additionally, if you need to make changes to the trip you’ll pay out the change fee based on how many of these tickets need to be changed. If it’s a multi city you could make multiple changes to the itinerary and just pay the fee once.

 

[DrGear]

Potentially. You cannot make use of the Qantas OneWorld award which caps the points you have to pay based on distance. However, this requires your flights are operated by Qantas and 2 other OneWorld carriers. Additionally, if you need to make changes to the trip you’ll pay out the change fee based on how many of these tickets need to be changed. If it’s a multi city you could make multiple changes to the itinerary and just pay the fee once.

I don't think we're hitting the cap, it's only about 220K each. Would be great if we were.

 

[kangarooflyer88]

I don't think we're hitting the cap, it's only about 220K each. Would be great if we were.

Oh the itinerary wouldn’t be hitting the cap but you should price out the one ways versus multicast to see if there is any point saving there

 

[DrGear]

Oh the itinerary wouldn’t be hitting the cap but you should price out the one ways versus multicast to see if there is any point saving there

Tried to, but there's no direct flight available CR, hence the stops. I'd love to find CR SYD-HND, but they're long gone for late March when we're planning. So we'll go via MNL to still get J, albeit at a higher rate. Not the worst thing though as we like flying and travelling J is its own experience and enjoyable.

 

[tdimdad]

If the cost is the same (or close enough), I'd take connections on the same ticket but stopovers on separate ones. Gives you the flexibility to change plans without potentially having QF mess up all of the remaining segments.

 

[DrGear]

If the cost is the same (or close enough), I'd take connections on the same ticket but stopovers on separate ones. Gives you the flexibility to change plans without potentially having QF mess up all of the remaining segments.

Seems logical. I’ll call them up and get it sorted that way then.