Booking a stopover on QF- any advice?

[Berlin]

I am currently trying to book a trip to South America on the Qantas website and as a return flight, it all gets priced nicely and ends up with a pretty good price of 5100AUD return in Business class. All the flights go via Santiago de Chile and the fare rules stipulate that one free stop over is permitted in each direction. But booking this online, as ever so often in cases like that, seems to be too much for the system and it suddenly quotes dream prices of around 9k if I try to book this as a multi city.

Does anyone have experiences with this, is there a way to book that stopover online? Or do I need to call and do I then get whacked with a hefty charge even though I simply cannot book this (rather simple) itinerary online? Any other suggestions- I usually try to avoid travel agents as I am more than happy to book everything myself but maybe in this case I should go that way. Any ideas who to use (and ideally someone who is fine with as little human interaction as possible- I know exactly what flights I am after, I simply cannot get the system to quote me the correct fare if the stopover is included).

Any advice would be greatly welcome!

 

[Travelqueen]

Hi Berlin,

I am also interested in the answer to your question, as I'm currently trying to do a similar thing.
I thought I would have to ring to get it done.

TQ

 

[serfty]

What dates are you looking at?

 

[Berlin]

Out of Sydney on December 20th all the way to Buenos Aires via Auckland on LATAM (last little leg gets quoted in Y for some reason but I can deal with that, it's only 2 hours) and then back from Buenos Aires to Santiago on or around the 3rd January and then onto Sydney on the 8th January (or thereabouts). Ends up costing me just over 5100 per person return if I book it as a return. As soon as I try to squeeze that stop over in, it goes up to around 7.5k each. Have tried with Qantas directly and some third party sites, same thing everywhere.

 

[serfty]

I had a quick look using ITA.

It seems the $5160 flights mainly book into I class while those at the higher price are booking into C.

On the way over the fare code is IBCL. On the way back from SCL it is not, C is coming up with the fare code of CBCL.

i.e. I is available for EZE-//-SYD on the 3rd but not for SCL-//-SYD on the 8th.

 

[Berlin]

I had a quick look using ITA.

It seems the $5160 flights mainly book into I class while those at the higher price are booking into C.

On the way over the fare code is IBCL. On the way back from SCL it is not, C is coming up with the fare code of CBCL.

i.e. I is available for EZE-//-SYD on the 3rd but not for SCL-//-SYD on the 8th.

So in order to find a magic combination where it is possible (or find out that it's not possible at all) I would need a travel agent, is that pretty much it?

 

[serfty]

I can recommend at least two good TA's.

Do you have an expert flyer subscription?

 

[Berlin]

I can recommend at least two good TA's.
Do you have an expert flyer subscription?

No, I don't anymore, I used to. Maybe time to subscribe to it again! I'll try with Amex first because I still got some travel credit with them. If they're no good I'll ask you for your TA advice- thanks a lot for your help in either case!

 

[serfty]

Note that there may be nothing they can do about booking class.

I do see I2 on QF322 (codeshare on LA) Jan 9th but can't seem to get at it with the cheaper fare.

 

[Berlin]

Note that there may be nothing they can do about booking class.
I do see I2 on QF322 (codeshare on LA) Jan 9th but can't seem to get at it with the cheaper fare.

Oh- fully understand, if the particular booking class is gone, then no luck even for the best travel agent. From what I can see on ITA Matrix, the cheap fare seems to fall into fare buckets I or Z and when booking as a return, I can see those available both on the 3rd from EZE to SCL and on the 8th from SCL to SYD. Seems that it's just the combination doesn't work.

 

[Berlin]

Just a quick update on how this went: I got American Express travel services to book this in for me and the lady on the phone first told me a much higher fare but then was very open to simply look up the exact seats which I found on ITA. After a bit of back and forth, this was successful including those stop overs so I am very happy (when trying to ticket the whole thing they left me on hold for 40 minutes and then kicked me out of the line- I was much less happy about that part :evil.
I now paid slightly over 5k each (even a tiny bit less than what the QF website had quoted me originally) for the following itinerary over Xmas and NY:
SYD-AKL on EK in J
AKL-SCL on LATAM in J
SCL-EEZ on LATAM in Premium Economy (from what I can see on the seat map, that means Economy seating with the middle seat blocked)
EEZ-SCL on AC in J (no idea how that Air Canada segment has made it successfully into this itinerary but that's how ITA managed to get this itinerary together and they've just replicated it)
SCL-AKL-SYD on LATAM in J

So, I've now got a Qantas ticket with zero Qantas flights in it but a strange Air Canada segment thrown in for good measure. Super good fare though so very pleased with the outcome (and nerdily curious to ever fly AC ).

 

[trooper]

At first I assumed it was one of those weird codeshares...but it IS an AC aircraft... apparently they have "full fifth freedom rights" on that route......:mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:

Flew ICN-YVR in J with them some years ago..... and LAX-YVR.....offered salmon both times..lol...which is fine with me!

 

[SYD]

Just noticed this thread. I had similar but slightly more successful experience for similar dates/itinerary taking advantage of the Companion Sale. We wanted SYD<->SCL but pickup BUE and MDZ. I couldn't get it to price that at all - site chucked up an error message. But it would do open jaw quotes. For $4400 each, ended up with SYD-AKL (EK J)-SCL (LA J)-AEP (LA Y)//MDZ-SCL (LA Y)//SCL-SYD (QF J). So the two Y segments were $50 on top the SYD-SCL Comp J Fare.

You don't want to hear this, but SYD-EZE/AEP was coming up $50 cheaper than SYD-SCL. Checking dates that showed cheap availability is a way of narrowing down a successful multi-sector booking using the awful QF engine.

BTW, I looked, but couldn't find Y+ flights SCL-EZE....

I still need to buy the one way fare AEP-MDZ. Strangely, when I checked LATAM site, the short hop MDZ-SCL was going to cost $500ea v $200ea AEP-MDZ. Overall, still a very good total price.