Finding availability from Dubai to Australia

[Drnrg]

Trying to search for seats from Dubai back to Australia in October this year. Have seats.aero and can see availability in all cabins for preferred dates. Qantas website constantly errors out when trying to search points seats, anybody else experience this?
Objective is to get back from Paris/London, stop over in Dubai to see family, then come home. Week of October 14th and 21st

 

[Mwenenzi]

How many seats and what class of travel?

 

[ChrisMars]

If the error persist, and considering it is a simple initial booking, you may call Qantas to make the booking, and ask for phone booking fee waiver due to website issue.

 

[Drnrg]

How many seats and what class of travel?

2 seats, premium economy or above. seats.aero showing business available on skywards
Silver FF here

 

[WilsonM]

Trying to search for seats from Dubai back to Australia in October this year. Have seats.aero and can see availability in all cabins for preferred dates. Qantas website constantly errors out when trying to search points seats, anybody else experience this?
Objective is to get back from Paris/London, stop over in Dubai to see family, then come home. Week of October 14th and 21st

If you're finding Qantas availability from Dubai-Australia on Seats.aero, then that could only be 1 seat - Seats.aero only searches for 1 seat on Qantas.

If you're finding Skywards availability on Seats.aero, that does not apply at all to Qantas. You need Classic Saver award availability to apply on Qantas, and these are extremely rare. You're most likely seeing ClassicFlex Plus Reward seats, which are higher priced, and not available on partners. Seats.aero does show these though. You can't book Emirates Premium Economy with points atm either. Qantas is probably erroring out because there's zero availability.

It's the same sort of thing as KrisFlyer Advantage awards - you can see the availability on KrisFlyer, but Velocity cannot access it.

You're looking to come back to Australia around the end of school holidays - it's going to be very difficult to find a clean itinerary, as demand is very high and any seat that was available is most likely taken. I'd suggest a stopover in Asia, as Qantas reward seat availability is better from Asia - destinations such as Hong Kong and Japan have received some love lately.

 

[Seat0B]

I have tried many many times to get 2 premium cabin rewards to/from DXB since 2016 as a WP and even as a P1 for a couple of years with no success at all.

 

[RichardMEL]

I have tried many many times to get 2 premium cabin rewards to/from DXB since 2016 as a WP and even as a P1 for a couple of years with no success at all.

QF status is irrelevant in terms of EK availability alas.

 

[ChrisMars]

QF status is irrelevant in terms of EK availability alas.

Maybe QF1/2, when did it switched from stoping in DXB to stoping in SIN?

 

[Mattg]

The Qantas website has a known bug where searches originating in Dubai just don't work. It doesn't necessarily mean there isn't availability, although that could also be an issue.

You might need to use the method described above by @WilsonM to search for availability then call Qantas (and keep calling until you reach someone who knows what they're doing) to book.

 

[Seat0B]

I have tried many many times to get 2 premium cabin rewards to/from DXB since 2016 as a WP and even as a P1 for a couple of years with no success at all.

Well yes but… back in 2016/17 if I recall correctly QF was flying its own metal via DXB. And there are QF code shares still on many flights between Aus/DXB and vv. And I’ve still never snagged a reward ticket. Despite status and effort to do so.

 

[am0985]

The Qantas website has a known bug where searches originating in Dubai just don't work. It doesn't necessarily mean there isn't availability, although that could also be an issue.

You might need to use the method described above by @WilsonM to search for availability then call Qantas (and keep calling until you reach someone who knows what they're doing) to book.

Yeah this is a major bug on the website. Annoying it doesn't get fixed though selfishly it probably means fewer people redeem these seats.

To fix this go to the multi-city tool and have your trip originate somewhere else - often London airports have reasonable availability, Amsterdam isn't bad either. You can then add in your DXB - Australia leg and you'll see the availability come up.

 

[elanshin]

Are EK awards different for different partners as well? Like could i search it up with another airline and then call QF to see if they can get it (yes i know calling QF, but theoretically let's say their call centres actually work).

 

[am0985]

Are EK awards different for different partners as well? Like could i search it up with another airline and then call QF to see if they can get it (yes i know calling QF, but theoretically let's say their call centres actually work).

You can search it on QF, you just need to know how to get around the bugs.

Adding a stop before DXB on the multi city usually will solve the problem.

 

[WilsonM]

The easiest way for me to check for exDXB is to add SYD-MEL on the front - it shouldn't cause any POS issues compared to using Europe, and there's nearly always availability.

Well yes but… back in 2016/17 if I recall correctly QF was flying its own metal via DXB. And there are QF code shares still on many flights between Aus/DXB and vv. And I’ve still never snagged a reward ticket. Despite status and effort to do so.

QF codeshares don't care about status, and aren't useful at all in determining award availability. This is still up to the partner airline completely, with zero say from Qantas (as the plane is operated by a partner). Similarly, the AF/KL and QF partnership is heavily restricted on award availability compared to their own members - funnily, they actually release a lot more award flights to SkyTeam members than they do Qantas.

A quick search using Seats.aero shows that there are seats available exAUS-DXB in certain months.

 

[CorporateFlyerMEL]

I have always had error message searching awards ex Dxb (perhaps because Qantas no longer serves UAE direct and does not deal with AED currency)?

 

[Mattg]

I have always had error message searching awards ex Dxb (perhaps because Qantas no longer serves UAE direct and does not deal with AED currency)?

Qantas has been able to accept online bookings ex UAE for years, taking payments in AUD. I think this is a different issue to the Qantas website not being able to take bookings originating in most other countries in the Middle East, Africa and South America.