Classic award increased price with mixed airlines?

[henrus]

This could be a total dumb question but in short do classic awards have to stick to a single airline?

Long question, I'm looking at the following which given all transits are under 24 hours should be a single price however when adding the BA CDG-LHR the price jumps by 10,000 points. This is obviously not distance related as the entire trip is just under the 3600 mile limit for that price but regardless if it was the price would only be 30,200 points. This appears to be charging the 10,000 for CDG to LHR then 24,500 for LHR-AMM-DOH whereas for some reason I thought it would allow multiple oneworld airlines to be combined?

 

[MELso]

You're correct that the BA leg adds 10K points.

I'd noticed the same effect when I was looking at MEL-MXP - flying via LHR was gong to cost 65,200 points comprised of 55,200 on QF to LHR and 10,000 on BA from LHR to MXP. It reflects that the points are based on a direct routing and flying (effectively) CDG-LHR-DOH is not direct. (You'll need to find CDG-DOH on QR to be charged 24.5K points, which is ummm... challenging on QF right at the moment! EDIT - if you can find BA right through, that also works for a 24.5k, and even more weirdly, business is less than premium economy on the dates I'm looking at in Jan 24...)

 

[henrus]

(You'll need to find CDG-DOH on QR to be charged 24.5K points, which is ummm... challenging on QF right at the moment!)

CDG-AMM-DOH does exist for 24.5k points and I'll probably end up booking something similar.

I thought I was going insane though as for some reason I had stuck in my head that airlines could be combined.

 

[aikman]

The definition of "Trip" in the T&C's does say this

(c) not broken by a change to or from any airline included in the Partner Classic Flight Reward table

 

[MEL_Traveller]

The definition of "Trip" in the T&C's does say this

That’s right. Because if the way the award charts are set up in terms of airline groupings, changing airlines these days often means changing award tables. And then you get charged per sector every time you change

 

[jpp42]

I thought I was going insane though as for some reason I had stuck in my head that airlines could be combined.

Possibly what you're thinking of the commonly-discussed Oneworld Award (OWA) where the total points is capped based on distance (officially called "oneworld® Classic Flight Reward" on the Qantas site), so if you meet the T&C's of that award then there's effectively no extra charge for changing airlines (and in fact it's required two use two non-QF airlines). That award table however is not really that useful for shorter itineraries though.