Cancel final leg of award booking - Virgin/Qatar

[nomisg]

Wife and I are flying Adelaide - Doha - Instanbul in late July, business class award seats. Booked on virgin, but flying with Qatar.

Now I need to change the Doha - Instanbul leg to Doha - Madrid (business class award seats available)

Called virgin, but they said they would have to cancel the entire booking, but there would be no business class awards seats for Adel - Doha available when trying to rebook, so that doesn't work. The virgin agent didn't seam the best and we had major languages barriers. Is this a true statement, has someone had a similar experience ammending awards flights?

At this point, looks like I'll need to just book Doha - Madrid leg and not get on the Doha - Instanbul and forfeit my points (roughly 70k) and charges ($500) for that leg.

Any other work arounds?

 

[RooFlyer]

Welcome to AFF @nomisg

You could try calling again, but I think the agent was correct, unfortunately.

I wonder if you could change the date of DOH-IST to sometime in the future, therefore preserving it for possible future use (and you then wouldn't be a 'no show' which is never a good thing). But you'd still have to book DOH-MAD separately & allow for delays on the inbound as it won't be the same ticket.

If you do change the original ticket, make sure its reticketed immediately, as QR have a habit of cancelling award bookings that aren't reticketed within 24 hrs. Get the agent to reticket it while you are on the phone.

 

[ben95]

Called virgin, but they said they would have to cancel the entire booking

The agent is not wrong. Since you wanted to change the point of arrival, that's not a form of changes that's allowed by VA under the rewards seat fare policy. It would be procedurally correct to have to cancel the whole booking and make a new one.

Is this a true statement,

It would be "technically" possible to reuse the same PNR, add the DOH-MAD leg, cancel the DOH-IST leg and then finally manually reprice/reticket the itienerary and charge you the appropriate change fee and fare difference. That is 100% supported by the Sabre reservation system albeit require extensive knowledge from the agent and be very very manual with a number of system override the agent will have to enter. I don't know if that's permitted by VA's internal procedures, but even if it is I suspect you'll need to be very lucky to get a veteran agent to know how to do all of these.

but there would be no business class awards seats for Adel - Doha available when trying to rebook, so that doesn't work

When you cancel the booking the seats immediately gets released. It would be up to QR to decide how/when/if the seats get returned to the reward seat bucket and up to you/your agent to snatch that once it comes back. Some airlines will release the seat back to the rewards seat category immediately upon your cancellation - that's how the black market operators hold reward seats and sell them to you for cash. I've cancelled Velocity rewards seats with SQ and can see the 2x J I cancelled show up immediately on VA's booking engine but not tried with QR.

Update: FlyerTalk confirms QR doesn't guarantee return the seats to bookable with points immediately (though some have had good luck). I'd recommed you don't try to cancel your ADL-DOH leg.

 

[nomisg]

Thanks everyone for detailed inputs. Sound like its not worth the risk to try and cancel and rebook.
ADL-DOH in a qsuite, not risking that at all!!!

I wonder if you could change the date of DOH-IST to sometime in the future, therefore preserving it for possible future use (and you then wouldn't be a 'no show' which is never a good thing). But you'd still have to book DOH-MAD separately & allow for delays on the inbound as it won't be the same ticket.

Doesn't give me that option online unfortunatly, any ammendments need to be done over the phone. DOH-IST layover is only 2 hours, the DOH-MAD is almost 8 hours, so I think I'll be safe with delays.

I wonder if I book the DOH-MAD leg, then call qatar directly to ammend and link it with my ADL-DOH, ask them to cancel the DOH-IST or push it down the line as you suggested.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Thanks everyone for detailed inputs. Sound like its not worth the risk to try and cancel and rebook.
ADL-DOH in a qsuite, not risking that at all!!!

Doesn't give me that option online unfortunatly, any ammendments need to be done over the phone. DOH-IST layover is only 2 hours, the DOH-MAD is almost 8 hours, so I think I'll be safe with delays.

I wonder if I book the DOH-MAD leg, then call qatar directly to ammend and link it with my ADL-DOH, ask them to cancel the DOH-IST or push it down the line as you suggested.

The problem with QR is that they don’t permit you to short-check bags. You won’t be able to get off in DOH, claim your bags, and then take a separate flight to IST.

Purchasing a separate ticket and asking QR to link them in some way is also not good as it means a duplicate ticket, of which you cannot fly both, and the airline is permitted to cancel one of the legs at will. And it might not be the leg you want them to cancel. In fact they will almost certainly cancel the DOH-MAD as the IST flight is linked to your current booking.

While QR can link bookings, they will not touch this ticket itself. They’ll refer you back to VA. (They can however cancel a leg of a duplicate.)

Finally, I don’t believe VA awards allow stopovers, so pushing the IST to a later date won’t work?

Best option might be to buy a IST-MAD ticket, but it means a visa cost, unless your passport is exempt. Alternatively, cancel the whole ticket and get a new.

 

[bcworld]

I wonder if I book the DOH-MAD leg, then call qatar directly to ammend and link it with my ADL-DOH, ask them to cancel the DOH-IST or push it down the line as you suggested.

No, QR won't do any of that...its not their ticket to touch.

 

[nomisg]

The problem with QR is that they don’t permit you to short-check bags. You won’t be able to get off in DOH, claim your bags, and then take a separate flight to IST.

I gather you mean taking a seperate flight to MAD? and you are saying my bags are checked all the way through on my orginial booking ADL-DOH-IST, which is a good point I didn't think about.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I gather you mean taking a seperate flight to MAD? and you are saying my bags are checked all the way through on my orginial booking ADL-DOH-IST, which is a good point I didn't think about.

Sorry yes, separate flight to MAD!

QR is notorious for prohibiting ‘short-checking’, essentially preventing anyone on a transit itinerary from collecting their bags in DOH.

On check-in in Australia your bags will be tagged all the way to IST. The only way around this is a stopover, ie anything over 24 hours.

Your current situation is frustrating, but the only options I think are to a) cancel, and try and rebook to MAD - but there is no guarantee the QR seats ex AU will reappear, or b) cancel and fly another airline, like SQ.

If you could find a backup with someone like SQ you could try cancelling the QR flights. If they don’t come back, book the backup.

 

[Phoenix-1]

Anecdote - I cancelled a x-DOH-ADL reward earlier this year (cancelled early Feb for a flight in late April) and it reappeared in Virgin's system.