Qantas Moved SYD-YVR 10 hours Earlier - Link separate booking?

[sjg]

How does this situaton work if you have had to 'link' two separate bookings (one domestic, one international)? Flying to YVR in two weeks with QF but flight brought forward to 10am from 8pm. Had to add a flight from regional NSW to make it to SYD at 7:30am (originally planned on driving to Syd during the day). Then called Qantas to 'link' the two bookings but doesn't seem to have changed anything on the manage bookings page (this might be normal and they are linked in QF system?). More or less wondering that if bookings are 'linked' will baggage still be checked thru and how is the current connection times at Syd for early morning DOM>INT?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

How does this situaton work if you have had to 'link' two separate bookings (one domestic, one international)? Flying to YVR in two weeks with QF but flight brought forward to 10am from 8pm. Had to add a flight from regional NSW to make it to SYD at 7:30am (originally planned on driving to Syd during the day). Then called Qantas to 'link' the two bookings but doesn't seem to have changed anything on the manage bookings page (this might be normal and they are linked in QF system?). More or less wondering that if bookings are 'linked' will baggage still be checked thru and how is the current connection times at Syd for early morning DOM>INT?

From what I understand ‘linking’ of bookings involves inserting a note into one or both bookings advising agents that another booking exists. This is not a proactive flag, but requires the agent to read through the notes and see the entry.

This doesn’t achieve much from a system perspective in terms of anything happening *automatically*, but it does provide the agent with all the relavent information to make their job a touch easier on the day of travel.

At checkin you advise the agent you have onward travel, which they can see through the ‘linked’ field or whatever it is. The other way of doing it on the day of travel is to just present them with the connecting PNR or a printout of your onwards itinerary, and they’ll do it on the spot.

Because linking is manual, and agents may not see it unless they are alerted to it, it doesn’t necessarily protect you in cases of misconnects or if they change one flight. For example if the early connecting flight is delayed, they may not automatically know you have a connecting international service.

Once at checkin however, and the agents sees the linked bookings, it is treated - for baggage purposes - just like any other connection, your bags will be through-checked to the final destination and you won’t have to pick them up. You should also be issued with both boarding passes.

Your connecting flights must meet the minimum connecting times as SYD, which is now 90 minutes. If they don’t, you’ll be required to collect your bags.

 

[jpp42]

Just a note, that in the future it would be technically possible for Qantas to revise your original booking to have an origin at the regional port, rather than SYD (assuming it was a paid fare - let's not get into discussion of classic rewards here). This would be the preferred outcome as the flights would all be on the same record locator (PNR) and you would have no issues with through-checked baggage and would be protected in case of misconnects. They Qantas agent might try to charge a change fee to do this, but I think you would have a valid argument that the change was induced by their schedule change, and you might be able to get the agent to waive the fee (but you'd still need to pay the fare for the additional segment).

 

[sjg]

Just a note, that in the future it would be technically possible for Qantas to revise your original booking to have an origin at the regional port, rather than SYD (assuming it was a paid fare - let's not get into discussion of classic rewards here). This would be the preferred outcome as the flights would all be on the same record locator (PNR) and you would have no issues with through-checked baggage and would be protected in case of misconnects. They Qantas agent might try to charge a change fee to do this, but I think you would have a valid argument that the change was induced by their schedule change, and you might be able to get the agent to waive the fee (but you'd still need to pay the fare for the additional segment).

Thanks - understood. I'd like to think that having arranged well ahead of time for the two bookings to be linked and given that the time difference between landing and taking off in SYD is 2.5 hours all should be fine even if for whatever reason i had to collect bags in Syd after flight from Dubbo. Even more so given the whole reason for the change is them changing the flight schedules by a considerable amount of time.

I was really more concerned about the current time req to transfer to INT from DOM on QF, haven't been overseas yet in the post COVID world.

 

[luxury-lizard]

Personally I would travel to Sydney the day before - if your Dubbo-SYD flight is delayed ..... I realise that you would then need one night hotel in Sydney but it's probably good insurance.