Hi all
I'm booked to travel Melbourne to Jo'burg on Qantas (via connection in Sydney) in early March for my honeymoon. Planning to spend one night in Jo'burg then travel up to Botswana via South African Airways, with a connecting small prop plane into the Okavango Delta.
However our Sydney connection allows only the minimum time (1 hour, 10 mins), and I know from experience that these Mel - Syd flights tend to be delayed and run late in the morning (it's a busy Monday morning too). I've spoken to Qantas and they have advised that my only option is to pay $2200 to shift the booking to an earlier leave time from Melbourne. These flights were sale fares in the recent Christmas sale and apparently they need to upgrade the entire fare to flexi to make this small change. The problem is, if we miss the Syd - Jo'burg flight we will miss the following two flights and two nights of booked accomodation at very significant cost (we splashed out because honeymoon, but the thought of missing the start of our holiday and losing all of this is giving me heart palpitations!)
I've checked and there's no way to upgrade the fare with points, or to book a brand new flight and forfeit the domestic connection. Apparently even if we made our way to Sydney earlier and were checked in and ready to go, they would cancel our international flight if we don't make the Melb-Syd one! I'm a silver member and a QC member - not that this seems to matter in this scenario. I will most certainly plan to get to the lounge in Melbourne early and see if a sympathetic staff member mightn't be able to bump us forward, but it seems unlikely. Our connection to Botswana is the next day so we actually have 18 hours on the ground in Jo'burg - plenty of time - but apparently if we miss it they would put us on the next Qantas flight out the following day, so we'd miss all connections.
So two questions:
1. Does anyone know of any way that I could get these changed at reasonable cost? Willing to pay what it would cost to book brand new domestic flights ($400 or so) but not the cost of the flights again ($2200!!) as they have proposed. Are there any circumstances by which Qantas would be willing to change this for you? I will feel much less anxious if this is possible. However customer service so far has not been at all sympathetic to our circumstances - it's a sale fare, you signed up for this, your fault etc.
2. What are the chances of actually making this flight with the 1 hour 10 min turnaround? I might be overthinking this. The last time we did this in Sydney it was maybe 30 mins but I was transferring to a domestic not international connection. Any chance the domestic Qantas Club would be inclined to give us the speedy transfer passes etc to help us on our way? Has anyone done this recently with any success?
Worth noting that we will not have checked baggage, so they wouldn't need to transfer our bags for us.
Thanks so much in advance, I really appreciate anyone weighing on on this, I'm so nervous about this holiday now.
Thanks
Laura
I'm booked to travel Melbourne to Jo'burg on Qantas (via connection in Sydney) in early March for my honeymoon. Planning to spend one night in Jo'burg then travel up to Botswana via South African Airways, with a connecting small prop plane into the Okavango Delta.
However our Sydney connection allows only the minimum time (1 hour, 10 mins), and I know from experience that these Mel - Syd flights tend to be delayed and run late in the morning (it's a busy Monday morning too). I've spoken to Qantas and they have advised that my only option is to pay $2200 to shift the booking to an earlier leave time from Melbourne. These flights were sale fares in the recent Christmas sale and apparently they need to upgrade the entire fare to flexi to make this small change. The problem is, if we miss the Syd - Jo'burg flight we will miss the following two flights and two nights of booked accomodation at very significant cost (we splashed out because honeymoon, but the thought of missing the start of our holiday and losing all of this is giving me heart palpitations!)
I've checked and there's no way to upgrade the fare with points, or to book a brand new flight and forfeit the domestic connection. Apparently even if we made our way to Sydney earlier and were checked in and ready to go, they would cancel our international flight if we don't make the Melb-Syd one! I'm a silver member and a QC member - not that this seems to matter in this scenario. I will most certainly plan to get to the lounge in Melbourne early and see if a sympathetic staff member mightn't be able to bump us forward, but it seems unlikely. Our connection to Botswana is the next day so we actually have 18 hours on the ground in Jo'burg - plenty of time - but apparently if we miss it they would put us on the next Qantas flight out the following day, so we'd miss all connections.
So two questions:
1. Does anyone know of any way that I could get these changed at reasonable cost? Willing to pay what it would cost to book brand new domestic flights ($400 or so) but not the cost of the flights again ($2200!!) as they have proposed. Are there any circumstances by which Qantas would be willing to change this for you? I will feel much less anxious if this is possible. However customer service so far has not been at all sympathetic to our circumstances - it's a sale fare, you signed up for this, your fault etc.
2. What are the chances of actually making this flight with the 1 hour 10 min turnaround? I might be overthinking this. The last time we did this in Sydney it was maybe 30 mins but I was transferring to a domestic not international connection. Any chance the domestic Qantas Club would be inclined to give us the speedy transfer passes etc to help us on our way? Has anyone done this recently with any success?
Worth noting that we will not have checked baggage, so they wouldn't need to transfer our bags for us.
Thanks so much in advance, I really appreciate anyone weighing on on this, I'm so nervous about this holiday now.
Thanks
Laura