Schedule change of Qantas flight results in partner airline seat cancelled via Qantas classic reward

[Pinkysunkiss]

Sorry for a very long post.
My family and I booked SYD-TPE (SYD-BNE, BNE-TPE, TPE-MEL, MEL-SYD) classic award tickets in June. I posted previously about my experience that China airline cancelled my BNE-TPE flight and eventually I was booked to the reward seat the day before.
Now, my husband and my son’s classic reward tickets (premium economy) had problems.
Qantas changed the schedule of MEL-SYD and resulted in cancellation of the BNE-TPE and TPE-MEL with China airline.
My husband first noticed these two legs disappeared on his Qantas app. Then when we checked with China airline about our seat selection, they advised us they were not able to see the seats. It disappeared from the booking.
We then contacted Qantas multiple multiple times but always connected to offshore centre who told us because of China airline’s schedule change it resulted in ticket cancellation, which is a total lie as China airline hasn’t changed their schedule. They tried to book my husband and my son back to the award seats and they just told us”they are working with China airline to reinstate the ticket but can not give us a time frame”The offshore centre stated they have escalated to their supervisor but minimal information was given.


I rang China airline and tried to find out the problem, and interestingly they were willing to tell me more information on the booking history after I told them Qantas accused of them change schedule and hence caused cancellation of the tickets. China airline customer rep then interestingly told me everything she could see on the booking history— Qantas had made a schedule change for MEL-SYD and for some reasons did not ticket the China airline part and therefore the seats were auto-cancelled back in Aug. There were no Z class seats left and we needed two. Obviously Qantas is unaware of the cancellation of tickets until we found out on the app in Sep and we didn’t receive any form of communication from Qantas.

I then rang Qantas taipei office and the phone went straight through to the customer rep and she confirmed what China airline stated was true. Unfortunately she also could not help us as she said it needs head office authority. She even suggested I go through complaint pathway as she could not see this will be resolved, given we need two Z class seats in both BNE-TPE, TPE-MEL and I am now very worried Qantas will cancel the whole trip and return us the points as they can’t find seats, despite we did not do anything wrong.

My ticket in a separate booking was not affected by the schedule change and ticketed correctly.

Has anyone been through this? Should I go through social media, email the Qantas executive or Australian consumer protection??

 

[flapper]

Try emailing Stephanie Tully, give your booking reference, set out the problem, the phone calls you have made and how you would like it resolved. You can also try messenger, some people have had success with that but not me. As the flight is not a Qantas flight they may not be able to help but it is worth a try.

 

[exLXCXFF]

I think Australian Consumer Protection will be difficult as it de facto does not exist in this country. Depending where you reside, you might take QF to NCAT or VICAT etc but this involves a lot of effort - there is a separate thread on this here.

 

[Nitro6333]

This whole ticket fiasco is a complete joke! Overseas call centres just put you on the hamster wheel.
Don’t bother emailing Tully she’s busy fixing Jetstar. After 100 or so emails I gave up. Try email [email protected] I got a response and a promise of action but no substance yet!

 

[kyle]

As a non QF flyer, but just in case one day I do decide to fly with them again, can someone enlighten me as to how these things can happen as there are now multiple threads on this issue.

1. Does this only happen on award tickets which involve partner airlines? Will paid tickets have this issue?
2. Why isn't ticketing instant in this day and age once points have been deducted and/or payment made or when a schedule change is made since everything should be computerised? Why does it require manual intervention and therefore cause the ticketing delays?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

As a non QF flyer, but just in case one day I do decide to fly with them again, can someone enlighten me as to how these things can happen as there are now multiple threads on this issue.

1. Does this only happen on award tickets which involve partner airlines? Will paid tickets have this issue?
2. Why isn't ticketing instant in this day and age once points have been deducted and/or payment made or when a schedule change is made since everything should be computerised? Why does it require manual intervention and therefore cause the ticketing delays?

It doesn’t happen with paid tickets because they don’t have the same availability issues as award seats.

Once an award seat is gone these days it’s hard to get it back. With a paid seat, well, there are plenty of them.

Ticketing should be instant. Just about every other airline I know sends through com0ex award itineraries, ticketed, in a matter of seconds, or minutes.

QF have some sort of manual ticketing desk that has to check there are no mistakes before issuing the ticket. To the expense of the customer.

As for automated changes, the system can sometimes rebook on unsuitable flights… for example a flight leaving before the connecting flight arrives.

All of these things should take two seconds to fix, but QF is unwilling to give authority to the overseas call centres. They would rather make sure their agent hasn’t made a mistake than the passenger to be able to book and fly with confidence.

 

[scottie222]

I’m in the same boat - Qatar airways flight via QFF redemption and a minor change by Qatar caused them to cancel our booking due to Qantas not confirming the updated ticket. So bad! Why invest in Qantas when they continue to be poor.

 

[Pinkysunkiss]

Update: thank you for your replies.
I have called again this morning since 8, the first time I was connected to Fiji call centre, the agent basically told me they have requested help from China airline but there is nothing they can do as they don’t operate China airline and they can’t control the seats and I can only wait. I requested her to escalate but she just didn’t listen and kept arguing with me. I hanged up immediately.
I immediately called again and for the grace of the God I got put through to Hobart and this guy was able to send through to ticketing and reassured me it will be no problems as we will have the seats despite there is currently no reward seats available. Hopefully the ticket will be available after 48 hours as he stated and hopefully this is the end of the drama.

Qantas airline taipei office told me, their experience was to contact 131313 between 8-12am on weekdays and it’s more likely to be connected to hobart. I hope this helps.

 

[Nitro6333]

I immediately called again and for the grace of the God I got put through to Hobart and this guy was able to send through to ticketing

Hi just out of intrest are you platnum FF? How do you know it was HBT did you ask?

 

[Pinkysunkiss]

Both my husband and I are bronze. When I called this morning the waiting time for both were around 15 mins. Yes I did ask where they were based when I talked to both of them.
Hobart agent asked me what I have been told previously and I told him the whole story. He said the information I received was not correct. But interestingly he said the previous agent had escalated and sent the request to ticketing, which I highly doubted an offshore centre could do that. I think he did it when I called him.

 

[Nitro6333]

Both my husband and I are bronze. When I called this morning the waiting time for both were around 15 mins. Yes I did ask where they were based when I talked to both of them.
Hobart agent asked me what I have been told previously and I told him the whole story. He said the information I received was not correct. But interestingly he said the previous agent had escalated and sent the request to ticketing, which I highly doubted an offshore centre could do that. I think he did it when I called him.

I think you should have bought a poweball ticket instead you could have went first class and had spare change

 

[Pinkysunkiss]

Another update:

Things are not changed. Of course I didn’t receive the ticket within 48 hours.
Called 3* times this morning.
Connected to Manila first, a lady gave me an ambiguous answer about ticketing department is very busy and she will call me back at some stage.
Then connected to another lady at Manila, who also tried to reach to ticketing but unable to resolve on the spot, saying will call back. Ask my contact number and say will call back in an hour but of course not.

Called the third time, connected to Fiji, worse experience out of all. Didn’t seem to understand the issue, keep repeating “you have the segment added back” then I request I need to see it on the ticket, then back to “ we have to wait for China airline to respond”.

Look like I am back to square one, should have asked the hobart agent to action last week, or maybe he is also an incompetent one???

Calling the fourth time to Qantas now

 

[exLXCXFF]

Another update:

Things are not changed. Of course I didn’t receive the ticket within 48 hours.
Called 3* times this morning.
Connected to Manila first, a lady gave me an ambiguous answer about ticketing department is very busy and she will call me back at some stage.
Then connected to another lady at Manila, who also tried to reach to ticketing but unable to resolve on the spot, saying will call back. Ask my contact number and say will call back in an hour but of course not.

Called the third time, connected to Fiji, worse experience out of all. Didn’t seem to understand the issue, keep repeating “you have the segment added back” then I request I need to see it on the ticket, then back to “ we have to wait for China airline to respond”.

Look like I am back to square one, should have asked the hobart agent to action last week, or maybe he is also an incompetent one???

Calling the fourth time to Qantas now

Best guess, despite what you have been told, China Airlines probably never opened up a reward seat for you, hence there is nothing to ticket.

 

[Pinkysunkiss]

I think you are right. The ticketing department is still trying their luck that “one day four premium economy seat passengers will cancel all of their seats” and wait until even the paid seats are gone just before the travel date to tell me sorry there is nothing we can do and then return me the points.
I feel this is the strategies they are using to avoid dealing with the issues.

And there is nowhere to escalate. My fourth call is with Manila again. A guy who contacted ticketing and was told there will be seats for my husband and son and the job is on the queue. “they experience a lot of backlog and they are dealing with passengers who are flying out in October. And basically asked me to wait” I told the agent that I needed this to solve on the spot and happy to wait when you talk to them.

See if this works. If not, I might try calling every morning when I drive to work to see my luck to reach Hobart and also escalate to Qantas executive email.

My and my daughter’s tickets (departing on another date) were confirmed and was not subject to the error when there was involuntary schedule change. The worst is we have booked another flight with China airline for four of us to depart 3 hours after they land in Taiwan to Japan, for long waited holidays.

I’m looking into travel insurance as well.

 

[LeaFar]

Sorry for a very long post.
My family and I booked SYD-TPE (SYD-BNE, BNE-TPE, TPE-MEL, MEL-SYD) classic award tickets in June. I posted previously about my experience that China airline cancelled my BNE-TPE flight and eventually I was booked to the reward seat the day before.
Now, my husband and my son’s classic reward tickets (premium economy) had problems.
Qantas changed the schedule of MEL-SYD and resulted in cancellation of the BNE-TPE and TPE-MEL with China airline.
My husband first noticed these two legs disappeared on his Qantas app. Then when we checked with China airline about our seat selection, they advised us they were not able to see the seats. It disappeared from the booking.
We then contacted Qantas multiple multiple times but always connected to offshore centre who told us because of China airline’s schedule change it resulted in ticket cancellation, which is a total lie as China airline hasn’t changed their schedule. They tried to book my husband and my son back to the award seats and they just told us”they are working with China airline to reinstate the ticket but can not give us a time frame”The offshore centre stated they have escalated to their supervisor but minimal information was given.


I rang China airline and tried to find out the problem, and interestingly they were willing to tell me more information on the booking history after I told them Qantas accused of them change schedule and hence caused cancellation of the tickets. China airline customer rep then interestingly told me everything she could see on the booking history— Qantas had made a schedule change for MEL-SYD and for some reasons did not ticket the China airline part and therefore the seats were auto-cancelled back in Aug. There were no Z class seats left and we needed two. Obviously Qantas is unaware of the cancellation of tickets until we found out on the app in Sep and we didn’t receive any form of communication from Qantas.

I then rang Qantas taipei office and the phone went straight through to the customer rep and she confirmed what China airline stated was true. Unfortunately she also could not help us as she said it needs head office authority. She even suggested I go through complaint pathway as she could not see this will be resolved, given we need two Z class seats in both BNE-TPE, TPE-MEL and I am now very worried Qantas will cancel the whole trip and return us the points as they can’t find seats, despite we did not do anything wrong.

My ticket in a separate booking was not affected by the schedule change and ticketed correctly.

Has anyone been through this? Should I go through social media, email the Qantas executive or Australian consumer protection??

Hello
This happened to us.Qatar cancelled flights due to Qantas not issuing ticket in time.
It has taken me 2 weeks and over 40 hours on calls to Call centres, for Qantas to book new flights not on Qatar as they would not reinstate original flights. We are now flying home Rome Dallas AA Dallas Sydney Qantas.
Not ideal, but at least we will get home hopefully. It is a Qantas error and they are required to fix it
Try these emails [email protected] or as above email [email protected]

 

[Pinkysunkiss]

Hello
This happened to us.Qatar cancelled flights due to Qantas not issuing ticket in time.
It has taken me 2 weeks and over 40 hours on calls to Call centres, for Qantas to book new flights not on Qatar as they would not reinstate original flights. We are now flying home Rome Dallas AA Dallas Sydney Qantas.
Not ideal, but at least we will get home hopefully. It is a Qantas error and they are required to fix it
Try these emails [email protected] or as above email [email protected]

Can I please ask is it because there is not even paid seats left in the class you require? It looks like Qantas is unable to ask Qatar to open a reward seat. I am not sure if it’s the case with China airline.

Unfortunately I think there are no reward seats left for all of the China airline flights to Taipei on the days that suit us.

For my own booking on another day I experienced cancellation of China airline flight (BNE-TPE) and was able to waitlist to the day before and after calling China airline like crazy, they took a pity on me and my waitlisted seat was cleared after a week (it was business class) and got the ticket issued by Qantas. I am pretty sure there was no reward seats left at the time but somehow go it from China airline. But it’s different issue as it was China airline cancelling the flight. Maybe I should have bought lottery last time round, and can just throw money and buy paid tickets for my husband and son…