Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[adelee]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I cannot book a CX flight to HKG because the HKG-BOS flight is on CX, requiring a stopover in HKG if arriving there on CX.

Keep checking, a CX transit option might open up. It did for me (I now have CX MEL-HKG-JFK and CX FRA-HKG-AKL with two transits in HKG, even though most of the fares require a stopover). I've burned a few points with change fees (not to mention time checking for new award fares opening up!), but sure it will be worth it for the minimal CX taxes and great service!

 

[snabbu]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Sounds good, but I've ended up booking BOS-LHR on BA, then LHR-HEL on AY. It should be interesting to fly facing backwards on BA's 747...

IMHO the worst long haul J experience in the sky for a single traveler.

 

[prozac]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

IMHO the worst long haul J experience in the sky for a single traveler.

...ok for a couple then?

 

[snabbu]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

...ok for a couple then?

If you know the person opposite you, or want to get to know the person opposite you, the seating arrangement is fine.

On take off, landing and service, the divider is down and you are pretty much forced to look straight at the person opposite. Sure I have no problems saying hi to my seatmate but 99% of the time I'm happy doing my own thing to get through the flight so each time the divider comes down there is your seatmate, right in your face. That's how it feels to me anyway and I find that experience very uncomfortable. YMMV.

 

[prozac]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

:shock: I had no idea. Would have to be a very Victorian British concept. Not for me.

 

[pangwen]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

:shock: I had no idea. Would have to be a very Victorian British concept. Not for me.

I found it quite nice when travelling with my wife, but I can see why it would be quite unsettling for a solo traveller.

 

[Ken1]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

The changes to the BA Executive Club started today with peak and off peak award flights. To get an idea of the changes I looked at LHR-SYD in J yesterday and it showed as 100,000 Avios points for a flight next April and today it's now showing as 150,000 Avios for SYD-LHR or LHR-SYD for BAEC members. When I logged in to QF FF today I see that SYD-LHR in J with BA is now 139,000 points, compared with 128,000 that it is for QF and was previously also for BA.

I saw the same BA flights as available when logged into CX Asia Miles so they should still be available to QFF members if we want to include them in a 280K award. They don't always show up on the QF website but I have called up and they do see them as available (eg QF 15 and QF16) even to a Bronze member. (I know the taxes on BA are high but it's still good to have different options to consider if QF or CX flights are not available for a particular date you are wanting).

 

[Jordan613]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Hi All,

I’m still accruing points and looking to redeem within the next few of months on a very different basis of what most people are – a year-long backpacking trip!

Looks like it will be an expensive trip although it would be very hard to get a cheap alternative non-award itinerary as I’m back tracking and ‘normal’ RTW flights wouldn’t allow.

What I’m looking at so far is:
November 2015: MEL->NBO via DOH on QR (~$330)
December 2015: NBO->GRU via DOH on QR (~$290)
May 2016: BOG->MAD on IBE (~$200)
October 2016: IST->AMM on RJA (~$135)
October 2016: AMM->MEL via DOH on QR (~$290)
Total miles ~33,200, total taxes ~$1,250

I have a wedding to attend in Kenya in December so I need to be there, then I want to be in South America for summer (Patagonia etc.) and also back in Europe for their summer.

If anyone has any general critiques or comments, always welcome. I’ll be pricing this up at an SCA, Flight Centre in the coming weeks to do a comparison although I suspect they won’t be able to get below $3k

Thanks for the awesome resource and wealth of knowledge this forum provides!

 

[Mystic]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I booked a RTW ticket late last year . This time I only had enough points 140,000 to fly economy.
I am flying Cathay, to Shanghai, Beijing to Prague with Finair, Berlin Airline Copenhagen to Rome, then Rome to Hong Kong Cathay, Hong Kong to Australia with Qantas plus 2 domestic Qantas flights.
I made several attempts to book on line followed by a few phone calls requesting help and then finally phoning to make to booking nicely complaining I had tried to book on line and the booking fee was not charged. Just for interest the Taxes were a bit over.
$800. Hope this helps.

 

[Daver6]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Hi All,

I’m still accruing points and looking to redeem within the next few of months on a very different basis of what most people are – a year-long backpacking trip!

Looks like it will be an expensive trip although it would be very hard to get a cheap alternative non-award itinerary as I’m back tracking and ‘normal’ RTW flights wouldn’t allow.

What I’m looking at so far is:
November 2015: MEL->NBO via DOH on QR (~$330)
December 2015: NBO->GRU via DOH on QR (~$290)
May 2016: BOG->MAD on IBE (~$200)
October 2016: IST->AMM on RJA (~$135)
October 2016: AMM->MEL via DOH on QR (~$290)
Total miles ~33,200, total taxes ~$1,250

I have a wedding to attend in Kenya in December so I need to be there, then I want to be in South America for summer (Patagonia etc.) and also back in Europe for their summer.

If anyone has any general critiques or comments, always welcome. I’ll be pricing this up at an SCA, Flight Centre in the coming weeks to do a comparison although I suspect they won’t be able to get below $3k

Thanks for the awesome resource and wealth of knowledge this forum provides!

Looks like you are transiting (stop of less than 24 hours) through DOH three times. Twice is the maximum. You can get around this by ensuring one of the transits is more than 24 hours though.

 

[Jordan613]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Looks like you are transiting (stop of less than 24 hours) through DOH three times. Twice is the maximum. You can get around this by ensuring one of the transits is more than 24 hours though.

Of course, thank you! Easy fix to explore Doha for a couple of days

 

[ozflier]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

My OWA award trip to South America and at last some positive news.

As you may have read, I had thought I had finally won the race when all the flights matched up for my wife and I .

That was until the nightmare recurred - it takes 2-3 weeks to ticket my award seats with LAN or TAM ( gets done via AKL - who knows why) . By the time ticketing occurred , my wife lost her business class award seats Buenos Aires to Sao Paulo onto Lima.

Qantas FF staff blamed me for this - too complicated an itinerary , I booked too early and the usual , because my ticketing is done in AKL)
Finally a supervisor expressed the opinion that he was sorry . But not willing to break the OWA routing rules to fly us direct EZE to LIM as seats were available - so not that sorry.
I was told to ring QFF daily to see if the seats became available and apparently an email had been sent to OW requesting a change in the economy status that we had on those flights to business. At least they were trying.

After a couple of weeks , I gave up on that plan and contacted TAM in BA . They said they were going to ask head office to open up some seats.

A week ago , they did and I found them on the BA website ( indeed 5 business seats GRU-LIM)

You may think it was all fixed up .

Nope, I still had to deal with QFF.

I rang QFF immediately but they could not find the award business seats on GRU to LIM!

I told them that I saw them on the BA website - response - you are not using BA points , you are using QFF points.

We had a discussion about how risky it would be to try and get any ticketing changes in view of the complexity of the ticket - ie just shut up and stick with what you've got! To be fair , I think the agent was genuinely concerned that further changes may see more of already booked sectors lost or damaged ( already happened twice ).
Anyway I'd like to cut the story short but there was another hour on the phone going thru agents etc who initially insisted that the TAM J award code was "U" . I knew from my itinerary that it was (I). No way they said , it is the same as LAN (U)as they are the same airline.

Eventually , a supervisor actually checked on "I" availability for TAM and of course , the seats were there.

No apologies and this guy promised to ask for priority ticketing thru AKL so that the seats were not lost.

I can tell you know that the bookings are now up to date and correct .

So no thanks to QFF for fixing the latest mess-up , no offer of refund of some the points I pay each time they bungle something and no offer of anything of anything like good will for the hundreds of hours while they tried to sort out problems mostly of their own making .

I hope that by reading this, posters will be on the lookout and avoid similar problems when they follow me to South America.

 

[Ken1]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I'm still planning various combinations of flights that will allow me to stop in YYC on the way to or from Europe in July next year when I plan to book a 280K One World award and am watching which award flights are currently bing released each day to get an idea of the pattern of different flight routes I'm considering so that I'm ready when he appropriate dates are released in July.

To fly to YYC I can fly SYD-DFW and then DFW-YYC on AA (in Y). I'm not seeing any J awards for SYD-DFW, although some Y and F are being released. From others' experience, is the SYD-DFW and DFW-SYD a route where hardly any J award seats are released?

If I can't get a J award for SYD-DFW I could fly SYD-LAX and then book and pay for a Westjet or Air Canada flight to YYC. I've been seeing some J seats released for QF17 but since that doesn't arrive in LAX until 1405 it doesn't work for connectons to YYC the same day. I did see yesterday J for SYD-MEL and MEL-LAX on QF93 so that would work for a same day connection to YYC if I can't get a seat on QF11, and I'm not seeing J seats released lately for QF11 either.

I've read that QF are now flying SYD-YVR in peak Summer and Winter seasons but I've never seen any award flights when I've done a search. Has anyone ever seen any for that route?

Another thing I've noticed is that CX don't seem to be releasing SYD-LHR in J lately, although there are still LHR-SYD being released each day when I've looked. I did see that I could look separately at SYD-HKG and HKG-LHR and could get combinations of QF & BA, CX & BA etc.

 

[gbetox]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I've almost concluded booking my 280k award.... The itinerary has 5 stopovers, 16 segments, and 33,611 miles:

QF: CBR-BNE-NRT - stopover
JL: NRT-HKG - 19h transit
CX: HKG-BOS - stopover
BA: BOS-LHR - 15h transit
BA: LHR-ATH - stopover
non-award flight ATH-PRG - stopover (ATH and PRG count as one stopover)
AB: PRG-TXL - 23h transit
AB: TXL-VIE - 11h transit
AY: VIE-HEL - stopover
AY: HEL-CPH - 23h transit
QR: CPH-DOH-BKK - stopover
CX: BKK-SIN - 5h transit
QF: SIN-MEL-CBR

I've been able to get almost all the flights I wanted. For the JL flight, the phone assistant could not see any availability. However, I could see plenty of seats on BA and Award Nexus. I asked her to double-check, and when she searched through "redemption" instead of "flight availability", she was able to see the seats and grab them.

Then, regardless of being able to see award seats on the CX flight BKK-SIN on 24/05/2016, she was not able to grab them. She checked will her supervisor, who said that sometimes they see "false availability" for CX flights, because CX updates their inventory not so frequently. She advised me to try again in a few weeks... Any thoughts on what's happening and what I should do?

Finally, SIN-MEL-CBR seats were not available, but I was able to grab them by sending a seat release request (as a WP).

My itinerary has 5 long transits. Will I have to grab my luggage and re-check it, or will it be checked through to the stopover destination?

Thanks!

 

[Chesty]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Has anybody managed to book a 420k trip in F for two people? Having a quick look it seems virtually impossible to do.

 

[annielee]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Hi experts,

I've read most of the pages on this thread (skip some early one as it might not be applicable coz its back in 2006)
Planning for the trip in 2017 (ya its a long way and time for me to accumulate points for me and my mom to be in J) i wont be able to take 3months leave, so im planning to break the trip into 2 and i came up with the following, not sure its doable, appreciate some critique

1st Part (Europe + Rusia) March 2017
MEL - KUL
KUL - CDG (or other europe country)
HEL - SIN (coz i cant go back to KUL again)
SIN - KUL - MEL (own expenses)

2nd Part (USA & Canada) Dec 2017
MEL - KUL - HKG (own expense)
HKG - LAX
JFK - YVR
YVR - MEL

I've calculated its about 34300 miles (give or take)

Thanks

 

[Daver6]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Has anybody managed to book a 420k trip in F for two people? Having a quick look it seems virtually impossible to do.

Tried and gave up pretty quickly.

 

[There'sOnlyOneJimmy]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Hi experts,

1st Part (Europe + Rusia) March 2017
MEL - KUL
KUL - CDG (or other europe country)
HEL - SIN (coz i cant go back to KUL again)
SIN - KUL - MEL (own expenses)

2nd Part (USA & Canada) Dec 2017
MEL - KUL - HKG (own expense)
HKG - LAX
JFK - YVR
YVR - MEL

Hi annielee.
I'm no expert by any means, but I faced a similar 'must return to MEL half-way through' constraint in my recent planning. Your method may well be better than mine (either generally, or in your specific case), but my method was to take a LCC flight MEL-KUL, then start the OneWorld Award itinerary from KUL, then do Phase 1, then use a STOP in MEL, then do Phase 2, then end the Award itinerary in KUL, and use LCC for the KUL-MEL flight home.
It may make no difference for you which way you do it, I'm just offering up the alternative for you to investigate...

Another observation - you say that you're returning to MEL via SIN because you CAN'T go back to KUL again. Keep in mind that even if your first visit to KUL (first leg MEL-KUL) includes a STOP, then you're still allowed to have 2 transits through KUL in the itinerary (that's 2 visits, strictly less than 24 hours). So you don't have to go to SIN to avoid KUL if you don't want to (may reduce the 'own expense' flight costs).

Good luck with your planning, and point accumulation.
TOOJ#3

 

[gbetox]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I don't think so. I believe you can transit through HKG using a multi segment CX. I currently have a ticketed CX AMS-HKG-MEL that is transit only (I'm just trying to get rid of the stopover the other way). I have also had Qantas call centre staff confirm the availability of a couple of CX multi segment transit ticket options today. As far as I know, if CX isn't going to allow something, their computers will kick it out immediately - there shouldn't be any problems once ticketed.

This CX restriction is not HKG-specific. I cannot add BKK-SIN to my booking, despite the fact that many award seats are available. I'm flying QF from SIN.

 

[Dr Ralph]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Has anybody managed to book a 420k trip in F for two people? Having a quick look it seems virtually impossible to do.

Nope. I've been looking to book, but looks like I can only see available 280K deals.