New Qantas Award Booking System

[Lonely Flyer]

I did a few "dummy" bookings, looks great.

Also, is it just me or does it seem like there are more seats available, specifically Business Class on normally busy routes such as SYD - LAX???

The reverse is certainly not the case

 

[DTM1]

yes, but it is obviously too good. went to book flights this afternoon after checking availability this am, and multiple bus class seats all gone

hopefully it's b/c other users of the forum are testing out the system with dummy bookings ....

 

[Lonely Flyer]

I am looking for seats (J award) in October 2008 LAX-BNE. There are no direct Y seats so far (other than 12/10) and no business from 1/10 to 12/10. I have been on every day so I suspect there has been no release yet instead of they have all been grabbed. Does anyone have any idea how QF decides when to release seats. Maybe there is a pattern that can ascertained by collecting some data. I really need to get a flight around 11/10.

 

[serfty]

As a WP, I see a WHY seat on QF176 Oct 11th - this must be one of those seats for SG/WP as it does not show up using a NB's account.

 

[coyote25]

Have been playing around with the new system and overall it is good. One drawback however is if booking a oneworld award and you are up to your last leg you can't force the system to let you try different routes to get back home.

In the past if say you wanted to come back from London to Melbourne and no flights/options came up you could do a multi sector booking and there where no limits (you just change the status of the award if you went over 5 flights/stopovers until the system revaluated seeing stopovers with less than 24 hours and it stops counting them).

Now you are only allowed 6 flights so picking say London via a few cities to get back to Melbourne isn't really possible. Obviously if the booking system considered all possible options this won't be a problem, but it seems to be limited to direct and semi-direct (via one stopover).

This is only a small problem for those booking oneworld and who have used there stopovers, you can't make the system work via the old multiple stop function. Hopefully I explained that clearly (probably not )

 

[JohnK]

After looking at the new award booking engine a little more closely it appears that Multi-city or multi-destinations bookings have had a totally negative enhancement. Very coughbersome with little flexibility. We can no longer add cities as we build the itinerary, we cannot change a middle leg to another destination, any date changes and all sectors need to be selected again etc etc.

Is Qantas tightening the screws by forcing people to move away from Oneworld awards and using FF points on simple one-way or return award bookings. I know for a fact that if I attempted to plan/book the RTW award I booked back in April it would almost be impossible as I lost count of the number of revisions I had before finally booking it.

This new award booking engine has added some new features which may look nice to some people but we have lost crucial finctionality in building Oneworld awards.

 

[Lonely Flyer]

As already may have been said by me I booked a oneway business award BNE-LAX for Sept 2008 about 5 weeks ago and have been waiting to book a return in October 2008.

This new so called award engine has no business awards showing for me NB from June to October at all either LAX-BNE or LAX-SYD. Is there a new program with the new engine whereby business awards are held back.

I am seriously looking at other options including cancelling my booking and paying for my flight to USA on another carrier and using all my points doing numerous flights on AA and BA as I was intending to do a trip across the atlantic.

If I could confirm that say doing a First Class award BA JFK-LHR and return would cost QF more than it would for them to carry us business class return across the pacific then I am tempted to give up the 10000 points cancelling the awards in Sept.

Mrs. Lonely Flyer is into me because she already has dates in October 2008 where she needs to be back at her desk and because I shrug and say I do not know when we can return the level of manure is rising past my chin.

Unfortunately most of our points come from cc spend and other programs are not as attractive as if we were regular fliers. Although with Virgin Blue (and I do not find flights within Australia a problem on DJ) linking shortly to Virgin Atlantic the VS program is looking more attractive as its partners include SG and my major Amex cc can transfer to it on a 1:1 basis whilst other programs are less generous. Gives me a reason to cancel my Qantas ANZ and Qantas Amex cards.

Enough of a rant

 

[straitman]

Unfortunately most of our points come from cc spend and other programs are not as attractive as if we were regular fliers. Although with Virgin Blue (and I do not find flights within Australia a problem on DJ) linking shortly to Virgin Atlantic the VS program is looking more attractive as its partners include SG and my major Amex cc can transfer to it on a 1:1 basis whilst other programs are less generous. Gives me a reason to cancel my Qantas ANZ and Qantas Amex cards.

Enough of a rant

Lonely Flyer,

Personally I think the whole system sucks, however all I do is workout what is best for me and I recommend that's the way forward for anyone. The correct outcome for you (or anyone) depends upon a multitude of factors that only you are fully aware of.

 

[Mal]

Qantas seems to have made some changes to help prevent the issue of mixed itinerary.

Searching Brisbane-Singapore on flexible dates shows me no availability, however, there is economy from Brisbane to Sydney all day long, and Business/First availability from Sydney to Singapore (but not Brisbane-Singapore or economy from Sydney-Singapore).

Similar issue with Bangkok.

So, I'm assuming rather than Qantas potentially booking me in a set of fare classes I may not like, they've taken the safe option and aren't showing me that I could potentially fly (Brisbane-Sydney[Econ]-Singapore[Business/First])

 

[JohnK]

So, I'm assuming rather than Qantas potentially booking me in a set of fare classes I may not like, they've taken the safe option and aren't showing me that I could potentially fly (Brisbane-Sydney[Econ]-Singapore[Business/First])

Which is probably the safest option judging by some of the discussion on this type of anomaly earlier. I think the last thing anyone wanted was to book a Business/First award and find that the longest leg, eg SYD-SIN, was in WHY!

 

[Mal]

Which is probably the safest option judging by some of the discussion on this type of anomaly earlier. I think the last thing anyone wanted was to book a Business/First award and find that the longest leg, eg SYD-SIN, was in WHY!

Actually, TBH, I don't know what I prefer.

Due to the way the site was behaving today, I ripped myself off around $200 by booking an Itin that I could have expanded to include another flight.

Basically, I booked a SYD-SIN, BKK-SYD Itin (SYD-SIN F/QF, BKK-SYD J/BA) itin. I couldn't find any availability ex BNE.

I then booked a return BNE-SYD at higher than average fares based on availability.

Later on, I thought about it and did some more searching and found that J awards were available from BNE-SYD on both dates. Doing some calcs using the Multi-Booking tool, I could have had BNE-SYD in J for $30 more and no increase in points, or both BNE-SYD and SYD-BNE in J for around 12000 points more and an additional ~$60.

I could have cancelled the original itin and rebooked, but it was the last seat on both flights I believe and that could have caused complications. Bringing QF into it, also would have caused complications I think.

At least I can happily earn 20SC/2000FFpoints for my flights that I wouldn't earnt otherwise. J BNE-SYD is nothing special, and nothing worth extra points for at all.

 

[serfty]

... One drawback however is if booking a oneworld award ... you could do a multi sector booking ...

Now you are only allowed 6 flights ...

This has been changed to allow 12 separate "flights" to be input for searching.

Still a PITA when compared to the old multi engine ...

 

[futaris]

I just noticed this on the Award Flight Offers - International page:

Be flexible with your travel dates, as the number of seats available for Award bookings is limited. This depends on the flight, date, season and destination and some flights may not have any Award seats available. Travel in Economy and Business cannot be combined in the same booking.

You can't combine economy and business on a single award anymore?

 

[Mal]

You can't combine economy and business on a single award anymore?

Nah, I'm sure you can, but not if you're using a discount code. They are encoded for use only on Business or only on Economy (or first etc) and cause issues if you try and use them to book a class that they're not meant for...

 

[Alanslegal]

I tried a few times to book a simple award rtw & kept on coming up with this ..... ""We are experience connectivity difficulties""

 

[Lonely Flyer]

I tried a few times to book a simple award rtw & kept on coming up with this ..... ""We are experience connectivity difficulties""

Well it must be Christmas. I have just booked my multi-leg with the call centre for no 2500 booking fee. And it turned out to cost me 2000 points and $400 less than had I did individual bookings online. They know the system is broken with regard to multi city overseas and so waive the fee if you explain the system does not work.

 

[JohnK]

I have just trying using the new award booking interface and would honestly have to say that it is rubbish. This is called an improvement? Is it just me or does anyone else feel frustrated trying to find availability? I put in a date and use flexible with dates option and it returns an error message to put in an alternative date and use flexible with dates option.

There is no way I can see that I could even draft a RTW itinerary using the new interface.

 

[lwardle]

For the last 30 minutes any attempt to update booking details gives message "We are experiencing connectivity difficulties".

P.S. this happens when trying to select the 2nd flight in a 3 destination "Multi-destination Itinerary"

Regards, Leigh

 

[jakeseven7]

For the last 30 minutes any attempt to update booking details gives message "We are experiencing connectivity difficulties".

P.S. this happens when trying to select the 2nd flight in a 3 destination "Multi-destination Itinerary"

Regards, Leigh

I know this is slightly dodgy, but most of the time I can't be bothered with the online booking engine so I just call QF, say the site is down, through a couple of technical words it, get a bit 'stressed' and they waive the point fee. Every single time . Plus its a hell of a lot faster and they are actually really great, suggest cheaper ways of doing things, enter promo codes for you, suggest upgrading to J will only be X points more etc etc.

 

[JohnK]

I know this is slightly dodgy, but most of the time I can't be bothered with the online booking engine so I just call QF, say the site is down, through a couple of technical words it, get a bit 'stressed' and they waive the point fee.

While this is probably a very good idea if you are booking a point to point one way/return award it is not feasible trying to plan a 10-16 sector Oneworld RTW award and not a lot of room for flexibility.

With the old boaward booking interface I could create 3-4 multi-destination itineraries in an hour. With the current one I can't get past the first couple of destinations as there is an error most times. The old interface allowed you to continually search 14 days ahead whereas the current one says use flexible dates and if nothing is founf returns an error message not an alternative.

Also if you make a mistake or want to add a destination in the middle of an itinerary then you have to go through every flight option again whereas before you could just delete and append anywhere in the itinerary.