Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[MelbFlyer]

I just did the below search and it capped out at 318k pts.

Pretty much the same route, just Leg #2 is LA to NY instead of SF to NY, and all in business.

Not sure what the issue may be on your end.

 

[Phoenix-1]

Pretty much the same route, just Leg #2 is LA to NY instead of SF to NY, and all in business.

Not sure what the issue may be on your end.

Thanks. Would you mind trying with SFO-JFK? I even tried with an AS leg instead or a connecting flight (SFO-ORD-JFK) and no dice.

 

[MelbFlyer]

Changed the 2nd leg to SFO instead of LAX, as soon as I selected the 4th flight, it no longer capped out.

It must be an issue with departing SFO instead of LAX, as everything else was the same.

Odd though, because you're allowed surface sectors.

Not sure what the issue is - are you able to make your way back to LA to fly out to NY instead of from SF?

 

[Phoenix-1]

Thanks for checking. The dates for SFO-JFK work out much better for me unfortunately, otherwise I'd jump on the LAX-JFK leg.

 

[Mr H]

Changed the 2nd leg to SFO instead of LAX, as soon as I selected the 4th flight, it no longer capped out.

It must be an issue with departing SFO instead of LAX, as everything else was the same.

Odd though, because you're allowed surface sectors.

Not sure what the issue is - are you able to make your way back to LA to fly out to NY instead of from SF?

Maybe it’s because of the uncertainty about whether SFO counts as a separate city or whether it is treated as a secondary Los Angeles airport.

 

[MelbFlyer]

Maybe it’s because of the uncertainty about whether SFO counts as a separate city or whether it is treated as a secondary Los Angeles airport.

Could be something similar to the system thinking that NZ is in Australia (when attempting to do a "long" stopover in between 2 halves of an OWA).

I tried to do something similar to the below (ie. get 2 trips within the cap by departing Australia and then landing back in NZ, then booking a separate ticket back to/from Australia), but the multi-city search gave me an error message when attempting.

 

[Phoenix-1]

Another weird issue I'm finding where AY flights only show up if I have an AU origin. For example:

Searching JFK-HEL shows no AY flights. Adding an SFO-JFK leg doesn't change anything. Adding an ADL-MEL leg (ADL-MEL, JFK-HEL) makes the flight show up.

Phantom flight perhaps?

 

[ScubaMel]

I have BA SYD-SIN-LHR in J booked.

i have seperate flights with JAL booked CDG-HND NRT-MEL booked in F/J.

I’ve just found an option all in J NCE-HEL-HND with AY in J and then HND- SYD-MEL with QF in J.

can I ring the call centre and get them to cancel the CDG flights and then book the NCE option and would they be able to combine with the BA flights to make it into a OWA? I currently don’t have enough points to just book the NCE option. The NCE departure actually suits perfectly as I am there before Paris and means I could avoid Paris altogether.

 

[Warragul]

Combine multiple bookings? No. Without the points in the bank now, you'd have to wait for the points from the cancelled CDG flight to come back which maybe to late for the NCE option.

 

[ScubaMel]

Combine multiple bookings? No. Without the points in the bank now, you'd have to wait for the points from the cancelled CDG flight to come back which maybe to late for the NCE option.

I must have gotten lucky in July when I cancelled a reward booking then as my points were back instantly (although this was less than 24hours after booking it) Which is why I thought I would be able to cancel the CDG flights and the rebook the other flights and get them to add it to my existing booking to make it a OWA.

 

[DC3]

I must have gotten lucky in July when I cancelled a reward booking then as my points were back instantly

Yes. Lucky.

 

[djkelly69]

can I ring the call centre and get them to cancel the CDG flights and then book the NCE option and would they be able to combine with the BA flights to make it into a OWA?

Do you have high status with QF? Otherwise seems very unlikely an O/S call centre would be able to do this.

 

[Phoenix-1]

I must have gotten lucky in July when I cancelled a reward booking then as my points were back instantly (although this was less than 24hours after booking it) Which is why I thought I would be able to cancel the CDG flights and the rebook the other flights and get them to add it to my existing booking to make it a OWA.

If you call when the frequent flyer team is working (7-7 on weekdays and before 5pm(?) on Saturday) they'll be able to refund the points instantly. I normally tell the agent that I need the points ASAP for another booking and then ask if they can contact the frequent flyer team to refund it instantly.

 

[MelbFlyer]

can I ring the call centre and get them to cancel the CDG flights and then book the NCE option and would they be able to combine with the BA flights to make it into a OWA?

Unfortunately you can't combine 2 PNRs into the one to benefit from OWA capping.

You'll have to cancel either PNR (and risk losing the award seats altogether if you got the last one), and hope x100 that the consultant(s) you get can see the reward seats you can see online / add them.

If you're Bronze, I'd say you're out of luck. If you're Platinum, you may have a (slim) chance.

It's not worth the risk to lose your flights altogether because of an issue on Qantas' end (ie. the fact that some consultants can see reward seats which are showing online then change your existing booking for you accordingly, and some can't).

I had a similar issue in that after booking, I could see new business reward seats showing online after doing a multi-city search (either newly released, or someone else has cancelled and therefore the seats have gone back into the awards pool). Attempted to call and change, only to be told countless times any of the following:

- There are no reward seats showing on the day / flights you're looking at
- The seats showing online are for new bookings only (most common response)
- Only commercial seats are available on the day you're looking at
- You are not allowed to change, only cancel altogether for a refund minus a cancellation fee

...all whilst me literally looking at the award seats online during the call!

Sometimes it took 15+ calls just to get a change done, and sometimes I had no luck at all so I gave up. Then a few days / weeks / months later when new seats show up, I try again and again most of the time without much luck.

Incredibly frustrating.

 

[ScubaMel]

Sorry, combine was probably a bad choice of word. Ideally wanting to cancel one PNR and then get flights added to the other one.

I

 

[Lynda2475]

Sorry, combine was probably a bad choice of word. Ideally wanting to cancel one PNR and then get flights added to the other one.

This is possible depending on competency of the agent. There will be change fees.

 

[BriarFlyer]

Just a data point of refund of points: I've cancelled several international CR bookings in the past weeks and to my surprise and delight had the points refunded within 24 hrs. But you will need to call to add the new flights to your existing booking to LHR and pay the change penalty, but worth it for the saving of a OWA.

 

[MelbFlyer]

But you will need to call to add the new flights to your existing booking to LHR and pay the change penalty, but worth it for the saving of a OWA.

This highly dependent if they can get a consultant that can see the said reward seats and also if the reward seats are still available after cancelling, it would be doable.

Unfortunately for the majority of us we don't get access to Hobart, therefore get the bottom of the barrel in terms of consultants who are able to help and resort to having to HUACA multiple times for a simple change.

 

[Phoenix-1]

Hobart isn't always the best. I got one as bronze (judging by the accent) and was told I couldn't book a flight to US without applying for an ESTA first.

 

[Phoenix-1]

After some experimenting and several long calls, I've learned a few things that may or not be common knowledge. I'm going to write them all down here in case it helps someone in the future:

1. Sometimes (as I posted on the previous page) the flights don't actually cap out to 318k. However, it seems like if you keep adding flights they will cap out to 318k at some stage. I managed to get MEL-LAX, SFO-JFK, JFK-HEL, BRU-HEL-KIX, KIX-KUL and KUL-ADL to cap out at 318k (however I didn't book this).

2. Some J award seats (definitely was the case for AY16 JFK-HEL and AY8 MIA-HEL) that don't appear if searched separately, DO appear if you book an AU origin flight prior. For example, ADL-MEL, JFK-HEL shows a JFK-HEL J award on 19/3. This doesn't appear on a search on AA's site either. If you search JFK-HEL alone and you'll only see a Y seat. If you search SFO-JFK-HEL, you also won't see it. I thought this was phantom availability, but I was able to book this seat (and get it ticketed!).

3. Airports not searchable on the Qantas website can be booked over the phone. Surprisingly wasn't that painful and I managed to book flights from HEL-TOS in J easily.

4. Ticketing a flight that starts in the USA seems to be troublesome as they require you to fill in a form to satisfy their "Secure Flight Passenger Data Requirements" prior to being ticketed. I booked my flights over the phone and they appeared in My Booking but then disappeared the next day. I contacted the reward ticketing escalations team (no reply, but they might have done something) and also called up to get them ticketed again. In the end, I received an email in my inbox requesting me to fill in the aforementioned information and then had my e-ticket a short while later. Booking the same flight for my sibling was worse - they never appeared in My Bookings and despite every agent telling me they were in the ticketing queue with nothing else to be done (and a couple even taking down the information required in the Secure Flight Passenger Detail form) nothing happened. After emailing the reward ticketing team however, they very promptly replied with instructions to go into the manage booking page and add the information directly (not My Bookings > Manage booking, but manage booking from the main Qantas page). After that, the e-ticket was finally issued shortly after.

My flights finally ended up being a mix of QF redemptions and VA redemptions as I was unable to find a good way back:

My final QF booking looked like this:

ADL-MEL, SFO-JFK, JFK-HEL-TOS, TOS-HEL-LHR with taxes at just under A$100.

I decided to give up on the OWCA due to being unable to find a way back that worked out well. I booked separate VA flights (UA, QR) to get to the USA and back home from Europe.

Overall very happy with these flights.