China Airlines reward seats using Qantas points

[Ansett Nostalgic]

Sad news - I was hoping the cheap EY J redemptions on ICN-PRG would return.

 

[aspro2]

Ok, so answering my own earlier question about managing bookings... because I made a booking an hour ago!

• As reported by @jsoprano in July, you can now do successful seat selection during booking with QF.
• You can manage your booking on the QF site and make seat changes and add special meals
• You cannot access your booking via the CI website (as has been the case for a few years)
• You can access the booking via the CI app as long as you can divine what it thinks your first name is (often firstnamemiddlename, no space), however, you can't make any changes
• You can still make modifications on the soon-to-vanish Czech Airlines site (but right now it seems to be geoblocking some Australian or non-European IP addresses).

And it really is the case that CI availability is very thin compared to last year and the years since CI became available via QF. I was booking six months out, which while rarely rich with options has usually had a few J seats per week. This time all I could find was PY.

 

[AIRwin]

OK then...

Actually not OK then

 

[jsoprano]

Ok, so answering my own earlier question about managing bookings... because I made a booking an hour ago!

• As reported by @jsoprano in July, you can now do successful seat selection during booking with QF.
• You can manage your booking on the QF site and make seat changes and add special meals
• You cannot access your booking via the CI website (as has been the case for a few years)
• You can access the booking via the CI app as long as you can divine what it thinks your first name is (often firstnamemiddlename, no space), however, you can't make any changes
• You can still make modifications on the soon-to-vanish Czech Airlines site (but right now it seems to be geoblocking some Australian or non-European IP addresses).

And it really is the case that CI availability is very thin compared to last year and the years since CI became available via QF. I was booking six months out, which while rarely rich with options has usually had a few J seats per week. This time all I could find was PY.

So another data point re my CI J booking on QFF points that I made back in June (for two on MEL-TPE! Thank god I did it early):

• Tried the CI app and can open my booking (yay!) with QF booking reference and my name (I don't have a middle name so that made this part easy lol); it show my seats that I selected but cannot change seat assignment (says "unavailable" where the button for the seat map would be)
• In QF app, still no seat selection (greyed out), but also shows my selected seat numbers
• Now, I tried QF homepage MMB again just to make sure and ... lo and behold, I can pull up the seat map and select different seats! That definitely wasn't possible a few weeks ago.

This is confusing, but whatever. Just thought I'd share. Good luck everyone.

 

[AIRwin]

Now, I tried QF homepage MMB again just to make sure and ... lo and behold, I can pull up the seat map and select different seats! That definitely wasn't possible a few weeks ago.

Did the seat selection save successfully?

 

[xen0n33]

I think I went with the earlier combo of the Czech website for seats then the QF app for meals. I'm flying tonight (SYD-BNE-TPE-LHR) and everything has stuck per boarding passes. Noticed the meal choice made via QF is reflected in the CI app, but can't be changed fully in the CI app (by which I mean it only offers the 3 menu choices, no special meals).

Side note: I've been looking forward to this trip for a while: I love the look of their business cabins (that I've seen in photos/videos), so I'm hoping the rest of the experience matches!

 

[aspro2]

Did the seat selection save successfully?

Yes, when I tried it recently.

 

[aussieboozer]

Wanting a J reward BNE-TPE-LHR in October 2025 after the 20th. When should I start searching for availabllity?

Also when I run dummy searches on QF Multi-City tool for flexible dates in August-September 2025 there is plenty of J availibility for BNE-TPE but only Y for TPE-LHR even on the dates showing J in the calendar view. Is this normal for CI or is it just another QF web site issue?

 

[flyguy77]

Wanting a J reward BNE-TPE-LHR in October 2025 after the 20th. When should I start searching for availabllity?

Also when I run dummy searches on QF Multi-City tool for flexible dates in August-September 2025 there is plenty of J availibility for BNE-TPE but only Y for TPE-LHR even on the dates showing J in the calendar view. Is this normal for CI or is it just another QF web site issue?

You can 'want' but most likely can't have.

They stopped releasing Business rewards to partner airlines on most routes.

 

[aussieboozer]

Just another nail in the coffin for QFF points! Not much use giving us reward seats to/from TPE if we can't go any further in J from there.

I wish QF would fix the search tool calendar view so that it doesn't show phantom availibility.

 

[MELso]

If you CAN find availability, it’ll be there from ~360 days out.

 

[jsoprano]

Did the seat selection save successfully?

Yes it did for me.

 

[am0985]

Just did ICN - TPE - SYD

Overall a very good experience so it's a shame they've reduced availability.

Had 10 hrs between flights though and left the airport to go into Taipei - seemed a fun city.

Lounge in T2 was horrible though, windowless, hardly any toilets. There's also an apparently better lounge in T1 an extra 10-15 mins walk or so but they don't let you visit that once you've had your pass taken for T2!
Decent-ish lounge food though saved hunger for the flight. Blue Label whisky in business class and excellent service.

There is some availability out of TPE close to 12 months out. September has pretty good availability for two people to Melbourne.

Might be useful for visiting places in the region, getting a cheap economy flight to Taipei and spending a night or two there before the flight back. Sadly not really an option to Europe anymore.

 

[johnjones878]

Not much use giving us reward seats to/from TPE if we can't go any further in J from there.

Don't worry since there's a dearth of Aus to TPE seats anyway. Wasn't *personally* a big fan of this additional onwards availability as now had to compete against other aussies utilising this route to get to Asia/Europe/US when I'm only trying to visit TW family haha.

There is some availability out of TPE close to 12 months out.

Down to only 1x J per flight now isn't it? Has economy also been reduced or still 5x?

 

[tmdl]

Don't worry since there's a dearth of Aus to TPE seats anyway. Wasn't *personally* a big fan of this additional onwards availability as now had to compete against other aussies utilising this route to get to Asia/Europe/US when I'm only trying to visit TW family haha.


Down to only 1x J per flight now isn't it? Has economy also been reduced or still 5x?

I managed to get my parents (2 seats) in J from MEL - TPE in July 2025, but it does look like reduced availability overall

 

[johnjones878]

I managed to get my parents (2 seats) in J from MEL - TPE in July 2025, but it does look like reduced availability overall

Wonder if MEL is the exception for some reason or just less Taiwanese haha. Just did a quick search after posting my previous comment and there are actually still plenty of 2x J available coming back in Aug and Sep. Was only looking up BNE and SYD before.

 

[MELso]

Wonder if MEL is the exception for some reason or just less Taiwanese haha. Just did a quick search after posting my previous comment and there are actually still plenty of 2x J available coming back in Aug and Sep. Was only looking up BNE and SYD before.

Yeah - I'm looking at MEL-TPE-YVR as a back up option to something on JL and there's a fair bit of J availability (a bit reduced due to school holidays in September 2025 I imagine).

 

[aussieboozer]

Why does the multi city tool show J reward availability TPE-LHR on a number of dates in October 2025 but when selected there is only ever Y seats?

 

[aspro2]

As observed by others, availability is much poorer, seemingly especially for MEL. I've just booked YVR-TPE-MEL and it was the only business seat TPE-MEL left for Sept 2025. Inventory seems to vanish quickly and oddly: last week I could see seven days with J availability for Sept. Yesterday it was one. Meanwhile, SYD and BNE seem to have a handful more still available. Availability in PE was better.

And for the second time in 18 months booking the same route, the ticket was not issued and I had to follow up, then being told payment had been declined (which it hadn't) and then being told a manual resubmission of payment had to be done at their end (even though I could see the charge on my credit card). At least this time the ticket arrived while I was still on the phone being told of the resubmitted payment! It was a long time on hold both in a queue and then while being "assisted" to get this all sorted.

Back to availability for a moment: I have alerts set to monitor availability for another CI itinerary booked seven months out in PE, and I have never seen new award inventory added in J or PE on any date in my two-week search range. Not sure if this is an accurate assumption, but it might be that CI has fixed award inventory for QFF, with no dynamic adjustment.

 

[jase05]

As observed by others, availability is much poorer, seemingly especially for MEL. I've just booked YVR-TPE-MEL and it was the only business seat TPE-MEL left for Sept 2025. Inventory seems to vanish quickly and oddly: last week I could see seven days with J availability for Sept. Yesterday it was one. Meanwhile, SYD and BNE seem to have a handful more still available. Availability in PE was better.

And for the second time in 18 months booking the same route, the ticket was not issued and I had to follow up, then being told payment had been declined (which it hadn't) and then being told a manual resubmission of payment had to be done at their end (even though I could see the charge on my credit card). At least this time the ticket arrived while I was still on the phone being told of the resubmitted payment! It was a long time on hold both in a queue and then while being "assisted" to get this all sorted.

Back to availability for a moment: I have alerts set to monitor availability for another CI itinerary booked seven months out in PE, and I have never seen new award inventory added in J or PE on any date in my two-week search range. Not sure if this is an accurate assumption, but it might be that CI has fixed award inventory for QFF, with no dynamic adjustment.

It’s not QFF, CI releases very few J seats with other SkyTeam partners too