Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[ozflier]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I managed to contact Red Roo, he is official Qantas rep on AFF regarding my difficulty of booking partner's seats.

Eventually spoke to Qantas staff and enlightened me regarding seat allocation within OneWorld system. Apparently most airlines do keep the majority of award seats for their own members. Qantas does the same. On top of this, the oneworld allocation can be airline specific and therefore searching and finding availability on BA does not mean can be booked with Qantas points.

Looks like might as well give up trying to nail down TAM seats, I can imagine very few Brazilians interested in flying Qantas, so there's little relationship between T&Q.

I like anyone to confirm this with their experience.

I am having the same problem booking SYD-SCL .

J and economy award seats appear in the BA website for LAN direct service LA0800 27 august but not in the QF website on the same flight QF 321 although economy award seats are available !

I know QF is doing its level best to offer QFF points holders the least access to flights on their metal but, even when a OW carrier has availability on their website, the convolutions of the OW award access seats are getting too great for me.

Not that I can say I haven't been warned earlier in this thread that chances of getting to South America with QFF points is next to zero for a couple .

I have even tried to go via North America with little success.(Sure there are options via SYD and HKG or Fiji I accept but it is a long run onwards to Lima) .

Does QF actually make any money out of their frequent flier program ? If so, they want to project ahead and see how many banks,stores and credit card companies are going to keep buying their points to give to customers once the latter start to realise, for international award travel, QFF is a con. Maybe they can get away with it for singles or the divorced or those happy to sit in their economy cabin for 16 hours straight.

It may be that QF has not noticed that their standing can also be adversely affected by what I perceive to be widespread dissatisfaction over QFF award access.

I just need get find a way to get something back from all those years trying to maximise my points so I could get a worthwhile trip with my wife to south america.

At least after this rant, I feel a bit better.

 

[knasty]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Syd-Scl is extremely hard to find in J but a friend recently did find 2xJ on QF321 and took them so it is possible if you are extremely flexible.

 

[nickfromeastryde]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I have just successfully booked a 280K x 2 involving only 11 flights and about 28K miles so certainly didn't maximise the award but on the other hand got exactly what I wanted with no compromise required - SYD-JBG-CPT(S)JBG-DOH(S)-CDG(S)-VCE-LHR(S)-IAD(S)-DFW-SYD. However yesterday, I tried to add flights to BOG which were easy to find from Washington but what I didn't realise was that I would then exceed my number of stops. So didn't go ahead but still proved that flights at least through the USA to Sth America were quite easy to source via in this case AA.

I booked it in three tranches so ended up paying 574K in total and about $3,400 in fees and taxes so on the whole, very happy and wouldn't swap for the world but in terms of value, I do question that its the absolute best possible utilisation of points. Based on the cash price of the above itinery, I worked out that I received about 4.6c per point, certainly more than the theoretical 3c per point I value them at but much less than the 10 to 15 cents per point value I have received in the last 3 years on 2 F upgrades to USA on an originally purchased discount cash J ticket. In saying that, upgrades are not guaranteed whereas 280K RTW awards are locked in

So I guess I am trying to make two points

1. By not trying to maximise the actual flights, I didn't find it terribly onerous to book a 280K J award. Sometimes I wonder if people trying to squeeze 16 flights and 35K in miles are really going to get what they really want out of the trip in the end. It certainly seems to create some stress
2. It has always been said on this site that these awards are almost nirvana but from a points per dollar spend, is that really the case?

Interested in what everyone thinks

 

[vetrade]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Hi Nick. Took more than a passing interest in your post as your route to Paris is identical to what we are doing next year. We are having 8 stop-overs and got around the 5 stop-over rule by paying for some cheap shorter Y flights separately to the J OW award. For example by paying for one flight from JNB - CPT, the stops in both those cities only count as one. Same thing for YVR - YYC.

Obviously I have no idea what your time constraints are or if you necessarily need to visit the cities in the order you intend, but FWIW maybe you could combine your LHR and CDG stop-overs into one to free up space to fit in BOG as well. Maybe you could fly to VCE from DOH with QR then travel overland to Paris (as you obviously already intend to do). Then if you paid for the short hop from CDG (or ORY) to LHR (a return ticket is much cheaper than a one way and you can dump the return leg) your stops in VCE, CDG and LHR would only count as one stop-over. Another thought is that since you are stopping in Washington you could pay for a one way cheap flight to JFK and have stop-overs in both cities which would only count as one - of course you may not have any interest in going to NY in which case that suggestion is irrelevant.

 

[nickfromeastryde]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Hi Vetrade, I saw in earlier posts you were doing some things similar and also should thank you for all the help you did provide me and others on this thread

My current itinerary was exactly what we wanted, ie land in Paris and make our way overland to Venice. We weren't going to stop in London on the way to Washington but did because BA took us through there and I guess because we could. It's a 3 month trip with a very flexible itinerary loosely planned around the flights. The side trip to Bogota has come afterwards, our son is getting married there and somewhat surprisingly made the effort to match it to our already confirmed travel dates. Depending on how soon we want to get to Bogota, will book some Y tickets either from Washington or Miami. If I had known what I know now, may have scrubbed one or both of the Doha and London stops but then again, maybe not. The cost of booking the Sth America flights is pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. It just would have been nice being able to use the RTW ticket seeing as we did have so much "unused capacity" in terms of both flights and miles

 

[ablecookie]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I have just successfully booked a 280K x 2 involving only 11 flights and about 28K miles so certainly didn't maximise the award but on the other hand got exactly what I wanted with no compromise required - SYD-JBG-CPT(S)JBG-DOH(S)-CDG(S)-VCE-LHR(S)-IAD(S)-DFW-SYD. However yesterday, I tried to add flights to BOG which were easy to find from Washington but what I didn't realise was that I would then exceed my number of stops. So didn't go ahead but still proved that flights at least through the USA to Sth America were quite easy to source via in this case AA.

I booked it in three tranches so ended up paying 574K in total and about $3,400 in fees and taxes so on the whole, very happy and wouldn't swap for the world but in terms of value, I do question that its the absolute best possible utilisation of points. Based on the cash price of the above itinery, I worked out that I received about 4.6c per point, certainly more than the theoretical 3c per point I value them at but much less than the 10 to 15 cents per point value I have received in the last 3 years on 2 F upgrades to USA on an originally purchased discount cash J ticket. In saying that, upgrades are not guaranteed whereas 280K RTW awards are locked in

So I guess I am trying to make two points

1. By not trying to maximise the actual flights, I didn't find it terribly onerous to book a 280K J award. Sometimes I wonder if people trying to squeeze 16 flights and 35K in miles are really going to get what they really want out of the trip in the end. It certainly seems to create some stress
2. It has always been said on this site that these awards are almost nirvana but from a points per dollar spend, is that really the case?

Interested in what everyone thinks

Interested to hear you paid $3,400 taxes and fees for your two J bookings. I was pleasantly surprised for my pair of J paying only $1,575 couple weeks ago. 5 stops and 11 legs - PER-HKG-BKK-NRT-YVR-LAX-MIA-RIO-MAD-TLS-land-WAW-DOH-PER. No idea how they work these charges out. May be because not using and QF flight!

 

[hossein_au]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Interested to hear you paid $3,400 taxes and fees for your two J bookings. I was pleasantly surprised for my pair of J paying only $1,575 couple weeks ago. 5 stops and 11 legs - PER-HKG-BKK-NRT-YVR-LAX-MIA-RIO-MAD-TLS-land-WAW-DOH-PER. No idea how they work these charges out. May be because not using and QF flight!

There is no LHR, nor any BA I presume, in your itinerary. No wonder you paid only about half of the fees nickfromeastryde has paid.

 

[ablecookie]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

There is no LHR, nor any BA I presume, in your itinerary. No wonder you paid only about half of the fees nickfromeastryde has paid.

That is correct.

So, the fees and taxes are related to airport, I've heard LHR is expensive and troublesome, so planned to give it a miss. Does BA also extract extra charges?

 

[Formal Hall]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Yes, BA charges huge fuel surcharges, even larger than QF.

 

[Mattg]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Yes, BA charges huge fuel surcharges, even larger than QF.

I'm beginning to regret booking the Europe to South America leg of my oneworld award with BA via LHR now when Iberia via MAD with a very similar schedule was available...

Hmm, I wonder if it's too late to change? Would the refund amount outweigh the change fee/s?

Edit: Never mind, there is no award availability on that day on Iberia any more.

 

[nickfromeastryde]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I really wasn't worried about $3400 for 2 people considering the size of the trip, was about 1K more than Iberia but a better itinerary and hopefully a better J offering

 

[vetrade]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I really wasn't worried about $3400 for 2 people considering the size of the trip, was about 1K more than Iberia but a better itinerary and hopefully a better J offering

We had a couple of flights with IB in J last year (MIA - MAD - BCN) and the planes / staff / food were excellent - their bookings /admin side can leave a lot to be desired but in the air their offering was the best of the 6 airlines we flew with. Fantastic MIA J lounge too.

 

[snabbu]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

My most recent booking took about 20 minutes over the phone costing a touch under 1K in taxes/fees/etc

SYD-MEL-HKG-SIN-KUL-NRT-CDG-LHR-ATL/SAN-NRT-ICN-TPE-HKG-SYD

All in J with NRT-CDG and SAN-NRT on JAL's 787 Dreamliner, can't wait.

 

[SOPOOR]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Firstly, Sopoor, you need to familiarise yourself with the rules for Oneworld awards - the basics are that you can have up to 16 individual flights, maximum of 35,000 miles and a maximum of 5 stop-overs (stop-overs refer to individual cities, not countries). You can transit (less than 24 hrs between flights) an individual city no more than twice and you can only have one stop-over in any individual city. You can go to as many countries / continents as you like subject to those restrictions. All flights must be on Oneworld member airlines - there is a list at oneworld.com. Also read up the QF terms and conditions on their website which has a section on classic awards. You do not actually have to go RTW in one direction, despite what the name implies.

Be prepared to read many more pages than the 5 you already have because you won't be able to get the most out of a OW RTW award booking unless you develop a working knowledge of how they work.

By far the best value is business class ("J" class) because the taxes and fuel surcharges are virtually the same for economy and business but the for double the points you get seats that would cost 3-4 times as much if you were paying cash. J seats are less available though so you need to book your seats early and be flexible with dates and routes to massage your hopes into an achievable itinerary.

You have quite a few hours of catching up to do, Sopoor, but there won't be any alternative to you dong the "hard yards".

thanks vertrade,

will do, and get started reading

 

[vetrade]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

My most recent booking took about 20 minutes over the phone costing a touch under 1K in taxes/fees/etc

SYD-MEL-HKG-SIN-KUL-NRT-CDG-LHR-ATL/SAN-NRT-ICN-TPE-HKG-SYD

All in J with NRT-CDG and SAN-NRT on JAL's 787 Dreamliner, can't wait.

Yes, it's a great feeling when you convert the plan to actual bookings, snabbu. Those 1K in taxes sound very reasonable with 2 JAL flights included.

 

[SOPOOR]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Wow you can do all that for 140/280 points!?!?!??!?

Sounds like a two month holiday

 

[ellen10]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

My most recent booking took about 20 minutes over the phone costing a touch under 1K in taxes/fees/etc

SYD-MEL-HKG-SIN-KUL-NRT-CDG-LHR-ATL/SAN-NRT-ICN-TPE-HKG-SYD

All in J with NRT-CDG and SAN-NRT on JAL's 787 Dreamliner, can't wait.

Well done
How far ahead are the flights. Is that in Y or J?

 

[hossein_au]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

I'm beginning to regret booking the Europe to South America leg of my oneworld award with BA via LHR now when Iberia via MAD with a very similar schedule was available...

Hmm, I wonder if it's too late to change? Would the refund amount outweigh the change fee/s?

Edit: Never mind, there is no award availability on that day on Iberia any more.

Don't regret... making you feel bad is/was the last thing anyone here intends. We are here just sharing information and learning...

If it was me, I would keep an eye on availability and if something pops up I'd call and change the flights. For me, saving $1000 (tax/fees differentials) in expense of 7,000 points (change fees) is well worth it. Of course everyone has different priorities.

Cheers, and I wish you a great trip regardless of what you do.

 

[hossein_au]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

My most recent booking took about 20 minutes over the phone costing a touch under 1K in taxes/fees/etc

SYD-MEL-HKG-SIN-KUL-NRT-CDG-LHR-ATL/SAN-NRT-ICN-TPE-HKG-SYD

All in J with NRT-CDG and SAN-NRT on JAL's 787 Dreamliner, can't wait.

I presume the LHR in your itinerary is just a transit (which won't attract hefty fees) instead of a stop over.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread

Interested to hear you paid $3,400 taxes and fees for your two J bookings. I was pleasantly surprised for my pair of J paying only $1,575 couple weeks ago. 5 stops and 11 legs - PER-HKG-BKK-NRT-YVR-LAX-MIA-RIO-MAD-TLS-land-WAW-DOH-PER. No idea how they work these charges out. May be because not using and QF flight!

Just to confirm is this $1,575 per person or for two.