I must, once again, extend a big thank-you to Qantas:
Unfortunately my grandmother's RTW trip recently took a turn for the worse due to having her passport and wallet stolen from her hotel room in London. Annoying, and a big hassle at the best of times, but after a bit of messing around you'd expect to be able to get the trip back on track.
Unfortunately this wasn't the case however: she was travelling on a South African passport, and the South African government have a ridiculous rule (well, seems to me ridiculous to me anyway) that when your passport is stolen overseas the only option is for them to issue an "emergency travel certificate" which can only be used for a single journey - i.e. you can use it to fly straight back to your home port, and that's it. So, the only option for my grandmother was to abandon the remainder of the trip (France, and the USA), and fly straight home.
That's where Qantas comes in. As most of us probably know, the rule for RTW FF tickets is that once the journey commences they are completely inflexible (or maybe allow date/time changes? But definitely not routing / airline changes). However, due to the extraordinary circumstances, on this occasion Qantas were immediately willing to waive the normal "no flexibility" rule and this afternoon cancelled my grandmother's remaining RTW segments in favour of a CX flight straight back home, for no additional cost other than the $$ difference in taxes and surcharges.
So: thank-you once again QF, your assistance has been greatly appreciated and deserves to be publicly acknowledged.
Unfortunately my grandmother's RTW trip recently took a turn for the worse due to having her passport and wallet stolen from her hotel room in London. Annoying, and a big hassle at the best of times, but after a bit of messing around you'd expect to be able to get the trip back on track.
Unfortunately this wasn't the case however: she was travelling on a South African passport, and the South African government have a ridiculous rule (well, seems to me ridiculous to me anyway) that when your passport is stolen overseas the only option is for them to issue an "emergency travel certificate" which can only be used for a single journey - i.e. you can use it to fly straight back to your home port, and that's it. So, the only option for my grandmother was to abandon the remainder of the trip (France, and the USA), and fly straight home.
That's where Qantas comes in. As most of us probably know, the rule for RTW FF tickets is that once the journey commences they are completely inflexible (or maybe allow date/time changes? But definitely not routing / airline changes). However, due to the extraordinary circumstances, on this occasion Qantas were immediately willing to waive the normal "no flexibility" rule and this afternoon cancelled my grandmother's remaining RTW segments in favour of a CX flight straight back home, for no additional cost other than the $$ difference in taxes and surcharges.
So: thank-you once again QF, your assistance has been greatly appreciated and deserves to be publicly acknowledged.
