QR withholding award seats from Qantas?

[QF_Flyer]

Flying out of Perth at the moment on points is a nightmare. Once you get to asia it seems you can pretty much get awards flights to anywhere you need to go. Having to keep booking extra stopovers and multiple tickets to get anywhere is a real pain.

I guess this is part of the issue, I was able to find award availability to/from PER with QR when searching yesterday. Which is useless as I need to get to the east coast. Ultimately ended up booking ex-AKL.

Whatever is going on, I was struggling with QF to book much yesterday, ended up booking MEL-AKL-ADL-DOH-HKG with BA (QF/QR/QR/QR), then HKG-SYD-MEL with QF (CX/QF). The QR flights consistently appeared for Velocity, but cost more than using BAEC (both points and $).

 

[Ktan89]

QR out of Australia was limited to 1 U seat per flight. They teased us with 2 seats for a few months and now it's all goonee

I believe EK was a good until taxes went up right?

 

[Daver6]

As a matter of risk policy I have avoided using QR in OWAs even when available - you can get to Europe and back just fine using AY and JAL.

Not sure how this is of any benefit to PER or ADL.

 

[Lynda2475]

without Qatar seats, a decent Qantas RTW classic reward ticket is much more difficult to piece together

Ive managed to book 2 OWA both without any Qatar legs as is my prefernce as I dont fancy an unwarranted internal exam just because Im female and transiting their airport.

Not sure how this is of any benefit to PER or ADL.

OWA can start with a domestic flight to connect to DRW, MEL, SYD, BNE to connect with more choices.

 

[FlyingFiona]

I have QR business (via QFF) end of may from Europe to Aus, lets hope there are no changes! Is there any website or app that will notify you if a schedule change occurs?

I have one in the opposite direction at the same time. It's already changed once but was reticketed immediately so I have hope that the same will happen if there's another change. But let's hope it doesn't need to be put to the test.

 

[Lawrage]

I guess this is part of the issue, I was able to find award availability to/from PER with QR when searching yesterday. Which is useless as I need to get to the east coast. Ultimately ended up booking ex-AKL.

Whatever is going on, I was struggling with QF to book much yesterday, ended up booking MEL-AKL-ADL-DOH-HKG with BA (QF/QR/QR/QR), then HKG-SYD-MEL with QF (CX/QF). The QR flights consistently appeared for Velocity, but cost more than using BAEC (both points and $).

Yeah I have noticed a heap of QR from Perth - Doha. Stupid problem to have though is that from Perth most of the points flights I have found were First (not much business on their A380) whereas from Qatar onwards its mostly Business availability and Velocity refuses to let you do a multi class booking for some reason.

It takes a lot more work that normal but you can string together points flights still, just need to be a bit more flexible that normal.

 

[Lawrage]

Not sure how this is of any benefit to PER or ADL.

Sad to say but Velocity seem to have the most flight availability for us Perth folk at the moment.

Other than that Its Malaysian Airlines and a connection from there or if you are lucky you can get an Emirates lottery flight if you booking 300+ days out.

 

[Daver6]

Ive managed to book 2 OWA both without any Qatar legs as is my prefernce as I dont fancy an unwarranted internal exam just because Im female and transiting their airport.



OWA can start with a domestic flight to connect to DRW, MEL, SYD, BNE to connect with more choices.

Yes, aware that you can do that. However, hardly ideal to waste time heading in the wrong direction, an extra stop and longer travel time. My original post on this subject was along the lines that now without QR easy one stop flights in Europe are not an option, especially with CX in the toilet.

 

[doctorstrangelove]

Sad to say but Velocity seem to have the most flight availability for us Perth folk at the moment.

Other than that Its Malaysian Airlines and a connection from there or if you are lucky you can get an Emirates lottery flight if you booking 300+ days out.

Agreed - also based in Perth and made the decision in October last year to switch my credit card churning from Qantas to Velocity for this reason. I also have a bunch of Avios left over from my time living in the UK and purchased more during a recent 50% bonus sale. It's not as good a value as the CC route but can still give you a reasonable discount on a seat in J.

Availability on Qatar is... good. I'm not going to say amazing because I cannot get exactly what I want but it's damn close. There are blackout dates around Christmas (I posted a thread on this in the forum) when only flexi awards are available (not worth it IMHO). And while I've managed to book a rewards flight on Avios from Perth to Dublin in the second week of June this year earlier last week I had to plump for F PER-DOH as only flexi J was available. I'll live. There were very few days in June where there wasn't availability at all!

But good is a hell of a lot better than almost non-existent. Trying to find a Qantas Classic Rewards flight from Perth to Europe in June caused the multi-flight tool to have a seizure at the ridiculousness of my request! Anytime I've flown back to Europe using Classic Rewards has involved some creative routing, searching over multiple days and usually at least one unsecured connection paid for separately. Not worth the hassle with an alternative available.

BTW there is one other way to get lucky using Qantas Classic Rewards to fly Perth to Europe: if you're willing to leave it to literally a day or two before you want to fly and don't mind coughing up for Emirates hefty carrier charges they usually release last minute empty seats in J or F. High risk for mediocre reward though.

 

[levelnine]

without QR easy one stop flights in Europe are not an option,

Yes, VA is far, far, far superior to QF on flights to Europe at the moment.

VA has good availability on EY, QR & SQ.

QF has nothing. QR gone. QF is non-existent, even for WP/P1 requests for release of award seats it seems. EK is sporadic at best and exorbitant in taxes. CX, MH, JL, BA, etc have all been releasing very little.

I'd say QF still has the upper hand to North America, as they have been releasing more seats on their flights to the US/Canada. And VA only has UA for direct, and they are worse than QF apart from last minute availability.

 

[cathalm8]

Agreed - also based in Perth and made the decision in October last year to switch my credit card churning from Qantas to Velocity for this reason. I also have a bunch of Avios left over from my time living in the UK and purchased more during a recent 50% bonus sale. It's not as good a value as the CC route but can still give you a reasonable discount on a seat in J.

Availability on Qatar is... good. I'm not going to say amazing because I cannot get exactly what I want but it's damn close. There are blackout dates around Christmas (I posted a thread on this in the forum) when only flexi awards are available (not worth it IMHO). And while I've managed to book a rewards flight on Avios from Perth to Dublin in the second week of June this year earlier last week I had to plump for F PER-DOH as only flexi J was available. I'll live. There were very few days in June where there wasn't availability at all!

But good is a hell of a lot better than almost non-existent. Trying to find a Qantas Classic Rewards flight from Perth to Europe in June caused the multi-flight tool to have a seizure at the ridiculousness of my request! Anytime I've flown back to Europe using Classic Rewards has involved some creative routing, searching over multiple days and usually at least one unsecured connection paid for separately. Not worth the hassle with an alternative available.

BTW there is one other way to get lucky using Qantas Classic Rewards to fly Perth to Europe: if you're willing to leave it to literally a day or two before you want to fly and don't mind coughing up for Emirates hefty carrier charges they usually release last minute empty seats in J or F. High risk for mediocre reward though.

Have you noticed the Qantas multi-flight tool has became a lot harder to use over the last year? It now never saves any of my previous searches and defaults back to the 3 flight with default settings every time. I find it very frustrating to use these days.

I also switched from Qantas CC's to velocity/Avios redeemable cards late last year. There is a deal to get 15k Avios for Cad$209 annual subscription to the economist which I think ill get to get me started with some Avios.

Though I am having an issue linking my British airways privilege club to my Qatar privilege club account, I hope this won't be a problem later when trying to transfer or redeem Avios point on qatar....

 

[There'sOnlyOneJimmy]

Have you noticed the Qantas multi-flight tool has became a lot harder to use over the last year? It now never saves any of my previous searches and defaults back to the 3 flight with default settings every time. I find it very frustrating to use these days.

Yes. I can’t help but wonder whether this and other similar enhancements might be part of a deliberate strategy to make the higher value uses of points more difficult to access (& thereby nudging people towards buying toasters, etc…).

PS- my professional advisors insist that I state that I in no way mean to imply that Qantas is or would ever behave in a way that might undermine the value of the points currency….

 

[Spizz]

Ill just say in Qatar's defense (Alliance issues aside they have with Qantas currently) they probably think to themselves also why would we release Business Class availability to Qantas members when Qantas don't make any Business Class overseas awards seats available to our members (or even to Qantas own members).

 

[QF_Flyer]

Yeah I have noticed a heap of QR from Perth - Doha. Stupid problem to have though is that from Perth most of the points flights I have found were First (not much business on their A380) whereas from Qatar onwards its mostly Business availability and Velocity refuses to let you do a multi class booking for some reason.

It takes a lot more work that normal but you can string together points flights still, just need to be a bit more flexible that normal.

Actually now you mention it yes it was F I was seeing, I was tempted to jump on as I've never done QR F, but in the end it wasn't worth it.

Also interesting that it won't do a multi cabin, on that thread, not specific to QF but definitely a QR issue, BAEC won't price anything involving QR+any other carrier, so all the options with QR and a connection (e.g. QR and BA/MH/CX/EI) wouldn't price online and errored out, not sure if the call centre would have been able to do it, I couldn't be bothered to find out. It was a bit frustrating though, and exclusive to QR flights, because other combos (such as BA/JL, LHR-DEL-HND (I think) for example) were pricing fine.

 

[QF_Flyer]

Agreed - also based in Perth and made the decision in October last year to switch my credit card churning from Qantas to Velocity for this reason. I also have a bunch of Avios left over from my time living in the UK and purchased more during a recent 50% bonus sale. It's not as good a value as the CC route but can still give you a reasonable discount on a seat in J.

Availability on Qatar is... good. I'm not going to say amazing because I cannot get exactly what I want but it's damn close. There are blackout dates around Christmas (I posted a thread on this in the forum) when only flexi awards are available (not worth it IMHO). And while I've managed to book a rewards flight on Avios from Perth to Dublin in the second week of June this year earlier last week I had to plump for F PER-DOH as only flexi J was available. I'll live. There were very few days in June where there wasn't availability at all!

But good is a hell of a lot better than almost non-existent. Trying to find a Qantas Classic Rewards flight from Perth to Europe in June caused the multi-flight tool to have a seizure at the ridiculousness of my request! Anytime I've flown back to Europe using Classic Rewards has involved some creative routing, searching over multiple days and usually at least one unsecured connection paid for separately. Not worth the hassle with an alternative available.

BTW there is one other way to get lucky using Qantas Classic Rewards to fly Perth to Europe: if you're willing to leave it to literally a day or two before you want to fly and don't mind coughing up for Emirates hefty carrier charges they usually release last minute empty seats in J or F. High risk for mediocre reward though.

Yes the EK route is good if you need a last minute flight, I was due to fly DXB to AKL a couple of weeks ago when the floods happened, booked DXB-MEL in F instead the day before and cancelled by QR booking to AKL. Was an amazing flight!

Only time I've managed to get QF between Europe and Australia was around a year out in F several years ago, and when the points plane was available in late 2021 as soon as the border opened (I flew MEL-SYD-DRW-LHR and back five days later, just so I didn't have to fly the journey in Y/W - that 17.5h segment is tough even in J). Every other time the heavy lifting has been done by CX, QR or BA.

 

[doctorstrangelove]

Have you noticed the Qantas multi-flight tool has became a lot harder to use over the last year? It now never saves any of my previous searches and defaults back to the 3 flight with default settings every time. I find it very frustrating to use these days.

I also switched from Qantas CC's to velocity/Avios redeemable cards late last year. There is a deal to get 15k Avios for Cad$209 annual subscription to the economist which I think ill get to get me started with some Avios.

Though I am having an issue linking my British airways privilege club to my Qatar privilege club account, I hope this won't be a problem later when trying to transfer or redeem Avios point on qatar....

This, but when you add in the synergy of the tool crashing when there's no availability to be found; the incredible frustration of landing on a month with business classic rewards galore only to pain-stakingly click through them all to find out that they're phantom availability and you've got to wonder how complex a flight search engine must be for Qantas' to function as badly as it does.

That's annoying you're having difficulty linking your accounts. I can't remember it being too tricky when I did it a few months ago. Maybe contact Qatar customer services and see if they can assist?

 

[kangarooflyer88]

Just saw the AFF article comparing the availability of QR awards on QFF versus Virgin and must admit, it is somewhat biased. Sure the QFF classic awards on QR flights is more limited to coach, but there are lower taxes and fees (€200 versus $155 AUD). I'm not gonna do a currency exchange rate but I reckon the Euro is much weaker than the AUD !

-RooFlyer88

 

[ozflier]

Just saw the AFF article comparing the availability of QR awards on QFF versus Virgin and must admit, it is somewhat biased. Sure the QFF classic awards on QR flights is more limited to coach, but there are lower taxes and fees (€200 versus $155 AUD). I'm not gonna do a currency exchange rate but I reckon the Euro is much weaker than the AUD !

-RooFlyer88

It varies and the Russian invasion is not helping its value but the current exchange rate 1 Euro = 1.55 AUD

euro to aud - Google Search

 

[schnitzel travellers bro]

Here's the latest update on the Qatar Airways reward seat situation:

Qantas Flyers Lose Even More Qatar Airways Reward Seat Access

Qatar Airways has all but removed the ability for Qantas Frequent Flyer members to use their points for Qatar reward seats.

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

What I love about AFF is its unbiased approach to the travel industry in Australia. No qantas centric approach here unlike ET phone home who haven't dared mention this horrible outcome with qantas and Qatar Airlines. Not a word. Yet all the fanfare surrounding lounges getting botox and filler and qf releasing thousands of ffp seats .
Great work Matt

 

[rigram]

I agree schnitzel travellers bro - I used to enjoy ET - but recently I've gone way off them...

Too much grandstanding at ET - well done AFF !