Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[serfty]

Z is award Premium Economy, P is award First Class on Qantas.

 

[Jacques Vert]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

At the risk of repeating some earlier posts, here is our experience (which I will break up into a couple of posts because I keep getting logged out!).

We did an RTW in J in June-July 2010. Exceptional value in my opinion: 280,000 + 2,500 each for a total of 570,000 + approx. $1,000 in taxes. The flight from SCL to SYD was showing at nearly $US6,000 each at the time! We had to make major changes on two occasions because of other issues so that added another 10,000 points; still good value.

If you are flexible with timing and routes you should get something you are happy with. I would not try to book anything but the simpliest itinerary on-line. the staff at Qantas call centre in Hobart were brillant.

JV

 

[SimonM]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

We did an RTW in J in June-July 2010. Exceptional value in my opinion: 280,000 + 2,500 each for a total of 570,000 + approx. $1,000 in taxes.

Thinking about the taxes on RTWs, I found that stopovers at HKG and LHR seemed to add the most. My first go at an itinerary included both and taxes were well over $600 IIRC. My actual route ended up avoiding LHR and only passing through HKG and the taxes only came to $339.

 

[Jacques Vert]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

There is a difference between transits and stopovers.

On an RTW on points, you only get 5 stopevers but unlimited transits (well, as long as you have a maximum of 16 sectors [which includes surface sectors] and I think there is a maximum number of miles as well but in my experience this rarely becomes an issue as you will see from our itinerary below).

A transit is a break of less than 24 hours.

A stopover is a break of more than 24 hours.

If you are lucky and the flight times line up in your advantage, you can make a transit as good as a short stopover. For example, we arrived in London at 2100, train to West Brompton, eat, drinks, bed at Rydges; up early next morning, walk (some of) the sites of London, lunch, more sights, train to LHR, fly to GLA, hire car, drive Inverness, dinner overlooking the River Ness - all on a transit so not using one of our 5 stopovers!

Also did a day in Madrid after flying in from Dublin before flying to Havana the next day. Both transits were between 23 and 24 hours. You can make it work for you!

Our final itinerary: CFS-SYD-HKG(stopover 1)-LHR(transit 1)-GLA(stopover 2)-paid extra flights GLA-LHR then LGW-AMS; RTW: AMS-LHR-CDG(stopover 3) surface sector(hire car to Barcelona)-BCN-MAD-DUB(stopover 4)-MAD(transit 2)-HAV(stopover 5)-MEX-SCL(transit 3 - 15 hours)-AKL-SYD-CFS.

Happy to receive a PM if you want more information.

JV

 

[OzziTravellers]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

Hi again FF members...

Thanks so much for your suggestions, I had my first crack at an online itinerary with the booking engine to see what it did, but it doesn't flick over to a Oneworld award rather stays as a Qantas/Partner award (for many more points).

Route is as follows:

MEL - PER - JNB (stopover 1, 2 segments)
JNB - LHR (transit < 24 hrs) - CAI (stopover 2, 1 segment)
CAI - LHR (transit < 24 hrs) - MUC (stopover 3, 2 segments)
STR - LHR (stopover 4, 1 segment + 1 land segment)
MAN - LGW - MCO (stopover 5, 2 segments + 1 land segment)
MCO - LAX (stopover DFW) - BNE - MEL (home, 4 segments)

So this totals 14 segments, 5 stopovers and according to the Great Circle Mapper 32963 miles including the land segments. I have used QANTAS, BA, AA (and SAA) for the flights - I thought the issue might be because SAA is used for the PER - JNB flight, but I played around with a few other (shorter) multi city bookings and it flicks over to the OneWorld award with this one in it.

I got told I can leave from diff airport so MUC arrival STR departure and LHR arrival MAN departure shouldn't be affecting it should it?

Thanks for any ideas...

 

[JohnK]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

LHR and LGW are counted as one airport so you have 3 transits and 1 stopover through LON which is not allowed. For this reason MAN will need to be a side-trip.

Also from memory the flights on SAA may be allowed by the award booking engine but I do not believe they can be ticketed. Need to confirm as I was having issues with this one a few years ago.

You have also listed 6 stopovers. Is DFW a stopover or not?

 

[OzziTravellers]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

Thanks JohnK.

My mistake DFW is not a stopover, just a break in the MCO - LAX flight.

How many transits are allowed through the one airport?

Does this mean if I dropped the MAN - LGW and just left straight from LGW it would work?

Thanks...

 

[JohnK]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

How many transits are allowed through the one airport?

Only allowed 2 transits through one airport.

Does this mean if I dropped the MAN - LGW and just left straight from LGW it would work?

Yes. That would then be a valid itinerary.

 

[OzziTravellers]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

Thanks again JohnK. I got it to work in removing that flight, but taxes are in the realm of $4800 for the 4 of us - would this be mainly because of the London transits do you think? I was expecting maybe 2-3k of taxes, but perhaps this was unrealistic on such an itinerary.

Cheers...

 

[JohnK]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

The LHR departure tax is quite high especially for travel in premium cabins.

Is there anyway you can route from LHR to a European destination after your stopover and then on to MCO?

Only other way I can think of is to stopover in LHR first and then transit LHR from STR on the way to MCO and that way avoid the high departure tax from LHR for international destinations other than EU.

Have a play around with different combinations.

 

[OzziTravellers]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

Only looking at Economy cabins, but the only other way to get to MCO I can see would be via NYC (without having to go further inland to Chicago/DFW) - would the taxes therefore be much of a muchness departing from JFK as opposed to LHR (although this would be domestic).

Amman was an option also given I'm planning on going to Cairo, but I see that it isn't in the booking engine, so I'm guessing RJ flights aren't bookable online.

I got the taxes dropped by about $1200 having an open jaw leg and dropping one of the LHR transits, so that was good, but then have to fork out the $$ to get to Cairo from EU anyway.

 

[JohnK]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

What I meant to say was can you change the stopover in LHR to be before you head off to Europe and Cairo?

What this will achieve finally is something like STR-LHR/LGW-MCO so there is no high departure tax paid to depart LHR/LGW as you are only transitting LHR on the way to the USA. This should reduce the taxes and surcharges.

 

[danih88]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

I'd probably add in that if you intend to travel with a partner but only pay for one ticket with points I would book your FF point trip first (for your partner), get those flights locked in and THEN purchse your physical ticket (for yourself to get the SC). It is easier to get a pay for flight to match the FF one.
I would use the operator assisted option to make your life easier and be prepared to be flexible. As mentioned in this thread, operator assisted calls will cost you 3500 points (or $60) and 6000 from April 2011 onwards.

In regards to baggage, correct me if things have changed but when I did my RTW back in 1993 (yes it was a long time ago) I was travelling EAST from Melbourne to LA and so I was part of the 2 x 32kg baggage allowance system. Apparantly because my ticket was just one continuous ticket (albeit one inch think), my original baggage allowance carried on to all my follow up flights. The only problem I had was on my final leg SIN-MEL where they wanted to charge me for the extra weight. One hour later (and a large line behind me) I managed to get this waived. Probably because I was a poor student back then.

Regards
Daniel

1230SC. Anniversary date 28 Feb... almost there...

 

[OzziTravellers]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

Hi FF's,

Thanks for all your help - finally got an itinerary sorted (dropping Cairo based on what's happening there at the moment). Tried booking online and got all the way through each time with an error at the end stating "fare not available" - tried for a booking fee waiver based on this, but no go. Turns out from lots of flights the only drama was USA back home out of a lot of flights.

Anyway we got 4 tix on the following itinerary for anyone that's interested in reading:

MEL>SYD>HKG>JNB - Stop 1 (no direct flights SYD>JNB around when I wanted to go)
JNB>LHR>AMS (Stop 2)
AMS>LGW>MCO (Stop 3)
MIA-SFO (Stop 4 & 5 because of the different departure airport in Florida)
SFO>LAX>BNE>MEL

Cheers...

 

[Jacques Vert]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

Enjoy the experience! Did you end up in J or Y?

 

[JohnK]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

Got to hear that you were able to get something booked.

Tried booking online and got all the way through each time with an error at the end stating "fare not available" - tried for a booking fee waiver based on this, but no go. Turns out from lots of flights the only drama was USA back home out of a lot of flights.

That is extremely disappointing. Qantas has not given you the option to book online and then charge a fee on top to book through the service centre.

I would send sternly worded feedback to QF and perhaps copy the ACCC with screen shots of the error message.

 

[Reggie]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

I had a wonderful experience with QF on Monday. I don't thinknanything she did will get her into trouble so I will mention her name. Radi from QF Premium was excellent, she helped me create a OW RTW 140,000 point trip, for 3 of us over Christmas in WHY.

Most flights I wanted on QF were not showing for me online, but Radi put the requests through and they all came back as a positive immediately. I was also short some points, but was just about to board QF93 which made my points up to what I needed, so was given 3 days to have the points credit, or trnafer some through from a family member.

All in all, great service, which I have never used before.

 

[OzziTravellers]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

Sorry I was probably a bit unfair to QANTAS in my post - my qualm was why did the f/flyer award booking engine even show the flight option when I had entered 4 passengers and only fail after I got gone through picking all the legs (and trying repeated attempts, different browsers, etc.) - the system knew I wanted to fly with 4 people.

Anyway as I had to change the return date I changed other legs of the trip were altered to extend stays a couple of days here and there and the QANTAS rep was very helpful throughout the whole process (around 45 minutes by the time we fully booked).

Just keeping the fingers crossed I make Gold again this year so we can use lounges while on this trip.

 

[NM]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

MEL>SYD>HKG>JNB - Stop 1 (no direct flights SYD>JNB around when I wanted to go)
JNB>LHR>AMS (Stop 2)
AMS>LGW>MCO (Stop 3)
MIA-SFO (Stop 4 & 5 because of the different departure airport in Florida)
SFO>LAX>BNE>MEL

That should not constitute an additional stopover. It may count as a "sector" in the 16 sector count limit, but its still only a single stop-over. I booked one of these awards and had different arrival/departure ports at most of my 5 stopovers. This was my itinerary:

BNE-AKL-LAX (stop 1)
LAS-DFW-MCO (stop 2)
YYZ-LHR-KBP (stop 3)
KBP-LHR-NCL (stop 4)
TXL-HEL (stop 5)
HEL-FRA-HKG-SYD-BNE

So stop 1 was a LAX-LAS ground sector, stop 2 was a MCO-YYZ ground sector, and stop 4 was an NCL-TXL ground sector. Each only counted as a single stopover.

 

[casanovawa]

Re: Oneworld RTW 140,000 point fare

hmmmm NM, and did u book over the phone with someone who let you have those ground sectors count as only 1 stop, that would be very handy for a trip i am planning... save me booking at least a couple of extra flights....