QANTAS Phantom reward seats

[MikeG]

I've tried to add these flights to my OWA booking for a global itinerary (round the world but not technically RTW)



Currently booked in Premium Economy, but have paid for Business Award - so wanted to change the seats to Business.

Can anyone confirm if these JL773 Business reward seats are actually there? Qantas customer service these seats are only available for purchase not for points.

M

 

[sudoer]

JAL are showing 4 J awards available on that flight. (You can check availability on the JAL site with a free JMB membership without any miles in your account.)



Edit: BAEC is only showing 2 J awards on the same flight but either way the space should be there..

 

[Isochronous]

I've had the QF call centre tell me a seat isn't available and then I've gone and managed to book it online whist keeping them on the line. All they could tell me was that basically their IT system is a joke and glitches like that happen.

 

[SeatBackForward]

I've had the QF call centre tell me a seat isn't available and then I've gone and managed to book it online whist keeping them on the line. All they could tell me was that basically their IT system is a joke and glitches like that happen.

This is a fob-off answer. There will be a reason, they just don't know why, or cannot tell you why.

 

[MikeG]

What do I do then? Just keep phoning them?

 

[sudoer]

Just keep phoning them?

Yes... Unfortunately...

Edit: you could also try the SMS line.

 

[knightfall88]

What do I do then? Just keep phoning them?

Yes don't believe them. For sense of scale, I called 12 times to do my last oneworld classic and only 2 actually ended up booking flights for me.

 

[MikeG]

Call answered after 2 hrs 5 mins, and now talking to a nice South African lady (Chelsea) - she says the flight is full, but I just pulled up qantas.com award seats availability for 2-adults.

 

[MikeG]

So after 2 hrs 22 mins she was able to see that if in my booking, trying to remove the PE (T) seat and adding a Business (U) seat, there is no availability. But if she got out of my booking and tried to book just the U seat, it works fine. She has emailed the problem to the JAL helpdesk to get guidance. I'll attach the screenshots she sends me later tonight...

This sounds like either a bug or a control for bookings of a certain size to limit liability for expensive seats or some such.

 

[leseven]

I was just going to make a new thread asking about this. Previously, I found reward seats availability using JAL and BA but when I call in, Qantas says no availability. So is it a system bug or are they holding those seats for higher status members?

 

[MikeG]

Although the lady said she would cc me with the email to JAL, I didn't receive anything. I'm on gmail so the file size was not an issue.

I will wait a few days and then phone them again.

 

[p--and--t]

I've had the QF call centre tell me a seat isn't available and then I've gone and managed to book it online whist keeping them on the line. All they could tell me was that basically their IT system is a joke and glitches like that happen.

I don't work there so I don't know how things work for a fact, however when I called to book my (then) 280K award, I was told no seats on a transpac sector for a JAL flight.

I was polite but firm and said how can that be I am on the BA site right now and they are showing 4 award seats as being available right now in real time.

The operator said hmm there's none showing on here, please hold for a minute and i'll check the "other" system and came back a few minutes later and confirmed she had grabbed 2 seats for me and the booking went ahead.

BTW: I am a bronze nobody, so it wasn't status converting seats.

 

[MikeG]

Theres obviously something going on there.

For the flight I was booking, she could see the two seats available, but cauldnt add them to my booking.

 

[knightfall88]

Theres obviously something going on there.

For the flight I was booking, she could see the two seats available, but cauldnt add them to my booking.

I've heard that one too amongst many other "reasons". This is a good topic. Bottom line is, most people in the call centers absolutely can't book anything and will mouth many reasons. And then are a few gems who actually do book what you can see online, no problems whatsoever. Couldn't tell you why this is the case unfortunately.

 

[DC3]

There is phantom availability and there is laziness.

 

[madrooster]

Theres obviously something going on there.

For the flight I was booking, she could see the two seats available, but cauldnt add them to my booking.

I've had the QF call centre tell me a seat isn't available and then I've gone and managed to book it online whist keeping them on the line. All they could tell me was that basically their IT system is a joke and glitches like that happen.

This is a fob-off answer. There will be a reason, they just don't know why, or cannot tell you why.

So after 2 hrs 22 mins she was able to see that if in my booking, trying to remove the PE (T) seat and adding a Business (U) seat, there is no availability. But if she got out of my booking and tried to book just the U seat, it works fine. She has emailed the problem to the JAL helpdesk to get guidance. I'll attach the screenshots she sends me later tonight...

This sounds like either a bug or a control for bookings of a certain size to limit liability for expensive seats or some such.

I was just going to make a new thread asking about this. Previously, I found reward seats availability using JAL and BA but when I call in, Qantas says no availability. So is it a system bug or are they holding those seats for higher status members?

Are you connecting to this NRT-MEL flight, or is Tokyo a stopover?

What is your first flight? ie. point of commencement.

JL does point of commencement based availability (more and more carriers are doing this, including QF), so just because the QF site shows it as being available when you search NRT-MEL, does not mean it's available if your point of commencement is in AU.

Eg. if your first flight is SYD-SIN, then your point of commencement is SYD. For a point of commencement of SYD, the NRT-MEL may not be available, but it is available for a NRT point of commencement.

The only correct way to check this is to use the multi city search on the QF site. If your point of commencement is SYD, then doing a multi city search for say SYD-HKG and NRT-MEL, would give you SYD point of commencement availability for the NRT-MEL. Airline websites always use the origin of the first flight searched as the point of commencement.

 

[MikeG]

Interesting - so this is all documented in the terms and conditions of a OWA I assume? Or just a secret Qantas plan to limit availability?

POC is CBR for the entire booking, but it chops and changes as Qantas never honoured their rules, so I had to insert flight into the mix so we had a complete trip.

I tried a multi-city booking CBR-SYD-LHR-NRT-MEL-CBR and sure enough JL773 U was available. Huh!?

M

 

[sudoer]

Or just a secret Qantas plan to limit availability?

I believe @madrooster is saying it's a JL thing.

 

[MikeG]

OK I got the cc from Chelsea@Qantas and in the email to Technical Support she writes:

Action Required: Please assist with confirming JL773 NRTMEL as it shows availability but system places flight into waitlist and does not confirm it.

 

[madrooster]

OK I got the cc from Chelsea@Qantas and in the email to Technical Support she writes:

Your problem is you are transiting in Tokyo, with just under 24 hours in Tokyo. You also then have just over 12 hours in Melbourne so that is also a transit.

That means availability needs to be looked at as LHR-CBR (with transits in Tokyo and Melbourne). When looked at like that, there's no U class availability on NRT-MEL.

You can fool the system though. If availability on BA for LHR-HND and QF for MEL-CBR is still available as a new booking, get QF to delete both of those flights, add the JL flight in, then put the BA and QF flights in.