Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[Kendall Roy]

Ari Gold,
Distances OK
Stops and transits OK
I certainly can't see any breach of the OW rules in what you are trying to do.

My guess is that you will find your answer (or at least your explanation) in Married Segment Control. In this case maybe you are being blocked from booking 2 connecting flights with the one carrier.

I am assuming (a) that you know awards are available for all flights and (b) you're trying for a J award, so if that's the case, the possibilities I'd investigate are:
HND - HEL - BRU (if your're trying to book both flights with AY).
HEL - HND - SYD (if you're trying to book JL for both flights, which you almost certainly are, given that your only alternative to JL is AY, which I know from my own recent experience has been showing zero availability for HEL - HND).
The third possibility (least likely because of the lack of AY J awards from HEL - HND), I see is AMS - HEL - HND if you're trying for AY for both flights

I'd experiment a bit to explore these possibilities:
Change the dates for the HND - HEL - BRU flights a little to make HEL a stopover and see if that fixes your problem. Keep all other particulars the same, particularly the carrier.
If that doesn't work, I'd do the same for the HEL - HND - SYD flights by including a stop in Tokyo (you will need to temporarily change your original stop in HND to a transit to try this)

MSC can be a very confusing animal to try and make sense of, especially because the same airline may only apply it to some individual routes, and not others. I recently booked JL for LHR - HND - SYD and it got ticketed without problems but that was after I couldn't get HEL - HND - SYD with JL to work. Same airline, different result.

Your fix could be as simple as converting one of your transits into a stopover in one of these cities (in my case I was hamstrung by the fact I had already used up all my 5 stopovers)

Good luck

RE: MSC - This is an issue for AKL-SYD-HND

It'll let me do it online with separate legs, but the staff over the phone are telling me computer says no.

I asked for MEL-BRU and the system actually offered up MEL-HND-HEL-BRU as an option.

Some consistency between online and staff systems would be nice!

 

[vetrade]

2. For my booking, I could book MEL-HND on its own but it wouldn't let me book the same flight to connect to HEL. I don't know why.

I'd be scratching my head about that, too, simply because those flights must have been with different airlines i.e. QF with either AY or JL.

 

[vetrade]

RE: MSC - This is an issue for AKL-SYD-HND

It'll let me do it online with separate legs, but the staff over the phone are telling me computer says no.

I asked for MEL-BRU and the system actually offered up MEL-HND-HEL-BRU as an option.

Some consistency between online and staff systems would be nice!

Obviously AKL - SYD was QF, but were you trying for SYD - HND with JL or QF?
If you were going for the QF / JL combo there really shouldn't have been a problem.
Normally you wouldn't expect 2 QF connecting flights to throw up a problem either, so it sounds like you have been stiffed.

 

[flapper]

I'm so glad to see people booking OWA flights again. I've booked 2 for next year. I'll only take one of those. One is booked for the middle of 2022 and the other for Sep 2022. Which one I take depends on the Covid situation. After 3 cancelled OWA trips I'm glad I booked them. Things are starting to look positive for a change.

 

[Mr H]

I'm so glad to see people booking OWA flights again. I've booked 2 for next year. I'll only take one of those. One is booked for the middle of 2022 and the other for Sep 2022. Which one I take depends on the Covid situation. After 3 cancelled OWA trips I'm glad I booked them. Things are starting to look positive for a change.

Agreed. I was feeling very low and booked an award that grew into a OWA thanks to advice on here. It was transformational to my mood, letting me focus on the future for the first time in a year and a half.

 

[ozflier]

I see CX have finally started releasing award seats on flights from HKG to Aus. There is plenty of availability. Some flights have 6 J seats available. Take note QF.

Not much showing HKG-BNE direct mid 2022 on CX!

 

[levelnine]

Do airlines such as JL, QR & AA release more J seats closer to the date? Or is it the case that if you miss out that's it?

 

[gidxg03]

Finally bit the bullet booking flights home to see family in 2022. Was a nightmare to get OWA business for 4 of us but managed to book the following. Risk will be if Japan don't open up or continue to have high cases but if all else fails and we can't change to better flights we can cancel and get a full refund. Price was $2,902 plus 1.27M points:

25 Jun 22	00:35 Melbourne	10h 00m	09:35 Tokyo (Narita)	Japan Airlines
29 Jun 22	10:00 Fukuoka	10h 25m	14:25 Helsinki	Finnair
	16:00 Helsinki	3h 20m	17:20 Dublin	Finnair
27 Jul 22	13:00 Dublin	1h 30m	14:30 London	British Airways
	15:30 London	11h 25m	10:55 Thu Tokyo (Haneda)	British Airways
29 Jul 22	10:30 Tokyo (Narita)	10h 25m	21:55 Melbourne	Japan Airlines

 

[flapper]

Not much showing HKG-BNE direct mid 2022 on CX!

There is plenty availability for SYD & MEL on CX. Maybe when you guys open your border in 2032 they will add BNE flights. lol

 

[vetrade]

Do airlines such as JL, QR & AA release more J seats closer to the date? Or is it the case that if you miss out that's it?

That's one of those questions like "how long is a piece of string?" but this is what I've seen over the past 3 months:
Release date patterns have only recently started to be more or less reliable now that governments are indicating they will open up to international travel. That's particularly so for Australia where most airlines stopped flying here and stopped listing any flights at all.
Individual airlines have varying J release patterns for differnt routes. You really do have to look at each route on its own merits


JL - 4 - 6 weeks ago there was excellent availability for some routes such as HND - SYD right on 360 days but for LHR - HND I didn't see anything around 360 days at all, but then sporadic availability started showing up at about 330 days. JL HEL - HND was only showing Y, as well.

QR - Routes into and out of Australia have only recently even started to be listed for revenue fares. J awards have been exceptionally variable from one route to another. E.g., there's been plenty of J available for JNB - DOH at 330 - 360 days but virtually nothing showing on flights to connect to from DOH to Europe such as CPH, NCE, ARN, OSL etc. over the same time frame. I did see some European routes available at 250 - 280 days. That made trying to book connecting flights almost impossible.

Part of the reason for that might be because JNB-DOH has 3 flights on most days but some of the flights connecting to Europe have only one flight a day.

AA. I haven't searched for AA availability in recent times but they are notorious for not releasing J awards at around 330 days as expected. For some routes they may not release any seats until approx. 250 days out and for others like LAX - LAS they may never release any J at all. Another bugbear of AA is that they very often only show J availability between 2 cities via some other out-of-the-way city with very long transit times or which blows out the overall trip distance so much that the total trip time is long.

 

[Jacques Vert]

OK AFF, I've been trying to book the following with limited success. Can anyone here see the rule breach?

Miles are ~34.5K

AKL-SYD-HND (Stop)
HND-SYD (Stop)
SYD-MEL-HND-HEL-BRU (Stop)
AMS-HEL-HND-SYD-AKL (Stop - ideally dump AKL at the end)

Two transits and one stop in both HND & SYD - that's within the rules?

I was also getting the "Cannot return to country of origin" error, which is BS given that NZ is my country of origin and not my last leg. Perhaps the system is hard coded to AUS being "home".....

Two transits and one stop are definitely within the rules.

How are you entering this itinerary into the multi-city search engine? If you have more than 6 "lines" it give an error.

You could also try replacing one of the SYD transits with MEL and see what happens.

 

[Mr H]

Finally bit the bullet booking flights home to see family in 2022. Was a nightmare to get OWA business for 4 of us but managed to book the following. Risk will be if Japan don't open up or continue to have high cases but if all else fails and we can't change to better flights we can cancel and get a full refund. Price was $2,902 plus 1.27M points:

25 Jun 22	00:35 Melbourne	10h 00m	09:35 Tokyo (Narita)	Japan Airlines
29 Jun 22	10:00 Fukuoka	10h 25m	14:25 Helsinki	Finnair
	16:00 Helsinki	3h 20m	17:20 Dublin	Finnair
27 Jul 22	13:00 Dublin	1h 30m	14:30 London	British Airways
	15:30 London	11h 25m	10:55 Thu Tokyo (Haneda)	British Airways
29 Jul 22	10:30 Tokyo (Narita)	10h 25m	21:55 Melbourne	Japan Airlines

Not sure I would ever have been able to bring myself to spend 1.27m points to get my family to Dublin for 4 weeks. We'd all have been in Y and the points would have waited till the kids had flown the coop.

 

[cjd600]

Not sure I would ever have been able to bring myself to spend 1.27m points to get my family to Dublin for 4 weeks. We'd all have been in Y and the points would have waited till the kids had flown the coop.

I'm happy to use my points to include the kids, all of us in J. Travelling in Y until they "fly the coop" seems cutting one's nose off to spite one's face lol

 

[levelnine]

That's one of those questions like "how long is a piece of string?" but this is what I've seen over the past 3 months:

This is tremendously helpful. Thank you.

 

[Mr H]

I'm happy to use my points to include the kids, all of us in J. Travelling in Y until they "fly the coop" seems cutting one's nose off to spite one's face lol

Lucky family. My family don't think a holiday has started until the plane lands at the destination - the flights are to be as short and direct as possible. We did upgrade to business on VN one holiday thanks to Optiontown, and we have sometimes had lounge access, but my points are achieving value now I travel solo

 

[GaryLG]

Not quite the same family situation but before covid hit I had this grand plan of doing owa in first with my points but so much has changed in the last two years that I have now shared points with my daughter so she and the recently born granddaughter can visit grand-mum/great-grand-mum!

 

[Oubline]

Finnair usually has only been releasing their award seats for long haul J to partner airlines 2 months in advance. I’ve noticed in the last day or two that they’ve opened up awards on several routes I’ve been looking at for June (e.g HEL-NRT), (HEL-SIN) with four seats available. It doesn’t seem to be phantom availability (I hope). I thought I would let others know in case it’s of help to get home from Europe!

 

[GaryLG]

Can I check if this will work before I ring and try and book it?

MEL-LHR-KEF independent flight back to LHR-NRT-KIX-NRT/HND-MEL

So just to be crystal, I would book and pay for a flight KEF-LHR or one of the London airports.
And the NRT/HND "stop" would be less than 24 hours, just the connection to get back from KIX.

Thanks

 

[Mr H]

Can I check if this will work before I ring and try and book it?

MEL-LHR-KEF independent flight back to LHR-NRT-KIX-NRT/HND-MEL

So just to be crystal, I would book and pay for a flight KEF-LHR or one of the London airports.
And the NRT/HND "stop" would be less than 24 hours, just the connection to get back from KIX.

Thanks

Looks fine. You could probably add in the KEF-LHR sector later if you wanted.

 

[GaryLG]

Looks fine. You could probably add in the KEF-LHR sector later if you wanted.

Thanks. Just to clarify, you don't mean as part of the OWA ticket do you?