Cancel 2nd leg of multi city?

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Debbos

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This is reaallly weird. Trying to get a seat New York to Sydney on Qantas classic rewards. Nothing on offer, so I try New York to Hong Kong thinking at least that's part of the way. And I get offered a biz seat on QF12 New York to Sydney PLUS QF117 Sydney to Hong Kong.

What's to stop me booking this and getting off in Sydney? I would have to send my check in bag separately as unaccompanied baggage but that's a lot cheaper than buying a New York - Sydney ticket.

*Edited: thought I would go ahead and book it. Got through to the last page and it said "We are unable to confirm your selected flights. Select ‘Start over’ and choose alternative flights."

It seemed too good to be true.
 
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Classic rewards biz seat all the way both flights! 128k points, a bargain. The usual hefty $ charge as well but still well worth it. It all went through fine until the last page. Sob.
 
If it were bizzo rewards then it’s definitely an error for 128k points
As you know, JFK-SYD is 128k points and SYD-HKG is 60K
 
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If it were bizzo rewards then it’s definitely an error for 128k points

Because JFK-SYD is 128k points and SYD-HKG is 60K
Yeah, I sort of knew that because I've scored classic rewards biz on QF flights via LAX a few times both ways. There's definitely some sort of glitch but the offer is there on the website. You just don't know it's not for real till you try to get it.
 
This is reaallly weird. Trying to get a seat New York to Sydney on Qantas classic rewards. Nothing on offer, so I try New York to Hong Kong thinking at least that's part of the way. And I get offered a biz seat on QF12 New York to Sydney PLUS QF117 Sydney to Hong Kong.

What's to stop me booking this and getting off in Sydney? I would have to send my check in bag separately as unaccompanied baggage but that's a lot cheaper than buying a New York - Sydney ticket.

*Edited: thought I would go ahead and book it. Got through to the last page and it said "We are unable to confirm your selected flights. Select ‘Start over’ and choose alternative flights."

It seemed too good to be true.

This has been mentioned previously, i thought on AFF, but not sure which thread. It’s a known glitch, and IIRC you can secure the USA-SYD leg by calling qantas reservations.
 
This has been mentioned previously, i thought on AFF, but not sure which thread. It’s a known glitch, and IIRC you can secure the USA-SYD leg by calling qantas reservations.
Thanks that's interesting. I actually did ring qantas yesterday but got nowhere. The operator I got wasn't the smartest tool in the shed. Had trouble understanding the point and just fobbed me off. I'll give it another go and hope for a better one. Meanwhile if you recall where you saw this before, I'd sure appreciate knowing. I did search here and Google before posting but will give that another try too.
 
Thanks that's interesting. I actually did ring qantas yesterday but got nowhere. The operator I got wasn't the smartest tool in the shed. Had trouble understanding the point and just fobbed me off. I'll give it another go and hope for a better one. Meanwhile if you recall where you saw this before, I'd sure appreciate knowing. I did search here and Google before posting but will give that another try too.

IIRC the other thread they rang qantas and asked for USA-SYD, the agent replicated the flight to HKG via SYD, and went away to book just the USA-SYD sector.

Asking the agent to just book USA-SYD will turn up a nil result and they probably won’t understand the glitch unless they see it for themselves.
 
Classic rewards biz seat all the way both flights! 128k points, a bargain. The usual hefty $ charge as well but still well worth it. It all went through fine until the last page. Sob.

What was the hefty $ charges for taxes & carrier fees?

Just booked LAX AA HKG QF BNE on a Classic award for 128K points & AUD76.00 in taxes.
 
What was the hefty $ charges for taxes & carrier fees?

Just booked LAX AA HKG QF BNE on a Classic award for 128K points & AUD76.00 in taxes.
Half your luck. The slug on my phantom seat was a bit over 400USD. Still a fleabite compared to actually <ouch!> *paying* for a ticket. I reckon I've tried every conceivable OW route NYC to SYD now for my dates, no luck. Looking at early Jan, seems Aussies are coming home to roost from all over the world then. You've given me another idea though... I'll try BNE and MEL.
 
Half your luck. The slug on my phantom seat was a bit over 400USD. Still a fleabite compared to actually <ouch!> *paying* for a ticket. I reckon I've tried every conceivable OW route NYC to SYD now for my dates, no luck. Looking at early Jan, seems Aussies are coming home to roost from all over the world then. You've given me another idea though... I'll try BNE and MEL.

Just out of interest, you called QF and they were unable to book the seat?
 
Just out of interest, you called QF and they were unable to book the seat?
I called them to check what would happen if I got off in Sydney on the JFK-SYD-HKG flights which show up as a classic reward. At that stage I didn't realise it actually couldn't be booked, so I didn't raise that. But I've done a lot more searching here since and other folks have mostly got nowhere by ringing when the website booking attempt fell over. Except for 1 WP and I'm a lowly QFPS.

Spent today doing more searching and finally found an ok multi-city routing which also came back just before the payment page with 'we are unable to confirm' message for no obvious reason. So I'll try giving Qantas a call when my eyes get uncrossed and post the result since you're interested.
 
I called them to check what would happen if I got off in Sydney on the JFK-SYD-HKG flights which show up as a classic reward. At that stage I didn't realise it actually couldn't be booked, so I didn't raise that. But I've done a lot more searching here since and other folks have mostly got nowhere by ringing when the website booking attempt fell over. Except for 1 WP and I'm a lowly QFPS.

Spent today doing more searching and finally found an ok multi-city routing which also came back just before the payment page with 'we are unable to confirm' message for no obvious reason. So I'll try giving Qantas a call when my eyes get uncrossed and post the result since you're interested.

My understanding is that if the system still shows USA-SYD-HKG, the call centre can book the USA-SYD sector for you. You need to ask them to replicate the USA-SYD-HKG, then they’ll go away and book the just the SYD sector. But i suspect the seats may have gone by now.
 
Apologies for such a long post and not knowing all the right terminology. I’m putting it all in case of it’s of use to others. In summary, it’s a tale of “phantom” classic rewards seats.

Classic Rewards Flights
In addition to the flights mentioned in my first post, I found JFK–HKG–SYD departing a few days earlier: Classic rewards showing 1st seats on 2 CX flights JFK-HKG same day, 1 bus seat on connecting QF HKG–SYD the following day. When I tried to book as multi-city, it came back with the “we are unable to confirm etc” message just before the payments page.

Here are my conversations with Qantas this morning:
1ST CALL
  • The JFK–SYD–HKG flights mentioned in first post: still showing but operator flatly said I couldn’t just book the QF flight JFK-SYD leg as it wasn’t available
  • I ask why it’s shown in the multi-city; she says attempt to book that would fail
  • The JFK–HKG-SYD option: operator said the problem was that there were no classic reward biz seats available on the HKG-SYD leg only economy. It was a ‘mistake’ that it was shown in online booking.
So I went back and tried booking the HKG-SYD again as one way classic rewards. It came up with the same bus seat and I got through to the payments page. Rang Qantas again:

2ND CALL
  • Operator said the problem was the JFK-HKG leg; the 2 CX flights I saw were not on her screen
So I tried booking JFK-HKG leg again as one way classic rewards. It came up with the same 1st seats on 2 CX flights. I picked one and I got through to the payments page again. Same with the other. Rang Qantas to see why I could apparently book as separate classic rewards flights but not as a multi-city (so my bag would get checked through):

3RD CALL
  • This operator was the best of the 3; he said I would find the one way bookings would fail after the payment page
  • he had a customer with a similar problem yesterday. He had logged in to her account, repeated her steps and got the same result i.e. classic rewards seats showing but booking failed after completing the payments page
  • he had gone through every step he could trying to resolve it without success and reported it to the IT section
  • He thought the problem was that seats available only as points + pay were wrongly shown as classic rewards
NEXT
  • I still have the payments page open for JFK-HKG so I fill in card details and press the button to continue. It comes back with “Your session has expired START AGAIN”. (The usual about to expire warning hadn’t previously appeared.)
  • Start again from the book flights page with classic rewards and now both CX JFK-HKG flights have vanished
  • I try booking with ‘Money points or both’; HKG-SYD shows cheapest price for all biz seats for a week is $19,834! I don’t bother checking the points
  • Then an email arrives from Qantas. “Qantas Secure Flight Information Request”. It asks me to click on ‘Retrieve Your Booking’ and fill in APIS details
  • The link takes me to a booking for the CX flight I’d filled in payment details for. Hovering the cursor over the CHANGE and CANCEL buttons under Flights brought up the message “Your booking is processing”
  • Manage Your Bookings shows both the JFK-HKG CX 1st seats AND the HKG-SYD QF biz seat, compete with booking refs!
  • No points deducted and no charge to my credit card for the one flight where I’d filled in payment page

This all seems similar to what was described here:
QF F Reward on website, but can’t book
Monumental Stuff up by Qantas
 
The Frequent Flyer Concierge team takes the hard work out of finding reward seat availability. Using their expert knowledge and specialised tools, they'll help you book a great trip that maximises the value for your points.

AFF Supporters can remove this and all advertisements

It sounds like the qantas site is a bit of a mess. And the cathay flights still affected by the recent changes to the Asia Miles program. Thanks for reporting back!

There is another method to check actual availability of seats... the Japan Airlines booking tool. You need to sign up and using the award finder is not easy, but it accurately reports seats (no ‘phantom availability’ that can affect the BA and QF tools).

Although the JAL tool is probably equally affected by the Asia Miles problems. But certainly for Qantas it might give an accurate picture of what’s out there.
 
UPDATE- SUCCESS!

So yesterday morning, Manage Your Bookings was showing 2 CX flights JFK-HKG, only 1 of which had gone through payments page and 1 QF flight HKG-SYD which I hadn’t paid for either.

Apparently there was a ‘hold’ on the unpaid seats, and they’d disappeared from the bookings page.

Yesterday afternoon, only the paid CX flight was still in Manage Your Bookings, although no eticket had issued.

But the other flights, CX and QF, were back showing as classic reward seats. So I booked and paid for both online.

Eticket for the QF flight came through quickly. Eticket for the 1st CX flight came this morning. (The 2nd one is still sitting in MYB presumably awaiting confirmation from Cathay).

The most bizarre part of this whole experience is that the online listing of reward seats was correct, but they weren’t appearing on the Qantas operators screens – i.e. before I’d gone through booking online so there was no hold involved.
 
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