Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[fairbasa]

How did you get AA domestic J (which is coded as F)?

My understanding is that all those Domestic F flights are being re-coded as J early next year. This itinerary is for August/Sept. When I logged in to the AA site through my AA ref to select seats it showed as 'First'.

 

[fairbasa]

That HEL-TLL flight is a good one. Climbs to altitude and then starts the descent Rear entry only so seats at the back are best!

Yea I've done it quite a few times now to visit in-laws (although not since it's changed from Flybe to Nordic). I swear they spend the whole flight just vectoring for the approach. I used to love the flybe flight attendants uniforms, Mrs fairbasa and I always thought they looked like dental nurses. Also felt sorry for them having to pull out and wheel the duty free cart on a 15min flight

Only problem with it I had was no award space on the flight immediately after the QR flight lands in HEL, so we're going to have to over night in HEL. Don't really want to jump on the Finnair bus down to the port then catch a 90min ferry after flying for so long.

 

[Geoffrey]

Right, but does it mean that the QF customer service representative was able to book it as part of a J award?

 

[fairbasa]

Right, but does it mean that the QF customer service representative was able to book it as part of a J award?

Yes as far as I can tell. I just rang up and asked for seats on that flight in Business and it was granted. Have a look on QF/BA sites for August next year, it shows domestic AA availability in Economy and Business.

This is what shows up on my QF award booking:

 

[Geoffrey]

OK I see now: it's a connecting leg from an international flight, so you can see book the whole flight in J.
If you search for DFW-JFK only, you only get Y availability

 

[fairbasa]

Interesting...I wonder why that is?

 

[madrooster]

Interesting...I wonder why that is?

AA now uses MSC, like QR and CX.

 

[Bengingerflea]

Great info here so thanks to all.
Booking for 5 x 140k RTW is a challenge but I have found a few almost perfect itineraries and am wanting a bit of advice from all please.
I read that the small change fee is good value to make adds/changes to tweak the itinerary later but unsure of the mechanics.
Is it possible to book the first few segments, then wait a few months to finish the booking back to the starting city, or do you need to make a booking that starts and ends in the same city from the first time you book?
Can the start and finish dates be longer than 12 months?

 

[Doctore1003]

Great info here so thanks to all.
Booking for 5 x 140k RTW is a challenge but I have found a few almost perfect itineraries and am wanting a bit of advice from all please.
I read that the small change fee is good value to make adds/changes to tweak the itinerary later but unsure of the mechanics.
Is it possible to book the first few segments, then wait a few months to finish the booking back to the starting city, or do you need to make a booking that starts and ends in the same city from the first time you book?
Can the start and finish dates be longer than 12 months?

Hey there, and happy travels. You can definitely take your time with booking flights. Do whatever you can online through Qantas first, then add as you need to by calling up (you can't do this online - and note you'll be charged the relevant fee). It won't be a problem if you don't book your leg home for a while. You can add/change flights all the way up to the departure of the first flight in the itinerary. Note that the points required for the booking will only "limit out" at 140 k once you've complied with the rule that you have at least two non-QF oneworld airlines in the booking (and assuming you're complying with all the other restrictions re stopovers, segments, miles etc).

From your first flight, you have to complete the itinerary within 12 months (again, you'll be limited by the fact you have to finalise the itinerary before the first flight, and airlines generally release seats about 11 months or so in advance).

 

[Geoffrey]

Finally booked two business-class awards for my wife and I from my home base (SFO)!

SFO-MIA 2Y (will see next year when AA finally codes their domestic "first class" as J)
MIA-GIG 2J
GIG-EZE 2J (separate EK award)
AEP-GRU-JNB-CPT 2J
CPT-DOH-MLE 2J
MLE-CMB-KUL-SYD 1J 1Y (2J to KUL, then MH doesn't seem to release more than 1 J seat per day... I'll just fly in Y)
SYD-SFO 2Y (never seen J on transpac?)

34669 mi according to gcmap
Thanks again for the help everyone!

 

[yld200]

Looking at adding a JFK-BOS-NRT with a <24hr layover in Boston to catch up with some friends. Can see theres an AA flight scheduled to land @ 13.34 while the connecting JL flight departs the following day @ 13.20.

Given the layover is less than 24hrs it shouldn't be classified as a stop over. The flights are in October next year, pending any schedule changes that make the layover >24 hrs I should be right with a 23hr 50min layover?

Has anyone done anything similar and had no issues?

 

[Doctore1003]

From my experience with booking AA flights a long time in advance, there could be multiple schedule changes in the coming months. I had a paid ticket recently that changed three or four times by several hours - and it was no problem to ring up and change to something more preferable. but I'm not sure how it would work with an award seat, or what would happen to your itinerary if any change causes you to have too many stopovers. Sounds a bit risky.

 

[grussellt]

Looking at adding a JFK-BOS-NRT with a <24hr layover in Boston to catch up with some friends. Can see theres an AA flight scheduled to land @ 13.34 while the connecting JL flight departs the following day @ 13.20.

Given the layover is less than 24hrs it shouldn't be classified as a stop over. The flights are in October next year, pending any schedule changes that make the layover >24 hrs I should be right with a 23hr 50min layover?

Has anyone done anything similar and had no issues?

I had a classic QFF award from CDG-SYD which gave me a very similar stopover in MIA. Fortunately I had no changes and everything went according to plan.

 

[yld200]

From my experience with booking AA flights a long time in advance, there could be multiple schedule changes in the coming months. I had a paid ticket recently that changed three or four times by several hours - and it was no problem to ring up and change to something more preferable. but I'm not sure how it would work with an award seat, or what would happen to your itinerary if any change causes you to have too many stopovers. Sounds a bit risky.

I had a classic QFF award from CDG-SYD which gave me a very similar stopover in MIA. Fortunately I had no changes and everything went according to plan.

Doctore - Thanks for the feedback, espcially with some previous experience with AA. I've done some more research and confirmed there are 2 flights later on the same day from JFK and I've when searching from LGA to BOS there are another few around the same time. If schedules do change, then I could change to anyone of these

grussellt - Good to know that it can be done

 

[flychrisfly]

Looking at adding a JFK-BOS-NRT with a <24hr layover in Boston to catch up with some friends. Can see theres an AA flight scheduled to land @ 13.34 while the connecting JL flight departs the following day @ 13.20.

Given the layover is less than 24hrs it shouldn't be classified as a stop over. The flights are in October next year, pending any schedule changes that make the layover >24 hrs I should be right with a 23hr 50min layover?

Has anyone done anything similar and had no issues?

Yep, I had an award flight booked out of Boston for a < 24 hour stop in New York, and AA ended up changing it so that my New York stop was > 24 hours. No problems at all since it was involuntary on my behalf. You'll be fine

 

[coyote25]

Yep, I had an award flight booked out of Boston for a < 24 hour stop in New York, and AA ended up changing it so that my New York stop was > 24 hours. No problems at all since it was involuntary on my behalf. You'll be fine

Same here. I had a flight booked and ticketed within the 24 hour window, flight got changed to outside window but no problems as still counting as a transit. Now if I changed other flights later it might have caused a recheck / validation that could have been a problem.

 

[tandlj]

We are nearly finished with booking our 2017 J class award trip, only three 'legs' are left: Bangalore to Phnom Pen at the end of NOV 2017, Phnom Pen to HKG around 10/12, and HKG to MEL on 15/12.

If the information we have is correct, we can only book the last CX flight HKG-MEL on 20/12/2016 as Cathay releases 360 days in advance. We could book the other two segments earlier, at the time they are released, but that would cost us an additional 14,000 ff points each time, 28,000 in total.

My question is about the risk of waiting for the release date of the last leg to do all three bookings - does anyone of you know how quickly business class seats are taken up and are 'sold out' on those routes (i.e. Bangalore-PHN and PHN-HKG)? All flights could be booked with Dragonair/Cathay; an alternative would be MH via KL but those flights would be released even later than the HKG-MEL on CX, I think.

Thank you for looking into this situation for us!

 

[Danger]

Looking at adding a JFK-BOS-NRT with a <24hr layover in Boston to catch up with some friends. Can see theres an AA flight scheduled to land @ 13.34 while the connecting JL flight departs the following day @ 13.20.

Given the layover is less than 24hrs it shouldn't be classified as a stop over. The flights are in October next year, pending any schedule changes that make the layover >24 hrs I should be right with a 23hr 50min layover?

Has anyone done anything similar and had no issues?

Even if the transit becomes a stop due to a schedule change, that's not your fault and I'd be surprised if Qantas penalised you for it. I've previously had two paid oneworld Explorer round the world fares that are capped at 16 stops become 17 stops due to route terminations. (One saw me fly HKG-xLHR-JED after CX cancelled HKG-JED, thanks to a particularly geographically challenged agent.)

 

[Radio8tiv]

We are nearly finished with booking our 2017 J class award trip, only three 'legs' are left: Bangalore to Phnom Pen at the end of NOV 2017, Phnom Pen to HKG around 10/12, and HKG to MEL on 15/12.

If the information we have is correct, we can only book the last CX flight HKG-MEL on 20/12/2016 as Cathay releases 360 days in advance. We could book the other two segments earlier, at the time they are released, but that would cost us an additional 14,000 ff points each time, 28,000 in total.

My question is about the risk of waiting for the release date of the last leg to do all three bookings - does anyone of you know how quickly business class seats are taken up and are 'sold out' on those routes (i.e. Bangalore-PHN and PHN-HKG)? All flights could be booked with Dragonair/Cathay; an alternative would be MH via KL but those flights would be released even later than the HKG-MEL on CX, I think.

Thank you for looking into this situation for us!

from 15 December the change fees are going up to 5000 instead of 3500 more info here Qantas increases award flight change and cancellation fees
just keep it in mind for your calculations

 

[ozflier]

Thank you for the warning re fee increase.
I had reason to ring QFF this morning to change my OWA trip for next year.
I had a wonderful representative to deal with.
She was au fait with the concepts of married segments and was able to make some changes for me which shortened my stay in Doha.
I have found, in this OWA booking, that response time is faster and that the knowledge of the agents has improved.
Well done to QFF.