Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[kenjicult]

Happy to report that I was able to add 4 new legs to complete an existing OWA booking without incident, with a new ticket being reissued within 8 hours. Only having JAL and Finnair for the entire itinerary might have made things more straightforward.

In my case I suspect having Points Club helped with priority phone access to the Hobart call centre (I think).

I made sure I had the full details for each leg before calling. The agent had no problem adding each new leg to the booking. I did mention to the agent that I had checked that the entire itinerary was a valid OWA but to double check just in case.

After recalculating taxes, the new itinerary came to an extra 6500 points, plus 5000 points booking fee. Total taxes / fees came to $1071.54 / 132,400 QFF points.

Itinerary is

MEL-ITM via NRT
ITM-JFK via HND
JFK-VIE via HEL
VIE-ICN via HEL
GMP-HND
NRT-MEL

Miss 18 is very pleased that I discovered Finnair fly HEL-ICN I reckon that won me dad of the year right then.

Well done - this is the outcome I am hoping for myself..
I do have points club but have called maybe a dozen times on phone roulette in the last 2 hours to try and get Hobart to add a segment to my existing booking. Anyone know a specific time window to trial as non-status to maximise chances of getting Hobart?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Well done - this is the outcome I am hoping for myself..
I do have points club but have called maybe a dozen times on phone roulette in the last 2 hours to try and get Hobart to add a segment to my existing booking. Anyone know a specific time window to trial as non-status to maximise chances of getting Hobart?

I don’t believe points club has any priority to reach Hobart. There is anecdotal evidence that non-status members may get escalated to Hobart after they have previously attempted to reach the regular call centre. Not sure if there is a confirmed algorithm for that.

 

[kenjicult]

I don’t believe points club has any priority to reach Hobart. There is anecdotal evidence that non-status members may get escalated to Hobart after they have previously attempted to reach the regular call centre. Not sure if there is a confirmed algorithm for that.

This is what I'm feeling as well.. they pick up very fast but it's not the centre I'm looking for. I've been told that Hobart are a 7am-5pm centre but I see others successfully making contact as late as 10pm. Will keep trying I guess!

 

[zeruassiul]

Does Iberia ever release reward seats to QFF? On the rare occasion I see some availability to South America but never on their Asia and NA routes. Only over get Iberia in my searches for internal Europe connections.

 

[WilsonM]

Does Iberia ever release reward seats to QFF? On the rare occasion I see some availability to South America but never on their Asia and NA routes. Only over get Iberia in my searches for internal Europe connections.

I don't know what Asia routes you're referring to, but they have a 3x weekly service to Japan and that's it - pretty slim chance that they'll release many seats, even less chance it'll line up for you tbh. But I have seen releases to/from the Americans occasionally, more often to DFW, Miami and LAX:

 

[zeruassiul]

I don't know what Asia routes you're referring to, but they have a 3x weekly service to Japan and that's it - pretty slim chance that they'll release many seats, even less chance it'll line up for you tbh. But I have seen releases to/from the Americans occasionally, more often to DFW, Miami and LAX:
View attachment 406907

Thank you, yes upon inspection it's just Tokyo they're flying to and only resuming that service on 27-Oct. Absolutely 0 award availability from what I've seen to Tokyo. Thanks for the Miami DFW tips.

 

[Jacques Vert]

Thank you, yes upon inspection it's just Tokyo they're flying to and only resuming that service on 27-Oct. Absolutely 0 award availability from what I've seen to Tokyo. Thanks for the Miami DFW tips.

IB used to have some availability to/from Tokyo before Covid; once they get the route up and running again and (hopefully) add more days per week, availability may improve.

 

[yaziyo]

Does Iberia ever release reward seats to QFF? On the rare occasion I see some availability to South America but never on their Asia and NA routes. Only over get Iberia in my searches for internal Europe connections.

I've definitely seen some transatlantic availability before from Europe to USA, but not always. They have a fair few routes into USA from Madrid and Barcelona so it can definitely take some trial and error to find. It's worth seeking out because other than Finn Air, other Qantas partners can have very high fees for transatlantic flights, before you even consider the points you're still paying.

https://www.flightconnections.com/route-map-iberia-ib

 

[Mr H]

IB used to have some availability to/from Tokyo before Covid; once they get the route up and running again and (hopefully) add more days per week, availability may improve.

IB is the same group as BA, and BA has almost completely cut off long haul award availability to other OW airlines. IB may have done something similar.

 

[WilsonM]

IB is the same group as BA, and BA has almost completely cut off long haul award availability to other OW airlines. IB may have done something similar.

BA definitely haven't almost completely cut off LH award availability - it's reduced yeah, but there's still good TATL availability and also to India. Even some availability on SYD-SIN, more usefully for Australians (mostly off-peak periods).

 

[cambriamarsh]

BA definitely haven't almost completely cut off LH award availability - it's reduced yeah, but there's still good TATL availability and also to India. Even some availability on SYD-SIN, more usefully for Australians (mostly off-peak periods).

And HKG-LHR tomorrow morning!

 

[MelbFlyer]

And HKG-LHR tomorrow morning!

Doesn't really help for people wanting to book OWAs, nor would want to take the risk of changing existing bookings (even if able to), the day prior to the flight.

 

[cambriamarsh]

Doesn't really help for people wanting to book OWAs, nor would want to take the risk of changing existing bookings (even if able to), the day prior to the flight.

Fair comment. My response was re lack of LH availability

 

[05flyer]

Fair comment. My response was re lack of LH availability

Finnair have pretty solid availability into LHR… but that of course depends on availability (and willingness) to fly via HEL from somewhere in Asia.

 

[MelbFlyer]

My response was re lack of LH availability

I think overall BA doesn't have really great LH availability. For my flown OWA, I looked 9-10 months in advance and even then there was very little.

Had to settle for PE on BA from LHR to SIN. Still paid 318k in points as all other legs were in business.

Would have been nice to nab a business seat, but alas, nothing was available. An upgrade at the desk was available but it was £2k/pp (almost AUD$4k/pp) - no thanks.

BA has great business availability over the Atlantic (UK to the US) though, but that didn't help in my case as I was going from Europe to Asia on the way back home.

Finnair have pretty solid availability into LHR… but that of course depends on availability (and willingness) to fly via HEL from somewhere in Asia.

On my way to Europe, I flew AY from HKG to CDG via HEL, wasn't too bad - tried a new airline / business product and the transfer in HEL was easy.

Lounge in the Schengen area was average though.

Despite a transfer and longer overall trip time, it was / would have been better than CX economy direct!

2 days out from leaving home though (and 4 days from the flight from HKG to CDG), CX must have released some unsold business seats as I saw some direct flights to CDG - but I didn't want to risk it knowing Qantas' known issues of not ticketing in time (if I could have even got my flights changed in the first place! My experience is well documented in this thread pages back).

In the end we just settled for Finnair.

 

[Jacques Vert]

Finnair have pretty solid availability into LHR… but that of course depends on availability (and willingness) to fly via HEL from somewhere in Asia.

Taxes on Finnair are very much lower than BA and transfers at HEL are very efficient; AY would be my first choice.

 

[Jacques Vert]

I think overall BA doesn't have really great LH availability. For my flown OWA, I looked 9-10 months in advance and even then there was very little.

Actually, BA has good availability as they guarantee reward seats on all flights to LHR and LGW (at least 8Y, 2W & 4J) although not all of those may be released to QF members.

The problem is that QF rarely release any seats so those available on BA are usually snapped up the moment they are released, especially for the European summer months. If you were looking 9-10 months out, you were around 2 months too late. A friend who recently flew in J to LHR watched BA availability SYD-SIN-LHR everyday for a couple of months; and everyday there were at least 2 x J available on the QF website and by the next day, the previous day's release were gone. He grabbed seats on his preferred day the moment they were released.

 

[icecream]

Hi all, I received an email saying a CX flight in my itinerary has changed and to accept or change via manage my booking. The timing has only moved 5 mins and I cannot see anywhere to accept it, logging into Qantas there is the yellow banner 'Warning Please review the following items Your flights have changed, please call your local Qantas office. See flight details.' and then a 'Time Updated' next to the CX flight but no buttons I can press to accept. I checked the itinerary in CX website as well which already shows the new flight time but no options to accept (it appears as if it's been 'accepted'). The ticket number is still the same in RJ (although with a banner that says 'A schedule change has occurred on this trip. Please acknowledge it and choose your trip options again')

Am I all good? Or do I need to action something? Just antsy since it's a CX flight (which has dropped before when the agent didn't ticket). I just want the message banners to go away

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Hi all, I received an email saying a CX flight in my itinerary has changed and to accept or change via manage my booking. The timing has only moved 5 mins and I cannot see anywhere to accept it, logging into Qantas there is the yellow banner 'Warning Please review the following items Your flights have changed, please call your local Qantas office. See flight details.' and then a 'Time Updated' next to the CX flight but no buttons I can press to accept. I checked the itinerary in CX website as well which already shows the new flight time but no options to accept (it appears as if it's been 'accepted'). The ticket number is still the same in RJ (although with a banner that says 'A schedule change has occurred on this trip. Please acknowledge it and choose your trip options again')

Am I all good? Or do I need to action something? Just antsy since it's a CX flight (which has dropped before when the agent didn't ticket). I just want the message banners to go away

i would call qantas to accept the change

 

[N860CR]

Hi all, I received an email saying a CX flight in my itinerary has changed and to accept or change via manage my booking. The timing has only moved 5 mins and I cannot see anywhere to accept it, logging into Qantas there is the yellow banner 'Warning Please review the following items Your flights have changed, please call your local Qantas office. See flight details.' and then a 'Time Updated' next to the CX flight but no buttons I can press to accept. I checked the itinerary in CX website as well which already shows the new flight time but no options to accept (it appears as if it's been 'accepted'). The ticket number is still the same in RJ (although with a banner that says 'A schedule change has occurred on this trip. Please acknowledge it and choose your trip options again')

Am I all good? Or do I need to action something? Just antsy since it's a CX flight (which has dropped before when the agent didn't ticket). I just want the message banners to go away

I had the same schedule change. There was a big red “accept” button at the bottom of the “manage” page on the app. Make sure you click manage as it doesn’t appear on the app itinerary page.

Try resending an eticket to yourself and checking if it reflects the new schedule.