How do you search for awards on Qantas web site when it won't let you enter many city codes

[luxury-lizard]

I am currently assisting a friend search for business class award flights (SYD-xx_-SOF and MAD-xx_-SYD. She has 300,000 points so this should be sufficient subject to availability - outbound is mid-Sept and return early October - of course it's pretty late in the day to be trying to snag awards to/from Europe.

Availability ex-SYD (or BNE, MEL, etc) to various Asian or ME hubs is pretty much non-existent so I have been thinking that she should buy economy (or PE) to/from an Asian hub then use her points for award seats from there.

I have been using both the American Airlines web site and AwardNexus (selecting QF). I am seeing availability ex-SIN or HKG so that is good but when I try to replicate on the QF website it won't (for example) let me enter SOF as a city code - but AA and AwardNexus do and find award seats.

Is this a case of you must call to secure these bookings? If yes then the issue IMO is that it's hard to know in advance how many points will be required and what the taxes and surcharges are - which may make this approach not cost effective.

(Note she is currently waiting on quotes for paid fares for the entire trip as this will probably be the only way to make this trip).

 

[travellerqff]

AFF just so happens to have posted about it this morning:

From Which Countries Can You Book on Qantas' Website?

The Qantas website has a well-known limitation that you can only use it to search for and book flights departing from certain countries. This can be

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

 

[luxury-lizard]

Thanks for the link - however - I am still a bit confused as AwardNexus uses Qantas to search for awards (assuming you tick this option) and it finds flights - really QF - this needs to be fixed or at least they need to staff the call centre accordingly.