Phoenix-1
Member
- Joined
- May 11, 2022
- Posts
- 289
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.
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.
