Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[MelbFlyer]

Just a heads up - 4 business reward seats QF16 LAX-BNE 5 april released this am (or at least that's when I found them) - I have taken 2 of them but still at least 2 left !

This is part of the overall problem - it's QF releasing random batches of business reward seats relatively close to the departure date.

It gets hard to plan so far out (as seats are now randomly released), and in most cases you can't really tell your boss "Hey, I'm going to go to the U.S. or Europe for 2-4 weeks", only weeks or a few months out.

 

[kirks069]

We want to book a oneworld Classic Flight Reward itinerary starting from December 2025 through to December 2026.
In the Points Hack article How to fly around the world in Business Class with Qantas Points it states:
"If your itinerary is particularly long, you might not be able to book everything in one go. That’s okay – you can book some of the flights now and add more later. Remember that whenever you change the booking, you’ll have to pay a change fee of 5,000 Qantas Points per person."

Does doing this mean that the total points cost is still 318,000 ?
How does this work? Do we book the first leg now (Perth to London, December 2025) and pay the points + taxes, and book the next leg (London to Montreal, October 2026) when the flights become available?
How does this effect our points?
Won't we pay more or does the system somehow recognise that we're doing an Around the World and adjust the points?
What happens to the taxes we pay; do they get refunded?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[elanshin]

@madrooster do you know if an involuntary change months out, QF can substitute a QF flight with an EK flight? (Already started the OWA).

Basically going from CHC-MEL to CHC - SYD - MEL

 

[MEL_Traveller]

We want to book a oneworld Classic Flight Reward itinerary starting from December 2025 through to December 2026.
In the Points Hack article How to fly around the world in Business Class with Qantas Points it states:
"If your itinerary is particularly long, you might not be able to book everything in one go. That’s okay – you can book some of the flights now and add more later. Remember that whenever you change the booking, you’ll have to pay a change fee of 5,000 Qantas Points per person."

Does doing this mean that the total points cost is still 318,000 ?
How does this work? Do we book the first leg now (Perth to London, December 2025) and pay the points + taxes, and book the next leg (London to Montreal, October 2026) when the flights become available?
How does this effect our points?
Won't we pay more or does the system somehow recognise that we're doing an Around the World and adjust the points?
What happens to the taxes we pay; do they get refunded?

Thanks for any advice.

For the cap to apply you need to add subsequent flights to your existing booking. The system keeps applying individual price costs in points, until it reaches 318. then it caps.

 

[Spacetravel]

So I have a classic award seat on QF1 SYD > LHR and was considering changing the flight by a day (but not availability). Received the involuntary schedule change email today by 20 minutes, however it says it will be automatically reticketed and I don’t have to do anything. There is no option to accept/ decline or for alternative.
If I call what is the likelihood they will be able to change my classic award to the following day?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

So I have a classic award seat on QF1 SYD > LHR and was considering changing the flight by a day (but not availability). Received the involuntary schedule change email today by 20 minutes, however it says it will be automatically reticketed and I don’t have to do anything. There is no option to accept/ decline or for alternative.
If I call what is the likelihood they will be able to change my classic award to the following day?

None?

 

[QFFBNE]

Planning a Oneworld Classic Award trip next year but interested in taking a break in the middle and wondering what is the maximum time allowed for a stopover as per the AFF "How to..." ? We've done a similar trip a couple of times before but max stopover in any one city was about 3 weeks.

Looking at doing Europe/Nth Africa first, come home, then doing a USA leg (or vice-versa) Something like BNE/LHR/SIN/AKL, extended stopover ostensibly in AKL, AUK/BNE/AKL on a seperate booking (paid or Awards?), then AKL/JFK/ORD/BNE.
The airports could and probably will change, but instead of an extended 8 + week trip, the idea of a few weeks in Europe, then home to BNE for a couple of weeks/months, then a few weeks in the US is very tempting.

Of course it would all depend on availability of Awards seats (business) but we are very flexible on dates and routing and Platinum status (P1 in a couple of months) will help. The best information I have is that it's doesn't matter so long as the entire trip is under 12 months but any advice or suggestions would be welcome. This could open up a lot of possibilities.

 

[kirks069]

For the cap to apply you need to add subsequent flights to your existing booking. The system keeps applying individual price costs in points, until it reaches 318. then it

At the moment we don't have a booking. We can book the first leg now for Perth to London in December 2025, but can't do the subsequent legs because they are in the last quarter of 2026.
Is it possible to do the full booking now?
Can we make the first leg booking now and then add on to it later and still have the points cost capped?

 

[elanshin]

At the moment we don't have a booking. We can book the first leg now for Perth to London in December 2025, but can't do the subsequent legs because they are in the last quarter of 2026.
Is it possible to do the full booking now?
Can we make the first leg booking now and then add on to it later and still have the points cost capped?

Full Booking - no. But given the competitive nature of PER - LHR I would lock in that leg now. It would cost significantly less than the cap and that will be how much you would be charged today.

As the rest of your journey opens up for awards, you can call them to add to the ticket. Each time would cost 5000 points per pax (this would be on top of the 318k as it's a separate fee) but it is often the only way you can guarantee getting flights.

As long as you have a valid OWA, it should be points capped no matter how much more you change your itinery before you start. It would only uncap if you invalidated the OWA rules in some way.

 

[elanshin]

Planning a Oneworld Classic Award trip next year but interested in taking a break in the middle and wondering what is the maximum time allowed for a stopover as per the AFF "How to..." ? We've done a similar trip a couple of times before but max stopover in any one city was about 3 weeks.

Looking at doing Europe/Nth Africa first, come home, then doing a USA leg (or vice-versa) Something like BNE/LHR/SIN/AKL, extended stopover ostensibly in AKL, AUK/BNE/AKL on a seperate booking (paid or Awards?), then AKL/JFK/ORD/BNE.
The airports could and probably will change, but instead of an extended 8 + week trip, the idea of a few weeks in Europe, then home to BNE for a couple of weeks/months, then a few weeks in the US is very tempting.

Of course it would all depend on availability of Awards seats (business) but we are very flexible on dates and routing and Platinum status (P1 in a couple of months) will help. The best information I have is that it's doesn't matter so long as the entire trip is under 12 months but any advice or suggestions would be welcome. This could open up a lot of possibilities.

Theres already a OWA megathread, hopefully the mods can move this over. Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

As for your question - there's no maximums as long as you have time to complete your journey. If you want to spend 350 days of your journey at one stop, theres nothing on the rules that says it cant be done. This is how many of us do 2 or more separate trips on one single OWA ticket. Australia becomes a "stopover" and we're most certainly still on our "holiday" trip at home.

For example, my current OWA, we started in KUL going to Tokyo for a Holiday. At this moment we're on a 4 months stop in Sydney before going to NZ for a weekend. Then we'll be on a 5 months stop at Melbourne before going to Europe.

 

[QFFBNE]

Theres already a OWA megathread, hopefully the mods can move this over. Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

As for your question - there's no maximums as long as you have time to complete your journey. If you want to spend 350 days of your journey at one stop, theres nothing on the rules that says it cant be done. This is how many of us do 2 or more separate trips on one single OWA ticket. Australia becomes a "stopover" and we're most certainly still on our "holiday" trip at home.

For example, my current OWA, we started in KUL going to Tokyo for a Holiday. At this moment we're on a 4 months stop in Sydney before going to NZ for a weekend. Then we'll be on a 5 months stop at Melbourne before going to Europe.

Great, thanks for that. I regularly read that thread and had done a search but nothing relevant came up. We're at the stage where 4 weeks or so away in one hit is our comfortable limit, so we were planning just UK /Africa trip for 4 weeks but you can get so much more for not that many more points it seemed a shame not to do the US as well. Also want to get in before the points increase in August. Next question is will they Iet me book the AKL/BNE/AKL legs as a seperate Classic Reward Flight? I could just as easily pay cash for these flights but I have points to burn so may as well use them

 

[elanshin]

Next question is will they Iet me book the AKL/BNE/AKL legs as a seperate Classic Reward Flight? I could just as easily pay cash for these flights but I have points to burn so may as well use them

Yep no problems there, just make a completely separate booking.

 

[DC3]

… will they Iet me book the AKL/BNE/AKL legs as a seperate Classic Reward Flight?

Easiest way is to do this on-line

 

[QFFBNE]

Yep no problems there, just make a completely separate booking.

Thanks, this just gets better and better. Now comes the fun part trying to get U Award return bookings to UK/Egypt around March/April/May, then USA in Sept/Oct. Used to be a lot easier when seats were released to a known schedule.

 

[QFFBNE]

Easiest way is to do this on-line

Yep, it will either accept the booking or spit out an error I guess.

 

[elanshin]

Thanks, this just gets better and better. Now comes the fun part trying to get U Award return bookings to UK/Egypt around March/April/May, then USA in Sept/Oct. Used to be a lot easier when seats were released to a known schedule.

Just one note, in the past the Qantas computers think AKL is an Australian city for the purpose of OWA (not sure if it's fixed yet) so it would error thinking you'd gone to your starting country (which you can't so). I'm sure any staff manually looking at your itinerary would have it be ok, but just a weird quirk that's been reported here before.

 

[QFFBNE]

Just one note, in the past the Qantas computers think AKL is an Australian city for the purpose of OWA (not sure if it's fixed yet) so it would error thinking you'd gone to your starting country (which you can't so). I'm sure any staff manually looking at your itinerary would have it be ok, but just a weird quirk that's been reported here before.

Thanks for the heads up. Never flown through Auckland before so that's a new one on me.

 

[kirks069]

Full Booking - no. But given the competitive nature of PER - LHR I would lock in that leg now. It would cost significantly less than the cap and that will be how much you would be charged today.

As the rest of your journey opens up for awards, you can call them to add to the ticket. Each time would cost 5000 points per pax (this would be on top of the 318k as it's a separate fee) but it is often the only way you can guarantee getting flights.

As long as you have a valid OWA, it should be points capped no matter how much more you change your itinery before you start. It would only uncap if you invalidated the OWA rules in some way.

And these have to be Classic rewards, not Classic Plus? Because the points for a Classic Plus PER - LHR is 541k Business class, which is significantly higher than the 318k mentioned.

 

[elanshin]

And these have to be Classic rewards, not Classic Plus? Because the points for a Classic Plus PER - LHR is 541k Business class, which is significantly higher than the 318k mentioned.

All flights must be CR. Plus can't go in any leg of OWA.

 

[kirks069]

Full Booking - no. But given the competitive nature of PER - LHR I would lock in that leg now. It would cost significantly less than the cap and that will be how much you would be charged today.

As the rest of your journey opens up for awards, you can call them to add to the ticket. Each time would cost 5000 points per pax (this would be on top of the 318k as it's a separate fee) but it is often the only way you can guarantee getting flights.

As long as you have a valid OWA, it should be points capped no matter how much more you change your itinery before you start. It would only uncap if you invalidated the OWA rules in some way.

And these need to be Classic rewards, not Classic Plus? Because the points cost for PER - LHR is 541k Classic Plus PER person. Way more than the 381k mentioned.