Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[Ponky]

I've booked an economy OWA for my daughter who is heading off to study in Europe in a few months. It's initially for 5 months but may have the option of extending to 10 months once she's there. She's also been told the course starts earlier than originally advised and wants to bring the trip forward by 4 weeks (keeping all other flights as is)

1. In your experience, would it be easier to cancel the current booking and just start again rather than try to amend the current booking? I have the points available to rebook without needing an immediate refund, and I realise it might be a bit of a wait for my money to come back to me, which I'm okay with. My main concern is that a few of the flights are with Qatar, and I get the impression they are quick to cancel bookings if Qantas is tardy with the reticketing.

2. Can I change flights of an OWA once the journey has already commenced? That's to say, she gets to Europe in August, and wants to come home in June instead of February - can we do that at any stage prior to commencing that particular segment?

 

[vetrade]

I've booked an economy OWA for my daughter who is heading off to study in Europe in a few months. It's initially for 5 months but may have the option of extending to 10 months once she's there. She's also been told the course starts earlier than originally advised and wants to bring the trip forward by 4 weeks (keeping all other flights as is)

1. In your experience, would it be easier to cancel the current booking and just start again rather than try to amend the current booking? I have the points available to rebook without needing an immediate refund, and I realise it might be a bit of a wait for my money to come back to me, which I'm okay with. My main concern is that a few of the flights are with Qatar, and I get the impression they are quick to cancel bookings if Qantas is tardy with the reticketing.

2. Can I change flights of an OWA once the journey has already commenced? That's to say, she gets to Europe in August, and wants to come home in June instead of February - can we do that at any stage prior to commencing that particular segment?

Once travel has commenced you can only change date or flight number. You can't change any segment route or airline. If your daughter wants to change the duration of her stay she would have to stick to the originally booked route and find award seats for those.

If you can find availability online for the new flights you want, it will probably prove easier to make a new booking online and cancel the existing booking rather than run the gauntlet of dealing with the call centre.

This is from QF's Ts&Cs:

If your booking contains only Classic Awards, then the following conditions apply:

Up to 24 hours before departure of the first flight:

The following changes are permitted up to 24 hours before departure of the first flight in your booking:

- change to name (only for flights with a Qantas (QF) flight number on the ticket that are operated by Qantas)
- change to class of travel
- change to any segment routing (including departure, stopover or destination cities) or airline

Up to the commencement of travel for each flight:

The following changes are permitted up to the commencement of travel of each flight in your booking*:

- change of flight number
- change to date of travel

provided that a change to name, class of travel or segment routing or airline is not required.

 

[azza_1992]

What is the situation with AA international J awards these days?

A few searches through the QF website suggest there is zilch availability.

Is this because:
- AA don't have many award seats?
- AA have the award seats but they aren't available to QFF members?
- AA award seats are available to QFF members, but not shown on the QF website?

 

[Guvner]

I saw some yesterday. DFW > MEX or are you talking long haul J?

 

[Ponky]

Once travel has commenced you can only change date or flight number. You can't change any segment route or airline. If your daughter wants to change the duration of her stay she would have to stick to the originally booked route and find award seats for those.

Thanks vetrade - much appreciated

Given I should have a 3-4 months notice and a bit of date flexibility, hopefully I should be able to make that happen - the return leg is MAD-DOH-PER on Qatar, so perhaps not a super competitive route from a reward seat perspective.

 

[There'sOnlyOneJimmy]

Thanks vetrade - much appreciated

Given I should have a 3-4 months notice and a bit of date flexibility, hopefully I should be able to make that happen - the return leg is MAD-DOH-PER on Qatar, so perhaps not a super competitive route from a reward seat perspective.

I admire your optimism…

 

[blu]

Seems impossible to get through the ticketing queue. 4 hours into todays call - itinerary has been rechecked (again) by Support team - no errors, Agent is on the queue for ticketing team trying to get it ticketed, during which time call dropped out/cut off. Flight was added a week ago. What a waste of a day, HUACA again.
And we still need to add one more flight when available, but have decided to pay for a revenue fare instead to avoid this futility again, as it may have to be mixed class (twice told 'no' already).

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Has anyone got experience of flying business with American airlines. The first leg from Syd-Dallas is actually operated by Qantas (787-9). The Qantas website will not let me choose my seat for this flight. It just refreshes to the start of the process again. I think this is a website issue only (I hope). I had to apply for an ESTA visa as well as I read you need one even if just transiting. I hope I do not have to pass immigration/passport control in Dallas and I am transiting within the airport only...?

You *will* need to pass through immigration, customs, and collect your bags in DFW. There is, unfortunately, no such thing as a ‘transit’ in the USA (unless you have pre-clearance from canada and select other departure points).

You’ll deposit your bags shortly after customs, then head back to departures to clear security for your onward flight.

AA business class is fine. I’d put it on par with Qantas… maybe a tad above. While they don’t have PJs (keep your ones from the QF flight) they have good noise cancelling headphones, good bedding, equal champagne to QF, and equal food.

 

[azza_1992]

I saw some yesterday. DFW > MEX or are you talking long haul J?

Yeah I meant long haul J.

Trans-atlantic, Asia, etc.

 

[vetrade]

Seems impossible to get through the ticketing queue. 4 hours into todays call - itinerary has been rechecked (again) by Support team - no errors, Agent is on the queue for ticketing team trying to get it ticketed, during which time call dropped out/cut off. Flight was added a week ago. What a waste of a day, HUACA again.
And we still need to add one more flight when available, but have decided to pay for a revenue fare instead to avoid this futility again, as it may have to be mixed class (twice told 'no' already).

This whole ticketing queue thingy isn't necessarily what it seems. Like everyone else I went through a phase of an inordinate delay to get our flight changes ticketed until I got lucky and happened to have my call answered by a switched-on agent who explained the process to me.

I had thought that ticketing was a completely manual operation where the booking agent transferred the itinerary to a separate ticketing team member who calculated the taxes and issued the ticket, but it turns out that "ticketing" is actually an automated queue.

There are multiple automated queues at any one call centre and I was told that sometimes one of those queues can get stalled for whatever reason (from a technical issue to a simple matter of the booking having faulty sectors that won't allow it to be ticketed), which means that all of the bookings in that queue stop progressing. They can sit there endlessly going nowhere until someone realises that the queue is stalled, and therein lies the real problem - there is no alarm triggered when a queue stalls. Unaware agents may keep adding bookings to a stalled queue and not even realise it is stalled.

Apparently if an agent only takes a cursory look to see if a particular booking is in a queue, they might see it's there and say "oh yes, your booking is in the queue but it hasn't been processed yet". If they don't take the next step to check if the queue is progressing (which I was told, no-one is specifically tasked with doing), then you may call multiple times and get told the same wrong answer multiple times.

In my case the agent said she transferred our booking to another queue and it was ticketed about 12 - 15 hours later.
It's obviously a flawed system.

 

[blu]

I've had problems with taxes & charges too. Different agents calculate different costs for the same flight.

 

[Matt_01]

@vetrade my understanding is not dissimilar to yours. When the VIP was formed most P1s received an introductory call explaining what they can/can not help with, towards the end of the call I was asked or words along these lines 'do you have any questions', 'is there anything else I can help you with' I asked about the OW bookings and the manual queue, the whole process was explained to me by a very competent agent.

 

[cathalm8]

Hi Guys what is the latest I can cancel a rewards booking online and get the full refund? Is it 24 hours?

 

[ozflier]

This whole ticketing queue thingy isn't necessarily what it seems. Like everyone else I went through a phase of an inordinate delay to get our flight changes ticketed until I got lucky and happened to have my call answered by a switched-on agent who explained the process to me.

I had thought that ticketing was a completely manual operation where the booking agent transferred the itinerary to a separate ticketing team member who calculated the taxes and issued the ticket, but it turns out that "ticketing" is actually an automated queue.

There are multiple automated queues at any one call centre and I was told that sometimes one of those queues can get stalled for whatever reason (from a technical issue to a simple matter of the booking having faulty sectors that won't allow it to be ticketed), which means that all of the bookings in that queue stop progressing. They can sit there endlessly going nowhere until someone realises that the queue is stalled, and therein lies the real problem - there is no alarm triggered when a queue stalls. Unaware agents may keep adding bookings to a stalled queue and not even realise it is stalled.

Apparently if an agent only takes a cursory look to see if a particular booking is in a queue, they might see it's there and say "oh yes, your booking is in the queue but it hasn't been processed yet". If they don't take the next step to check if the queue is progressing (which I was told, no-one is specifically tasked with doing), then you may call multiple times and get told the same wrong answer multiple times.

In my case the agent said she transferred our booking to another queue and it was ticketed about 12 - 15 hours later.
It's obviously a flawed system.

I've been waiting for 72 hours so far for a reticketing to take place - nil so far despite daily calls to the centre!

 

[blu]

I've been waiting 9 days after adding a flight. One or two calls each day. The last agent was fairly terse and unhelpful, must have been a long day. Seems chaotic in the industry this week.

 

[flapper]

I received a dreaded 'Update regarding changes to your flight' email this arvo for my OWA that starts next month. Despite fearing the worst it was only an AS flight departing 30 mins earlier. As it connects with another flight I don't get the option to accept the change online and must call. Does anyone know if it needs to be reticketed? CMT shows the updated time and the same ticket no. QF manage my booking shows it in yellow with time updated. I emailed the E-ticket again but it still shows the old time.

 

[blu]

I thought time changes were just that only. Did you have to accept ?

 

[flapper]

I thought time changes were just that only. Did you have to accept ?

I didn't get the option to accept. It says I have to call, I'm guessing because I have a connecting flight afterwards.

 

[melbkate]

Hello all - it's been a while since I booked our last OWR J flights to Europe from Melb. Involved spreadsheets and lots of monitoring of various sites to see avails. Destination Italy, France, Spain sometimes via Tokyo HKG, Singapore and Helsinki.

I know I used BA and qantas but are there any other sites people can recommend to see how many J seats are available on different route options? I'm not getting very far with BA and Qantas sites. Looking to travel June 2023 and would love the Perth-FCO flight but any sites that show FF seats would be a great help. Thanks Kate

 

[Guvner]

Expertflyer is a good (paid) resource.