Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[DC3]

If my last leg is LHR - HKG (returning to origin), does HKG get counted as a stopover?

The final destination (HKG) is not a stop-over, as the trip has ended.

 

[kenjicult]

You have tried out of LGA? Appreciate no bags on AA Y, except if you have Qantas silver or above. But also, if it’s part of an international ticket, doesn’t your baggage allowance continue over?

You're probably correct, I haven't looked into it beyond seeing that the Y classes didn't include bags on the Qantas booking tool. So was gunning for what I believed to be most straightforward. Ironically its been quite the opposite. I'm reluctant to capitulate now having spent this much effort so far (could be accused of being a subscriber to the sunk cost fallacy). But the fall back would be a Y out of JFK or LGA and just be done with it.

 

[madrooster]

QF need a dedicated team with deep knowledge of the Oneworld Classic award and the Oneworld cash paid *ONE* detailed rules, and knowledge of airports around world, for these more complex tickets. Not some random unskilled phone operator who happens to answer a call. The amount of rework on these more complex tickets will be increasing Qantas costs.

Be careful what you wish for... SQ got rid of their equivalent product altogether when the complaints about them rose.

 

[Mr H]

I am constructing a OWA.

My route so far is:

MEL-CMB-DEL-HEL-LHR
LHR-HEL-GDN
-ground sector-
HEL-HND

Both my first two routes transit in HEL. Will my third flight count as (a) a third transit in HEL; (b) a stop in HEL; or (c) not count as HEL at all?

Grateful for wisdom.

 

[muppet]

I am constructing a OWA.

My route so far is:

MEL-CMB-DEL-HEL-LHR
LHR-HEL-GDN
-ground sector-
HEL-HND

Both my first two routes transit in HEL. Will my third flight count as (a) a third transit in HEL; (b) a stop in HEL; or (c) not count as HEL at all?

Grateful for wisdom.

I think it will be a stopover. Either way, I don’t think a OWA will allow 3 goes at an airport irrespective of how it’s treated. I think (c) is unlikely.

I don’t think the 1x stopover and 2x transfers in a city are coughulative.
EDIT: @Mr H says it can be done.

 

[Mr H]

I think it will be a stopover. Either way, I don’t think a OWA will allow 3 goes at an airport irrespective of how it’s treated. I think (c) is unlikely.

I don’t think the 1x stopover and 2x transfers in a city are coughulative.

1 stopover and 2 transits are absolutely allowed.

 

[ShelleyB]

I am constructing a OWA.

My route so far is:

MEL-CMB-DEL-HEL-LHR
LHR-HEL-GDN
-ground sector-
HEL-HND

Both my first two routes transit in HEL. Will my third flight count as (a) a third transit in HEL; (b) a stop in HEL; or (c) not count as HEL at all?

Grateful for wisdom.

I am not sure I have any 'wisdom' here, but I think that (c) is likely to apply. I think your stopover is GDN and HEL won't count at all. Here is the definition of stopover in the classic award rules:

Stopover' in relation to:
(a) an Australian domestic Itinerary, means a break of journey at an intermediate point when onward travel does not take place on the same calendar day; and
(b) for all other Itineraries, including those containing a domestic to international connecting flight, means when a passenger arrives at an intermediate point and is not scheduled to depart within 24 hours of arrival;

Here GDN is the intermediate point. HEL is just a departure airport (like MEL at the beginning of your itinerary). I certainly don't see how HEL could be a transit as you did not arrive there on a flight.

Have you put a dummy booking in the multi-city tool and does it price as appropriate?

 

[Mr H]

Have you put a dummy booking in the multi-city tool and does it price as appropriate?

Good suggestion which I would never have thought of. Yes, it maxes out. It also demonstrates that the QF agent has badly inflated the taxes.

 

[cma_369]

I am constructing a OWA.

My route so far is:

MEL-CMB-DEL-HEL-LHR
LHR-HEL-GDN
-ground sector-
HEL-HND

Both my first two routes transit in HEL. Will my third flight count as (a) a third transit in HEL; (b) a stop in HEL; or (c) not count as HEL at all?

Grateful for wisdom.

You'll have to stay 24 hours on your 3rd trip via HEL, had this issue on my last RTW when Qatar was possible and had to stay longer than 24 hours on the 3rd pass via Doha to make my Doha-Istanbul flights add to the itinerary and price properly.

Putting together a new itinerary for Aug-Sep 25 and was deciding whether I'll have to cross HEL 3x or not, but I snagged a flight on JL43 to hopefully fly on the new JAL business product due to HND-HEL and HND-LHR trip times being very similar due to the Russia airspace diversions.

 

[Mr H]

You'll have to stay 24 hours on your 3rd trip via HEL

The specific issue I have is that I want to pick up in HEL after a ground sector - so technically no stay in HEL. I managed (eventually) to find similar flights to do a dummy booking and it capped out at 318,000 miles.

I'm not a great fan of JL because as a non-status passenger I can't reserve window seats. I feel like a J passenger should be able to get a window seat.

 

[cma_369]

The specific issue I have is that I want to pick up in HEL after a ground sector - so technically no stay in HEL. I managed (eventually) to find similar flights to do a dummy booking and it capped out at 318,000 miles.

I'm not a great fan of JL because as a non-status passenger I can't reserve window seats. I feel like a J passenger should be able to get a window seat.

I was able to reserve window seats on JL43 for me and my wife which worst case will still be the uber private apex seat, JL 52 only centre seats though.

Pretty sure the arrival portion of your surface sector is the the city considered the 'stop over', but given the 3x rule it would still count to your transit tally flying out of HEL.

 

[Mr H]

Pretty sure the arrival portion of your surface sector is the the city considered the 'stop over', but given the 3x rule it would still count to your transit tally flying out of HEL.

On my dummy booking it maxed out at 318,000 so it either counted the third HEL as a stopover or ignored it, but it didn't trigger a third transit problem.

 

[Mr H]

So following on from the discussion about stopovers and transits in HEL, I tried to add the final flights to my OWA as they were released today: NRT-KUL-MEL with MH to get me home. I was met with a situation that will be familiar to many, but was new to me - the agent telling me these flights were only available for new bookings and could not be added to existing bookings. She suggested I paid for them separately. Yeah, nah.

I was so surprised, I ended the call to regroup. Having done that, I idly entered my entire itinerary into the multi-city and to my greatest surprise, I was able to pretty much reconstruct it from what was still available. The only real modification was to do MEL-CMB via SYD, and to do DEL-LHR direct rather than via HEL. So I booked it all online as a new itinerary:

MEL-SYD-CMB-DEL-LHR (QF, UL, UL and BA - all in J)
LHR-HEL-GDN (AY - final sector in Y as that route is all Y on an ATR72)
HEL-HND (JL - J)
NRT-KUL-MEL (MH - all in J).



I'm quite happy with that. Now I need a flight to change on my original booking so I can cancel it with no penalty. There's 11 months for that to happen, so fingers crossed.

 

[ShelleyB]

So following on from the discussion about stopovers and transits in HEL, I tried to add the final flights to my OWA as they were released today: NRT-KUL-MEL with MH to get me home. I was met with a situation that will be familiar to many, but was new to me - the agent telling me these flights were only available for new bookings and could not be added to existing bookings. She suggested I paid for them separately. Yeah, nah.

I was so surprised, I ended the call to regroup. Having done that, I idly entered my entire itinerary into the multi-city and to my greatest surprise, I was able to pretty much reconstruct it from what was still available. The only real modification was to do MEL-CMB via SYD, and to do DEL-LHR direct rather than via HEL. So I booked it all online as a new itinerary:

MEL-SYD-CMB-DEL-LHR (QF, UL, UL and BA - all in J)
LHR-HEL-GDN (AY - final sector in Y as that route is all Y on an ATR72)
HEL-HND (JL - J)
NRT-KUL-MEL (MH - all in J).

View attachment 406630

I'm quite happy with that. Now I need a flight to change on my original booking so I can cancel it with no penalty. There's 11 months for that to happen, so fingers crossed.

That's fantastic. Saves needing to argue with (likely) multiple agents about adding your new sector, and of course saves any risk of losing seats from delayed re-ticketing. Looks like a great trip.

 

[Jacques Vert]

So following on from the discussion about stopovers and transits in HEL, I tried to add the final flights to my OWA as they were released today: NRT-KUL-MEL with MH to get me home. I was met with a situation that will be familiar to many, but was new to me - the agent telling me these flights were only available for new bookings and could not be added to existing bookings. She suggested I paid for them separately. Yeah, nah.

I was so surprised, I ended the call to regroup. Having done that, I idly entered my entire itinerary into the multi-city and to my greatest surprise, I was able to pretty much reconstruct it from what was still available. The only real modification was to do MEL-CMB via SYD, and to do DEL-LHR direct rather than via HEL. So I booked it all online as a new itinerary:

MEL-SYD-CMB-DEL-LHR (QF, UL, UL and BA - all in J)
LHR-HEL-GDN (AY - final sector in Y as that route is all Y on an ATR72)
HEL-HND (JL - J)
NRT-KUL-MEL (MH - all in J).

View attachment 406630

I'm quite happy with that. Now I need a flight to change on my original booking so I can cancel it with no penalty. There's 11 months for that to happen, so fingers crossed.

Good outcome. Only downside I see is that the DEL-LHR on BA has very much higher taxes than AY via HEL.

 

[Mr H]

Good outcome. Only downside I see is that the DEL-LHR on BA has very much higher taxes than AY via HEL.

Yes, plus you have to pay for seat selection but at least they recline.

 

[kenjicult]

Hello all

After many additional hours battling with Qantas, now purely on principle of them honouring their own rules.. I appear to have reached an impasse.

If you recall I had a HKG-ICN-HEL, HEL-JFK, SIN-LHR ticketed itinerary for 620600 points (2 pax in J) and was trying to make it HKG-ICN-HEL, HEL-JFK, EWR-CLT-LAS, SIN-HEL-LHR at 636000 points. But they were quoting me the full rewards points price for that added EWR-CLT-LAS segment (such that the total would be over 700k). The wrong price is one thing, the other one thing is that I need it to be a valid itinerary as I want to add LHR-HKG at the end later when flights are released.

I was coming up against all kinds of wrong advice from the call centre as to why the system wasn't pricing correctly, including accusing me of having too many stopovers, too many miles, not starting and ending in the same place. They were also counting ground sectors as an additional stopover, citing that the itinerary I wanted would have 6 stopovers. They were also generally getting confused with round the world rules (RTW being a term I stopped using very soon after realising their frequent confusion). I've even been told that a valid OW classic flight reward itinerary has the individual flights add up to no more than 318k pp (rather than the system "capping it")

Without labouring even more frustrating details since then, my issue is probably that I can't directly reach anyone in Hobart, and the senior manager I've been dealing with is citing (alleged) advice from Hobart that states there's nothing they can do to add the sector to my itinerary and have it cap correctly at 318k per pax.

This manager is saying that there's no one else to pass me on to. Basically stating that she's the highest point of escalation and there's no way to get me in contact with Hobart directly. I am of lowly FF status.

Someone in the thread above said that the eventual diagnosis for a similar issue for them was that the initial itinerary was incorrectly issued by Qantas, such that the itinerary in the first instance wasn't considered a OW classic flight reward. I strongly feel that this is also the issue for me but am hitting a wall of "the system is not capping the points at 318k pp, therefore it's an invalid itinerary". This is despite no one being able to correctly tell me which criteria of the OW classic flight reward the itinerary doesn't meet.

We've even tried alternatives like JFK-ORD-LAS, EWR-PHX-LAS; allegedly they are also not capping at 318k. (which if the initial itinerary wasn't "tagged" correctly as a OW classic flight reward, is possibly unsurprising).

When I asked them specifically to recreate the itinerary to see that it caps, they have told me that it doesn't. (Though a post in the thread above has shown it would be recognised as a valid OW classic flight reward itinerary and cap correctly) Basically rather than the logic of "he has a valid OW classic flight rewards itinerary therefore it will cost no more than 318k pp", they're doing the reverse of "it hasn't capped at 318k pp therefore it's not a valid itinerary", and then calling it quits on looking into it further.

I've all but run out of steam to battle it. I've also emailed the rewards ticketing escalation email (and cc'd in some of the execs for what it was worth) - haven't heard back. Unfortunately I don't have enough points or guts to rebook the itinerary in full without cancelling my current rewards flights (which seems too risky - 3 decent birds in the hand to try and add 1 more seems silly..)

All in all - it's been a bad time and I feel like I've only been lied to or discounted for over 20 hours with no power or avenue to challenge. Ultimately, I would probably pay cash to get across the US and save the points for a long haul international trip - maybe with Emirates or something so I don't feel too annoyed about having that flight not included in the OW cfr itinerary. Rant over!

 

[Mr H]

Someone in the thread above said that the eventual diagnosis for a similar issue for them was that the initial itinerary was incorrectly issued by Qantas, such that the itinerary in the first instance wasn't considered a OW classic flight reward. I strongly feel that this is also the issue for me but am hitting a wall of "the system is not capping the points at 318k pp, therefore it's an invalid itinerary".
...
I've all but run out of steam to battle it... Ultimately, I would probably pay cash to get across the US and save the points for a long haul international trip.

You actually do need to sort it out because if your initial reservation has been processed incorrectly, your final LHR-HKG is going to take you massively over the 318,000 cap.

 

[kenjicult]

You actually do need to sort it out because if your initial reservation has been processed incorrectly, your final LHR-HKG is going to take you massively over the 318,000 cap.

Yes you're absolutely right. I've lodged an online complaint for what it's worth as well.

Playing phone roulette has only ever gotten me. Cape Town, Manila, or Fiji. Is there a chance that Hobart picks up for non plat members?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Yes you're absolutely right. I've lodged an online complaint for what it's worth as well.

Playing phone roulette has only ever gotten me. Cape Town, Manila, or Fiji. Is there a chance that Hobart picks up for non plat members?

there were reports that non-status members can actually get routed to Hobart if they call often enough! Don’t know whether that is still the case but it certainly was a few weeks ago.

I think the agents are partly right. The system will cap at 318,000 points provided you are within the rules. I don’t think there is any flag that needs to get added to the booking at the outset because plenty of people just book one or two sectors, come back later, and complete the booking. It caps out at that stage at 318.

generally speaking agents will come up with all sorts of reasons to try and figure out why the system is throwing up an error. There is a known error that New Zealand for example is considered part of Australia and so you can’t transit through Australia and back as it considers your award has already finished. But that’s about the only error that I’m aware of.

There must be something perhaps it’s based or the number of transits in Helsinki… Something is causing the error. It’s just finding that.