Next to no award availability showing up on Qantas.

[HarryTheFlyer]

I’m trying to hunt down 2 x award redemptions in either F or J from basically any major port in Europe to anywhere in Australia (we’d love to end up in BNE, but beggars can’t be choosers) around the beginning of October 2020.
I’m able to see award availability from MAD and CDG to DXB, but anything beyond DXB I’m presented with a 3006 error code on the qantas website. The phone staff have been somewhat helpful trying to find flights, but they also can’t see anything beyond DXB.

Segment by segment searches out of DXB or DOH yield no results. Could this be a married segment thing where they haven’t released award availability yet?

We had an easy time booking F tickets on EK, BNE-MEL-DXB(via SIN)-LIS without any issues.
Has anyone else had a familiar experience trying to get back from Europe?

Cheers,
D.

 

[p--and--t]

From a BA search, looks like there may be 3 x J DBX-HKG-MEL Oct18th (CX0746-CX0163)

 

[jase05]

Try doing a multi sector booking. I’ve seen pretty good availability ex AMS.
For example on Oct 1 there is AMS-DXB-HKG in F and then plenty of J availability from HKG-BNE in Oct.
Example 1
AMS-DXB-HKG on EK F, HKG-BNE ON QF J for 210k each

Example 2
AMS-DOH QR J
DOH-BKK QR J
BKK-HKG CX J
HKG-BNE QF J
202,500

Looks to be other options with BA and RJ if you are willing to play around a bit with your dates

 

[HarryTheFlyer]

Try doing a multi sector booking. I’ve seen pretty good availability ex AMS.
For example on Oct 1 there is AMS-DXB-HKG in F and then plenty of J availability from HKG-BNE in Oct.
Example 1
AMS-DXB-HKG on EK F, HKG-BNE ON QF J for 210k each

Example 2
AMS-DOH QR J
DOH-BKK QR J
BKK-HKG CX J
HKG-BNE QF J
202,500

Looks to be other options with BA and RJ if you are willing to play around a bit with your dates

Hi Jase,

Thanks so much!
Do you think your gold status has come into play here at all? When I do those searches for EK/QF, particularly the DXB-HKG and HKG BNE, I either get put onto CX via BKK for the DXB-HKG leg, and then HKG-SYD-BNE in Y. I'm not able to see any J availability HKG-BNE in Oct at all. :-(

 

[jase05]

Hi Jase,

Thanks so much!
Do you think your gold status has come into play here at all? When I do those searches for EK/QF, particularly the DXB-HKG and HKG BNE, I either get put onto CX via BKK for the DXB-HKG leg, and then HKG-SYD-BNE in Y. I'm not able to see any J availability HKG-BNE in Oct at all. :-(

I don’t know the intricacies but I believe Gold allows to to see better availability. This is what HKG-BNE looks like in October for me

 

[jaseb]

I recently went through a similar process to get home from Munich to Melbourne in a J award flight.
We wanted QR (pref QSuites) or EK (pref A380) flights if possible.

These were the multi city routes we were most keen on - maybe try looking into some of these back to DOH or DXB then tack on another sector to BNE... or settle for SYD, MEL, HKG, KUL, SIN etc if no availability all the way "home"

QR QSuite routes (to Doha)
FRA - DOH
TXL - DOH
CDG - DOH
MXP - DOH
AMS - DOH

QR non QSuite (to Doha)
MUN - DOH
ZRH - DOH
DUS - DOH
GVA - DOH
BRU - DOH
VCE - DOH
NCE - DOH

EK A380 routes to DXB
MUN - DXB
FRA - DXB
ZRH - DXB
VIE - DXB
DUS - DXB
PRG - DXB
HAM - DXB
CDG - DXB
MXP - DXB
AMS - DXB
NCE - DXB
FCO - DXB

 

[HarryTheFlyer]

Hi All,

Thanks so much for all the helpful replies and hints.
Let me tell you a tale of how this all unfolded this morning.

I managed to find AMS-DXB-HKG-BNE as per Jase's suggestion after doing a few date juggles. This was the itinerary:
5 Oct 2020 2150hrs - 0630hrs EK150 AMS-DXB in J (A380)
6 Oct 2020 1825hrs - 0620hrs EK386 DXB-HKG in J (777)
**Overnight Stopover**
8 Oct 2020 2015hrs - 0700hrs QF98 HKG-BNE in J (787)

We weren't initially planning the stop over for the night in Honkers, but we decided it might be best to try and beat some of the jetlag on the way home. (Also- who can't go past a drink in LKF?)
Also if I didn't put in the over night stop over, Qantas didn't recognise the next leg onto BNE, I'd be presented with another 3006 error code and had to start again.

All seemed hunky dory, and had entered all the passenger details to then be presented with an error from Qantas. "An error has occurred in our central database. Please contact us for further information. (4002 [7597])"

After about an hour on the phone, the service agent was able to issue the tickets, and all was good in the world. She was even lovely enough not to charge the phone booking fee.
It cost us 163300 points and €555.93per person. (Taxes seem a bit steep, but considering the availability, we're happy to grab these wile we can.)

I'm curious as to why the detour through HKG didn't show up on any previous searches?
It didn't even show up on some AwardNexus searches I'd done previously too.

Dan.