An update on our RTW.
It seems harder to book than previously
The Oneworld booking tool is a travesty. It has error messages that disappear if you keep going, but then comes up with more rule violations that are no explained.
The booking site tells us to use Jetstar asia and has the flight number. As the community have pointed out, jetstar and jetstar asia are not allowed.
Using google flights or the airlines website to find flights has limitations. I found several flights that we were not allowed to book as the DONE4 had no D class.
And on the subject of seat availability, we found the following
Internal USA flight in May 2024. No D class, lots of business class, but we had to take the economy ticket with "the hope of standby upgrade"
Trans-Atlantic. No D class availability and you are not allowed to go economy in this sector.
Qantas can be helpful. But it took 3 phone calls.
Call 1. This is difficult and I will call you back........ no reply
Call 2. Next day. This is impossible, there are no flights for 2 weeks SYD-YVR in April ???????
There was no explanation or alternative, just NO.
Call 3 Desperation call as seen below
I also skyped AA helpdesk 1 800 247 3427 as my preferred itinerary was HND-HND. The helpline was really helpful, very enthusiastic but ended up unable to come up with a way I could have the ex japan trip and fly with Mrs KT.
We needed 2 different start dates and then we will meet up on flight 3 for the rest of the trip. We finally thought we had the booking engine sorted, both itineraries matched our shared sector, then I booked mine and Mrs KT tried. She was shown the error message page. After a talk with QF it seems I had booked the only D ticket on 2 flights that couldnt be flown in Y.
With desperation we rang Qantas again. We had an amazing helpdesk person who understood why we did this, what went wrong and how to search for alternatives to fix. This was a long call, lots of time on hold to check, but really helpful and we have a solution. We had to use different cities from BGI-ARN, but we have confirmed bookings.
My take home advice.
Book early. Just because a flight has seats, doesn't mean it has OWE seats.
The search engine is a good start, but it has errors.
I thought this would be easier, and was caught out on a number of flights, especially trying to match 2 people for flight 3-15. I want my old travel agent back, but they hav long gone.
I was lucky the final Qantas call solved this or I would have been in intense trouble
Thanks to everyone in the forums for help and advice