One way to OWE awards?

[Smackbum]

I am in need of a cunning plan, and this seems like a good place to find one.

I would like to take my family to the UK (London, Edinburgh), France (Paris) and Vietnam (Saigon). I would like to do this with points for as many of us as I can manage. I would like to do this over December/January 2010/11.

I knew it would be hard so I have been making a few dummy bookings to check out routes and points and have hit 2 snags. The first one was that Qantas don't fly to Vietnam any more. I can solve that by using Cathay Pacific and hub through Hong Kong. So the rough itinerary is as follows.

Sydney to London (Qantas)
London to Edinburgh (BA)
Edinburgh to Paris (BA)
Paris to Saigon (Cathay via Hong Kong)
Saigon to Hong Kong (Cathay again and may as well have a stopover)
Hong Kong to Sydney (Qantas or Cathay)

This seems tailor made for a OWE fare and at 140,000 points I should be able to afford at least 2 fares.

But the very big but is that you have to book a OWE in one hit, so this means waiting until a month after the first leg awards are open before I can book it. I've booked long-haul to the UK before in the so called off or shoulder seasons and it is a struggle at those times. I reckon that award seats Sydney to London in December would be gold and hardly likely to sit around for a month.

So my cunning plan was to book them all as one-way awards and then ring Qantas afterwards and get them to change it to a OWE. I rang them yesterday and they had a chuckle and told me it couldn't be done that way, but then they said something I didn't really understand. They said I could book the outward legs myself (Sydney to London and Edinburgh) and then when the return legs came available ring up Qantas and they would add them each time to the growing OWE itinerary. It might take 3 or 4 calls (and therefore up to 10,000 points in fees for each passenger) but it would still be cheaper than individual awards.

Do you think this is my best option and have I got the story right from Qantas? I am still fuzzy about the distinction between their plan and my original one.

Ta.

SB

 

[MrHyde]

They are both similar, I think.

I did not fully understand what you meant by booking them all as one way and getting them to change it to OWE. Did you mean book SYD - LHR and then later book LHR - Vietnam and asking them to combine them. If so, that won't work.

What Qantas has suggested seems to be the way to go. They are suggesting booking the first leg and getting that confirmed. When the next leg or legs become available, calling Qantas and asking them to change your booking. This will cost you 2500 points per change per passenger. At the time of change, they will re-calculate the points cost as well as taxes and you have to pay the difference. Eventually, once everything is booked, it will come out to 140,000 points plus the points for each change. The points should become 140,000 as soon as the London - Vietnam leg is booked as then you will satisfy the criteria for 2 airlines other than Qantas.

Now, if availability in your other legs outside of Christmas, you could do this with just one change, so cost could be as low as 142,500 points. Now, there is the risk that you preferred dates just don't become available. But with OWE, you have a few options, like London to HKG can be done on BA, AY or CX... same for HKG to Australia.. (CX or QF)

 

[dajop]

But with OWE, you have a few options, like London to HKG can be done on BA, AY or CX... same for HKG to Australia.. (CX or QF)

And going to London of course there are numerous options as well, apart from standard QF kangaroo route (various airlines and routings including transits in any of SIN, BKK, HKG, PVG, NRT, LAX, SFO, SCL, EZE, JNB, BOM .... )

 

[Smackbum]

They are both similar, I think.

I did not fully understand what you meant by booking them all as one way and getting them to change it to OWE. Did you mean book SYD - LHR and then later book LHR - Vietnam and asking them to combine them. If so, that won't work.

Yes that was my cunning plan and that is what they had a chuckle over. So it looks like I could book SYD-LHR myself and then ring Qantas up to 5 times to add each extra leg to the itinerary as those seats come up. Or I could gamble that enough award seats will hang about for me to make the one change at the end to add everything. It would be nice if there was an easy way to monitor award seats so I knew when BA and CX release theirs and also when to panic about dwindling availability.

And going to London of course there are numerous options as well, apart from standard QF kangaroo route (various airlines and routings including transits in any of SIN, BKK, HKG, PVG, NRT, LAX, SFO, SCL, EZE, JNB, BOM .... )

My other worry is that I might get a couple of awards tickets if I am lucky so that leaves me a couple more to buy outright. Can I assume that any OWE itinerary will also be purchasable and at what price?

 

[dajop]

Can I assume that any OWE itinerary will also be purchasable and at what price?

The OWE itinerary does not come cheap, and is less flexible in someways, as unlike the OW award booked using QFF pts you need to go in a single direction between continents. Also it is not cheap ... oneworld - oneworld Explorer

At $3,699 plus taxes on your itinerary, you'd be much better doing a return to EDI and flying via SIN and doing a stopover there and in London and using a LCC, VN or SQ to fly to/from Vietnam. (or via HKG or BKK and use CX or TG or Air Asia).

 

[MrHyde]

dajop is right.

A OWE ticket would mean that you can't fly Australia - Europe (via Asia) and then Asia - Australia. You have to fly in the same direction: Australia - Asia - Europe - USA - Australia (round the world).

The One World award (140,000 pts) is different from OWE in that it allows you to travel upto a certain KMs range (I think 35,000 kms) on atleast 3 OW airlines. It is not possible to purchase this routing as a package... it would involve a lot of one ways tickets and will be very expensive.

If you have to buy some tickets, the best would be to do as suggested by dajop.

 

[Flashback]

dajop is right.

A OWE ticket would mean that you can't fly Australia - Europe (via Asia) and then Asia - Australia. You have to fly in the same direction: Australia - Asia - Europe - USA - Australia (round the world).

The One World award (140,000 pts) is different from OWE in that it allows you to travel upto a certain KMs range (I think 35,000 kms) on atleast 3 OW airlines. It is not possible to purchase this routing as a package... it would involve a lot of one ways tickets and will be very expensive.

If you have to buy some tickets, the best would be to do as suggested by dajop.

It will be miles, not KM.

 

[Smackbum]

Thanks for your advice - wouldn't want to have to spend $$$$ to match a difficult itinerary. I have decided that Paris and Vietnam will be optional side-trips to the main game, so to start with I am simply booking SYD-LHR for 1 Adult and 2 kids. Even this has its challenges as every time a new date becomes available and I try to book it I get this message

The Calendar dates had to be shifted so that each day stays within the site travel limits. (7127 - 10031)

When I try the following day all seats are gone except dodgy routings via Melbourne. I thought that seat availability would click over at midnight but is that midnight in the origin or midnight at the destination? Another alternative is that Qantas are being very stingy with classic award seats out of Sydney and want to push people to the any-seat awards at three times the burn rate.

 

[RB]

You are going to struggle to get 3 people on the 1 flight and avoid what you are calling dodgy routings.

 

[Smackbum]

I'm sure I read somewhere that around 10% of seats on Qantas planes are award seats, so that would mean around 35 per plane on the Kangaroo route. The bias would presumably favour Economy over Business and First, so maybe 20/10/5? Premium Economy is an unwelcome addition in my case, but at worst there should be 10 cattle-class award seats.

But I think the problem is that you have to book each leg as it comes up, like SYD > SIN, SIN > LHR. Or would Qantas have a separate bucket for direct SYD > LHR? There is no point me getting 3 of us to SIN and then only 2 to LHR!

Perhaps Qantas could run the popular routings as a ballot system rather than this FF roulette.