Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[elanshin]

Will keep trying I guess if it's just an agent issue, but after 4 separate ones it seems more like a system error. Guess there is nothing else to be done.

I did look for commercial fares and have set a google flight tracker for it, fares seem closer to $700 on J though.

I was hoping by booking the separate reward fare I might be able to escalate and get it resolved/refunded. However, I guess that might be wishful thinking given it's on JAL and not QF. The other perk is if the main itin falls through with departure changes, etc and we need to drop the trip - dropping this additional award won't hurt as much as paid fares.

It's not necesarily a system error rather its more likely "it's complicated" which many agents would treat as "it can't be done" as that's typically the easier out for them.

Not sure about your circumstances, but personally I'd be ok with a 2.5h flight in Y as well which would drop the cost to very low for NRT > ICN. Just make sure you don't accidentally end up at GMP instead.

I just happened to rdmly look around on Zipair and saw they're pretty cheap at $300 per pax. Even OZ is only $500-600 or so per PAX. for J. Zipair is JL's newish Value carrier and has a legit lieflat seat (Same one as KLM I beleive - just without IFE) flying on JL's older b788. I guess it depends on when your actually flying and if it's a peak season.

 

[billbro]

Does this makes sense to anyone or here or can someone explain it to me?



So my interpretation of the above is that, there are X amount of reward availability in a given market. The rationale being provided is that in my originating market (aka Australia) the relevant award has already been redeemed/exhausted.

The only problem with this is if I chuck in a multi-city booking that originates from Sydney the flight is still there (e.g. SYD > HKG, HND > GMP)?

Just make sure you don't accidentally end up at GMP instead.

What's wrong with GMP? I read it's closer to downtown and also it's where the redemptions are available.

Second last leg will mean the boss at home will have luggage, so J just makes it easier than Y

 

[Captain Halliday]

I think the answer suggested by @There'sOnlyOneJimmy is worth looking into.

Does the sector you want to add connect with an existing sector in your booking (ie, less than 24h)?

 

[billbro]

Does the sector you want to add connect with an existing sector in your booking (ie, less than 24h)?

No it doesn't, it's 3 days between either side (entry/exit).

The sector HND to GMP shows as available irrespective of the sector I add before it.

So it doesn't seem like a divorced flight?

Anyway thanks all for the help, think I'll just have to book the flight separately. At least the rest of the trip is squared up and all J.

 

[Captain Halliday]

No it doesn't, it's 3 days between either side (entry/exit).

The sector HND to GMP shows as available irrespective of the sector I add before it.

So it doesn't seem like a divorced flight?

Okay. Then my suspicion is you’ve not yet found an agent who knows how to do it.

 

[billbro]

Okay. Then my suspicion is you’ve not yet found an agent who knows how to do it.

I'm going to die inside if it is because Seoul defaults to ICN... but I've repeated GMP a zillion times now and HND

 

[ozflier]

Hi,
Just some frustration arising from trying to book American Airlines and Alaskan flights with QFF points.
I do use Seats.Aero which can be useful .
As part of a OWA booking to Canada , I have tried to book Alaskan for west USA and Alaskan flights - virtually zip availability for business class seats.
That's life though it does devalue having QFF points.
I am wondering which seats QFF can see and offer as awards .
Alaskan seem to have revamped their reward availability such that most award seats in their program are not available to QFF fliers.
Again that's life.
What i find confusing is that despite Alaskan reward seats being available and described as available on seats.aero in the business / first class categories , and despite their being "I" class , only some of them are available for QFF redemption! The expected "E" class availability for successful access to Alaskan reward seats does not appear.
Maybe I am missing something but to save you reading thru the following attachments , on one day 5 June 2024 on Sears.aero , Expertflyer and QFF, reward seats on the latter show availability for some "I" class seats on Seats.aero and on EF "E" seats .
It is all too confusing.
I have emailed Seat.aero who have been helpful in the past in case they do not see this and can comment.
Does anyone have an explanation?
Sorry glitch on my laptop - unable to attach file ? too big - will keep trying.

 

[levelnine]

Does anyone have an explanation?

Ultimately you have to rely on what you can see on qantas.com.

seats.aero can help you find dates to check, but it could be displaying wrong availability for any number of reasons (eg out of date results, bugs, etc). Whatever you find on seats.aero, you should go check on qantas.com. If it's not on qantas.com, you are wasting your time wondering where the seats are.

It is extremely common for airlines not to release all their award seats to partner airlines. Indeed, Qantas is notorious for doing this to Alaska and American, so it is only fair that they retaliate in kind.

 

[ozflier]

Ultimately you have to rely on what you can see on qantas.com.

seats.aero can help you find dates to check, but it could be displaying wrong availability for any number of reasons (eg out of date results, bugs, etc). Whatever you find on seats.aero, you should go check on qantas.com. If it's not on qantas.com, you are wasting your time wondering where the seats are.

It is extremely common for airlines not to release all their award seats to partner airlines. Indeed, Qantas is notorious for doing this to Alaska and American, so it is only fair that they retaliate in kind.

thank you .
What confused me is that the oneworld code for an Alaskan business / first reward seat is "e".
QFF can show flights for a reward when is no sight of any "e" codes available on seats.aero only "i".

 

[levelnine]

thank you .
What confused me is that the oneworld code for an Alaskan business / first reward seat is "e".
QFF can show flights for a reward when is no sight of any "e" codes available on seats.aero only "i".

Fare buckets are not 100% reliable gauges of availability. Qantas can show award availability to its members in business class even when U is 0.

 

[ozflier]

Fare buckets are not 100% reliable gauges of availability. Qantas can show award availability to its members in business class even when U is 0.

I learn something everyday on AFF ,thank you.
I realised that WP and P1 could request conversion from say "I" code to "U" for example when (U) was not available .
What I didn't realise was that I may be able to find, say QF business class reward seat availability, on the QFF site ( or thru the phone agent) in the absence of availability of the (U) code on Expert Flyer or Seats.Aero !!

 

[Daver6]

I learn something everyday on AFF ,thank you.
I realised that WP and P1 could request conversion from say "I" code to "U" for example when (U) was not available .
What I didn't realise was that I may be able to find, say QF business class reward seat availability, on the QFF site ( or thru the phone agent) in the absence of availability of the (U) code on Expert Flyer or Seats.Aero !!

I posted about this a few weeks ago. EF wasn't showing U or X availability even though CR seats were available on QF. Additionally, there were some I could see as a WP but someone else as a SG didn't see.

 

[Ciaomeow]

I have an 11.5 month OWA journey coming up. The booking process for me wasnt too bad. I booked the whole ticket originally in around June this year however with the dates not yet available in the second half of the booking I just put in some placeholder legs. Last week I called Qantas and had these changed (the last 3 legs) to suit the intended itinerary.

The ticket is:

Auckland-Hong Kong-Osaka (Cathay, Business)
Osaka-Tokyo-Honolulu (Japan Airlines, Premium Economy)
Honolulu-Los Angeles (Alaskan, Business)
Mexico City-London-Helsinki (British / Finnair, Business)
Helsinki-Delhi (Finnair, Business)
Kuala Lumpur-Melbourne (Malaysian, Business)

318000 points (+5000 change fee), $1400 taxes each (NZD)

Pretty happy with the booking. Couldnt get a Business seat on Japan Airlines to Honolulu but that is okay. It was hard to find anything from Asia back to Aus in Business and 12 months out so went with Malaysian. A few land segments but that is what we were planning. Between LA and Mexico we are going right to south to Patagonia on Latam Business award but thats on a separate ticket. My partner and I tried to do a similar trip in 2020 but had to return home after 3 months. We got all the points refunded from that ticket which was nice. A bit harder to get to Sth America on an OneWorld award now that Latam is not part of it.

My experience with Qantas was quite good. No long on holds and very helpful staff. I think I got an Aus call center too. I was thinking it was going to be harder without the Qantas Chat thing being available. That was how i made all the changes when booking the 2020 trip.

Anyway, looking forward to starting this next week. Good luck to others trying to book.

Hello
Curious, When you booked this trip, did you do online through the multi-city option or did you book via the phone? I'm having trouble using the multi-city option as it only lets me put in 6 segments & the total is above the RTW Classic reward limit.

 

[levelnine]

What I didn't realise was that I may be able to find, say QF business class reward seat availability, on the QFF site ( or thru the phone agent) in the absence of availability of the (U) code on Expert Flyer or Seats.Aero !!

It is generally award availability only available to Qantas (not partners) when it can be seen on Qantas.com but U is 0. Most of the large releases of seats have followed this pattern — not bookable by partners and not visible on most award search sites because they look for U availability.

 

[gaz1]

Hi,
I am trying to book 2 x Business class OW Award trips for late this year.
I am getting very frustrated trying to find sectors with availability & would appreciate any tips, etc (especially for best websites to use for searching)
The Qantas site is terrible, very slow & often only shows Emirates (which we can't use).
We've done this some time ago & Qatar was great but no business availability now.
For example there seems to be good availability on Royal Jordanian BKK-AMM & MNN to Europe but this often doesn't show up if you do BKK-LHR (for example) but if you know the separate sectors the availability shows.
ba.com is better but focuses on Europe-NYC via LHR (which has extremely nigh taxes).
It would be idea to see options BKK-NYC or PER-NYC but the searches seem to be very limited in stringing together sectors on the other airline.
I'm sure there are other options similar to Royal Jordanian - does anyone have tips on the best other award search websites for Qantas One World? (eg I tried points.yeah but that didn't allow you to choose oneworld, just qantas (which then includes Emirates, China Airlines, etc).
Sorry if this has been asked - I admit I haven't gone through all of the 768 pages of this forum.
I appreciate any tips that might help us.
Cheers,
Gary.

 

[ozflier]

It is generally award availability only available to Qantas (not partners) when it can be seen on Qantas.com but U is 0. Most of the large releases of seats have followed this pattern — not bookable by partners and not visible on most award search sites because they look for U availability.

Thanks again for this info.

 

[elanshin]

Hi,
I am trying to book 2 x Business class OW Award trips for late this year.
I am getting very frustrated trying to find sectors with availability & would appreciate any tips, etc (especially for best websites to use for searching)
The Qantas site is terrible, very slow & often only shows Emirates (which we can't use).
We've done this some time ago & Qatar was great but no business availability now.
For example there seems to be good availability on Royal Jordanian BKK-AMM & MNN to Europe but this often doesn't show up if you do BKK-LHR (for example) but if you know the separate sectors the availability shows.
ba.com is better but focuses on Europe-NYC via LHR (which has extremely nigh taxes).
It would be idea to see options BKK-NYC or PER-NYC but the searches seem to be very limited in stringing together sectors on the other airline.
I'm sure there are other options similar to Royal Jordanian - does anyone have tips on the best other award search websites for Qantas One World? (eg I tried points.yeah but that didn't allow you to choose oneworld, just qantas (which then includes Emirates, China Airlines, etc).
Sorry if this has been asked - I admit I haven't gone through all of the 768 pages of this forum.
I appreciate any tips that might help us.
Cheers,
Gary.

Patience is sadly the name of the game here to get OWA.

Firstly I'd suggest you build some ideas of routes you'd prefer to take (even if they're not available today). You never know when QF decides to do a big dump (there hasn't been many J options released past Sep 2024). That way if QF decides to release all their inventory tomorrow, you already have a plan for what you want to book. So if say they do a reward seat drop tomorrow and QF1 is available, you're ready to gobble it up.

As for searching current options, unfortunately, even if you can see availability on other sites (be it experflyer, seat aero, BA, AA, AY etc) unless it's available to QF (many airlines are not releasing everything to partners immediately anymore) you wouldn't be able to book it.

I would say have a spread sheet open and as you come across each partner and their network and availability, plonk it into the sheet. Try to make sure QF can see the award whether it's as a single segment or married - multicity tool with flexible dates and point payment shows availability but unfortunately you will have to go through with the EK, CI and other partners.

Short of paying someone to trawl through the options for you, this is part of where the hard work lies in finding all these options and routes then making sure it fits the OWA rules. Good Luck on your searches.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

The OneWorld alliance seems to be coming the OneWord alliance… ‘no’

 

[madrooster]

I’ve got no delusions about being a wise soul… but my gut reaction is the married/divorced segment issue.

Maybe not quite married/divorced, given I can book it separately?

My suspicion is the presence of the MAD-FRA on IB since you have a transit at FRA. Send me your booking reference and date/flight that you want for HND-GMP privately and I can take a look when I have a spare moment.

thank you .
What confused me is that the oneworld code for an Alaskan business / first reward seat is "e".
QFF can show flights for a reward when is no sight of any "e" codes available on seats.aero only "i".

For AS... it's E class for saver awards in J and T class for saver awards in Y. I class is a commercial class, so I'm not sure why seats.aero claims it is a redemption class when it isn't. Third party websites are not always correct.

I think it was sometime last year, possibly the later half of 2022, QF changed AS J awards to be charged as J level awards rather than F so AS is in line with AA these days.

 

[flapper]

My suspicion is the presence of the MAD-FRA on IB since you have a transit at FRA. Send me your booking reference and date/flight that you want for HND-GMP privately and I can take a look when I have a spare moment.



For AS... it's E class for saver awards in J and T class for saver awards in Y. I class is a commercial class, so I'm not sure why seats.aero claims it is a redemption class when it isn't. Third party websites are not always correct.

I think it was sometime last year, possibly the later half of 2022, QF changed AS J awards to be charged as J level awards rather than F so AS is in line with AA these days.

Yes, AS F awards seats have been classed as QF J for over a year now. I have found the release of AS awards seats on QF kind of strange. For the route I was watching a few months ago they would release a lot of J seats at an odd time of day like 4 or 5pm and they would be available for a few hours or maybe even until the next morning, then all would disappear and then some flights would come back a few days later. BA & QF showed different availability. Then there was the problem that the call centre couldn't see the flights showing on QF website. It took 6 or more calls before I got someone who could see them and knew how to add them to a OWA.