QF/EK: Add infant to booking - rules?

[ChrisW.]

Hi all,

Qantas has the policy about infants on their website, e.g. I can add an infant to an existing booking (https://www.qantas.com/agencyconnec...ing/infant-fare-and-ticketing-guidelines.html)

However, how does it work if the QF flights are operated by EK? Is that the same rules as booked through QF or does EK have different rules? Did not find anything about the infant booking rules on the EK website.

We want to book flights for later in the year as they are reasonably priced but do not know the birth day of our baby/infant yet.

 

[Quickstatus]

There was another thread (see here) about an infant issue on a partner airline booking. CX marketing airline and QR operating airline.

In that case it was adding infant after the booking which might be different to your situation.

 

[ChrisW.]

There was another thread (see here) about an infant issue on a partner airline booking. CX marketing airline and QR operating airline.

In that case it was adding infant after the booking which might be different to your situation.

We would do the same, book us adults niw and add the infant later, once born.

Seems there is some issues with CX and QR but hope things work better with QF and EK.
Hope anyone here has some experience ?

 

[liamg]

We had this a few years ago on a points ticket booked by QF, flying JL. Wasn’t an issue at all. QF agent did it straight away on the phone. I would only trust the premium centres for this, though.

 

[kevrosmith]

We would do the same, book us adults niw and add the infant later, once born.

Seems there is some issues with CX and QR but hope things work better with QF and EK.
Hope anyone here has some experience ?

Bumping this thread @ChrisW. to see how your experience with QF and EK went. I find myself in this situation now... booking for May 2025, baby not due until October 2024.

I'm looking to book a Classic Reward booking on EK using QF points, so want to understand if it was easy enough to add the infant once born.

This Qantas Support page says to add the infant to a booking only once born. Help and Support | Qantas

 

[ChrisMars]

I did that for a QF BA CR. Add infant once born. It took me three calls.
First call agent say infant need to be on its own booking ref (maybe with one parent). I declined. Second call, same story, I said ok. I dont thimk they took taxes, I dont think I got a eticket. In both cases, the agents checked with a support team, it s a bit worrying. They claimed du to the ba leg, they cant add the infant on the same booking.

Third call the agent correctly added the infant to the booking, took a small amount of taxes. This unlocked bassinet seat selection via the app. Got an eticket, three passengers with three ticket number.

 

[ChrisW.]

Overall, we did travel and on the day there was no issue.
However, to get there was a bit bumpy.

I called QF when the little one was born to add her to our booking. They had to do a new booking for the infant to attach to our original booking and I got an email from QF with the details (booking reference and eticket).This was required for the invoice to be generated to pay the 10% of the original fare price.

I couldn't see the infant in the QF booking but could see the infant in the EK booking. Also was able to select the bassinet seats on EK website.

Closer to the time I kept getting emails from EK that there is no eticket for the infant. This resulted in a bit of back and forth with QF saying it is all fine and EK saying no eticket.

Luckily we had the grandparents here from overseas and they flew back to Europe on EK one week before us. So when we dropped them at the airport in BNE, I just asked the staff at check-in.

Long story short, with the email details from QF they could find the infant ticket and gave me a printed paper to show the week after for our flight at check-in as they couldn't do it a week out.
On our actual flight day they just linked the infant to our booking at check-in, it took about 5 min or so. From there on it wasn't an issue for the return flight as it was sorted.

 

[kevrosmith]

Doesn't give you the most comfortable feeling though to hear that it's not so smooth. "Sorry Freddie, you're going to have to stay here at the airport by yourself, as the Airline isn't going to let you come with Mummy and Daddy due to their systems not working properly..."

Guess I'll just have to follow the process for now and hope for the best once the baby arrives.

 

[ChrisW.]

Doesn't give you the most comfortable feeling though to hear that it's not so smooth. "Sorry Freddie, you're going to have to stay here at the airport by yourself, as the Airline isn't going to let you come with Mummy and Daddy due to their systems not working properly..."

Guess I'll just have to follow the process for now and hope for the best once the baby arrarrives

Yes, I had the same thoughts after reading of all the other things that went wrong with QF bookings here. But the EK airport staff in BNE was great and they said it was always going to be fine as they can fix it on the day as we had an eticket for all 3 of us.
It seem just the backend systems of QF/EK does not synchronise proper...