Changing Classic rewards booking to more than a year from original departure

[rossco9]

Hi, I'm currently overseas on a classic rewards booking and we have decided to stay longer. I chatted to Qantas to move our flight to May next year for the return flight on a separate trip. I found reward availability and the call centre guy said all good and then after a while on hold he came back to me and said as it would be more than a year since the first flight on the booking, no can do. It's only by 2 weeks, but it's for a friends wedding so we can't really just find something earlier.

Has anyone had any luck getting around this?

It seems a bit odd that I can't cancel as if I had booked it as two separate legs I could have. Hind sight is a wonderful thing. Is that what most people do?

Really appreciate any insights.

 

[aikman]

I've been caught out by that rule before. If you have taken the first flight in your booking then you can no longer refund the rest of the flights in that booking. The best you can do is ask for the airport taxes back although not sure if you have to pay a fee to do that.

In hindsight if you had booked your return flight under a separate booking then you wouldn't have this problem now.

The one year thing is also a rule across all airlines except budget airlines.

 

[FlyingFiona]

This scenario is exactly why I never book return reward tickets. I always book them one way (or RTW).

 

[rossco9]

For reference, I ended up putting it to Qantas that I could have booked it as two separate bookings, so shouldn't be penalised as I didn't get any benefit for having booked it a return (was all rewards flights). After a lot of back and forth on the phone and facebook chat they issued me new tickets for next year.