Reverse direction using points:is it allowed

[ColinD]

Hi,

When booking award flights on the FF web site, the Origin and Destination columns are not identical. There are a lot more cities in the destination than in the origin. Does this match up with actual rules of usage, or is it just an inconvenient issue of the site?

Example: I could make a booking for Sydney to Abu Dhabi, but not the reverse direction (because AUH is not listed in the origin column).

Is it worth waiting to talk to FF folks, or will they jsut tell me I can't make such a booking?

cheers
Colin

 

[Joshua]

The obvious idea would be try a return booking if but otherwise consider changing the region/country of the QF site to one closer to your departure. With one-way cash bookings that's usually the procedure.

Can't really try it right now as qantas.com is under maintenance :|

What I would do is call them up right now and then moan about the web site being down - by far the best time to get the fees waived

 

[markis10]

Points bookings need to be done from the country site that the point of origin is in, as that is the determining factor in who issues the ticket and conditions of the issuance, while there often will not be points differences (not at least for classics), there is differences in the ticket conditions, quite a few countries require you to show the credit card used to a local rep before the ticket is issued.

For AUH, I suggest calling QF is the only option.

 

[StevePER]

I thought it was just a dodgy website. If you call they'll be quite happy to make your booking and take the assisted award booking fee.

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

The flights between SYD-AUH are codeshare with Etihad, and as such I don't think there are any points flights to be had... but I could be wrong...

 

[kamchatsky]

I can see it, sooner or later, they would simply have major OZ cities for departure for booking awards. Anywhere else you have to call up so that they will charge the new 3500 assist booking fee in the future :shock:

 

[ajw373]

Hi,

When booking award flights on the FF web site, the Origin and Destination columns are not identical. There are a lot more cities in the destination than in the origin. Does this match up with actual rules of usage, or is it just an inconvenient issue of the site?

Example: I could make a booking for Sydney to Abu Dhabi, but not the reverse direction (because AUH is not listed in the origin column).

Is it worth waiting to talk to FF folks, or will they jsut tell me I can't make such a booking?

cheers
Colin

Actually it isn't just the award bookings that are like that, all bookings are. For example if your country is set to Australia you cannot book a flight from London to Sydney for example but you could make a booking Sydney to Paris.

Now change the country to UK and you can now make a booking London to Sydney, but clearly not London to Paris, as the codeshare flights with BA require the PAX to book in conjunction with a Qantas longhaul flight.

So to put simply the origin and destination columns are ALWAYS different and are based on what is available for the country you have selected.

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

In addition, it may be a commercial restriction on the code-share agreement that QF are not allowed to sell tickets ex-AUH... as these would need to be booked on Etihad.

Some of the commercial codeshare arrangements are rather complex.