Booking a BA flight with domestic connection costs more?

[aaa99]

Hello,

Sorry if this one is my misunderstanding of partner award charts.
Was looking at classic rewards to connect to the BA16 flight to SIN.

I noticed that MEL-SYD-SIN on both QF only requires 68400 points, but if was to use BA, it requires 93000 or so (with a tag on from MEL). It seems SYD-SIN on its one on BA requires only 75000 and it looks like they are pricing MEL-SYD as an extra flight at full price of 18000.
I also noticed MEL-KUL-SIN (on MH) requires only 75000.

So, why is BA+QF itinerary priced a lot higher? I understand that MEL-SYD-SIN is longer than MEL-KUL-SIN, but I thought QF points required is the same between 3601 and 4800 miles.


Edit, I also tried CBR-SYD-SIN, which is slightly shorter than MEL-KUL-SIN and yet requires 93000 (18k+75k).

Scratching my head here and I am interested to hear your answer.

 

[RealtimeY]

it looks like they are pricing MEL-SYD as an extra flight at full price of 18000

It's because of the mixture of QF and partner flights, which have different redemption rates. Therefore, it's pricing as two trips instead of one. I also had to pay the 93k points to fly MEL-SYD-SIN with BA

 

[aaa99]

Ah, okay thanks for explaining. I thought that was only an issue when mixing with non-OW carriers, like KLM, Emirates or Jetstar. I assumed when it is a mix match within OW, it would use the higher of the two values and not price them as separate trips.

Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.

 

[drron]

Basically because QF does everything possible to get you to use QF rather than a partner airline.
When you are on a paid BA fare you earn way less than you would rather than a paid QF flight. For example pre covid we used the BA return SYD-BKK fare and mrsdrron would need to travel 3 of these a year to requalify WP whilst ~ 1.6 fares would requalify me as a BAEC gold.
It was a no brainer as it was cheaper in F on BA than J on QF.

 

[aaa99]

Hello, a similar question.

I was looking to book KUL-HND-LHR.
KUL-HND is on MH
and
HND-LHR is on JL

GC map shows the distance as 9295km which should slot in the classic reward table at 8401 - 9,600 table for 139k points. However, it seems to add up the points for the two flights giving me more like 165k points.



Have I missed anything here?

 

[AustraliaPoochie]

Possibly because it's seen as a split reward rather than a direct flight?

 

[dajop]

GC map shows the distance as 9295km which should slot in the classic reward table at 8401 - 9,600 table for 139k points. However, it seems to add up the points for the two flights giving me more like 165k points.

Have I missed anything here?

Yes. combining flights on different carriers prices as individual sectors in the award chart. MH being the first award and JL the second. The lesser points would be charged if you could do JL for the KUL-HND, so your whole journey was on JL. Would also work if you did KUL-NRT/HND-LHR all on JL.

 

[serfty]

Have I missed anything here?

Here is the definition of a QFF Classic Award "Trip" from the Terms and Conditions.

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'Trip' means a series of one or more consecutive Flight Segments within an Itinerary:

• (a) that does not include:
  • (i) a Stopover; or
  • (ii) a Flight Segment whose arrival city is the same as the departure city of any other Flight Segment in that series (in this instance the Trip will be broken at the farthest point from the departure city for that series);
• (b) not exceeding the maximum permitted miles in the Qantas, Jetstar or Partner Classic Flight Reward tables as applicable (see qantas.com for the tables); and
• (c) not broken by a change to or from any airline included in the Partner Classic Flight Reward table (see qantas.com for the table).

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(c) is where you get two "trips" with a change from MH to JL

For Partner Classic Flight Rewards with Air France, Alaska Airlines, Bangkok Airways, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, China Airlines, China Eastern, EL AL, Emirates, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, KLM, LATAM Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qatar Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Royal Jordanian, SriLankan Airlines and WestJet.

https://www.qantas.com/au/en/frequent-flyer/use-points/classic-flight-rewards/tables.html#partner

Sometimes, if you can book as a Round/Return trip the oneworld classic awards come into play which may or may not be less points.