Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[Inuniform]

Have you looked at CDG-HKG and HKG-SYD on CX?

I have found wide availability on this route

Yes, however I want to stop in Tokyo. Anything other than direct, even through Hong Kong puts me over the limit.

 

[motef]

W

Yes, however I want to stop in Tokyo. Anything other than direct, even through Hong Kong puts me over the limit.

Whats your full routing?

 

[AL10]

There's often JAL availability to Helsinki.

 

[Inuniform]

W

Whats your full routing?

Syd-Mel-Nrt-Yvr*Nrt-Doh-Fco*Lhr-Cdg*Tokyo*Sydney

 

[motef]

Syd-Mel-Nrt-Yvr*Nrt-Doh-Fco*Lhr-Cdg*Tokyo*Sydney

Have you looked at YVR-LHR-FCO with BA?

 

[Inuniform]

Have you looked at YVR-LHR-FCO with BA?

View attachment 260508

I did look at this route but there was no availability around the 30th August to early September.

 

[Inuniform]

Does anyone know what time JL seats are released on the QF booking site? Also, because I would have to ring QF to add flights to a booking, is there anything wrong with booking flights on a different ticket and then cancelling them while you’re talking to QF in order to hold the seats and add them to an itinerary?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I did look at this route but there was no availability around the 30th August to early September.

There is availability on 30 August in BA J from ORD to LHR. This can be combined with a YVR-ORD on AA for example. The flight leaves YVR at 1324, arrives into ORD at 1940 and connects with the BA flight at 2105. Connections from LHR to FCO seem easy enough so I didn't check those for connecting onwards. While the BA flight is bookable now, the connection from YVR seems outside the current calendar.

Post automatically merged: Oct 1, 2021

Does anyone know what time JL seats are released on the QF booking site? Also, because I would have to ring QF to add flights to a booking, is there anything wrong with booking flights on a different ticket and then cancelling them while you’re talking to QF in order to hold the seats and add them to an itinerary?

There is no guarantee that cancelling a flight will return the seats to the award inventory pool. This can happen with airlines where there are waitlists (as soon as you cancel the seat goes to the next person on the list), or it could be that yield management has determined they can now sell the seats so won't re-offer them as awards. Finally, if booking the award seats through another partner program, they might never be made available to QF (ie, they were special seats only available to members of the operating airline's FF program).

 

[mrsterryn]

So good to be able to be planning these trips again

 

[vetrade]

Does anyone know what time JL seats are released on the QF booking site? Also, because I would have to ring QF to add flights to a booking, is there anything wrong with booking flights on a different ticket and then cancelling them while you’re talking to QF in order to hold the seats and add them to an itinerary?

My recent experience is that release dates are very inconsistent ATM across multiple airlines. I've nearly completed a 318k booking and the route map is now almost unrecognisable from what was originally planned. Maybe a lot of people have recently started snapping up a lot of J availability for the second half of next year, but my impression is that the variable supply has been caused by the airlines themselves shutting the supply off abruptly and even cancelling already released awards.

Since you asked about JL, I'll start with them. Only weeks ago JL had plenty of availability from about 360 - 330 days out for both JL48 (HEL-HND) and JL51 (HND-SYD) but recently nearly all the JL48 availability disappeared virtually overnight. At the same time, JL51 seats were still available. I When I looked at LHR - HND there was reasonable availability for JL42 (which has a long transit in HND) but only sporadic availability for JL44. As luck would have it, I just got the JL44 / JL51 combo just 2 days ago at 359 days out.

Case 2: QF had been showing a steady stream of J availability on the SYD - JNB route from start of June next year to such a degree that I had no concerns about getting them for the end of July 2022, despite the fact that I have no status and couldn't get them till 293 - 297 days out. Then, poof, they all vanished and despite checking every day religiously, no new availability showed up and there's still none today (for NBs, at least). Luckily I had booked MEL - HKG - JNB at 360 days with CX as insurance, but it did chew up several thousand extra kms.

Case 3: QR - researching a variety of QR routes, it was difficult to put together combos of JNB - DOH with onward flights to many European cities. QR had good availability JNB - DOH at 330 - 360 days out (with the possible exception of QR1478) but DOH to ARN/NCE/CPH/HEL/ZRH etc had no availability for connecting flights until about 2 months after most of the JNB - DOH availability would have been gone. That makes planning a trip a nightmare.

EDIT: I changed the sequence of our itinerary a bit and opted for JNB - LHR - KEF instead of JNB - DOH - ARN/CPH etc. and had no trouble getting J for both flights on BA. People may not like BA's taxes but when it comes to award availability they are often very good

Re, your other point about holding seats on another booking: it is a few years ago now but I had booked the last J seats on a QF SYD - LAX flight as part of a OW award. I subsequently cancelled them in favour of a different date, and out of interest I checked each hour to see how long it took for my released seats to show up back in inventory. It took 11 hours - so maybe your plan of waiting on line to re-book seats you have on another booking could be a long process.

 

[flapper]

Does anyone know if the "Frequent Flyer" system is back up? I added some flights to my OWA today and they couldn't reissue as the system was down. They couldn't even recalculate the taxes. They told me to call back later which I did but it was still down. I don't want to wait on hold for 4 or more hours if it isn't back up. I used the call back earlier and that took 4 hours despite saying 30 mins to 1 hour but I'm not being offered a call back atm.

 

[ozflier]

Does anyone know if the "Frequent Flyer" system is back up? I added some flights to my OWA today and they couldn't reissue as the system was down. They couldn't even recalculate the taxes. They told me to call back later which I did but it was still down. I don't want to wait on hold for 4 or more hours if it isn't back up. I used the call abck earlier and that took 4 hours despite saying 30 mins to 1 hour.

I've called twice in the last two weeks and both times the agents have noted the system is very slow - one also said that the booking system is being refurbished slowly so it may not cause too much trouble in the future.

 

[vetrade]

Does anyone know if the "Frequent Flyer" system is back up? I added some flights to my OWA today and they couldn't reissue as the system was down. They couldn't even recalculate the taxes. They told me to call back later which I did but it was still down. I don't want to wait on hold for 4 or more hours if it isn't back up. I used the call back earlier and that took 4 hours despite saying 30 mins to 1 hour but I'm not being offered a call back atm.

I've spoken to them about 5 times in the past 10 days to make changes and query ticketing which hadn't arrived. Two of the calls were with very capable Aussie agents who each mentioned that the QF system was playing up. A lot of bookings are apparently being diverted for manual ticketing which would normally be automatically processed in around 5 - 10 minutes. That's led to a backlog and I've been assured all my flights are confirmed and "safe" but the actual ticketing could take 48hrs because of the no. of flights and the re-calculation of taxes.

P.S. I did some changes with a lady at the CPT call centre and she was brilliant, but not so my experiences with the Asian agents. After 2-3hrs waiting for a callback, the 2 Manilla (?) agents I got seemed absolutely clueless as to what a OW Award was or how to add/change flights. One put me on hold and then the call dropped out after 15 minutes. The other pretended he couldn't hear me, saying there was static on the line (it was crystal clear to me), before hanging up on me. The give-away was the fact that he kept saying he couldn't hear me but he still waited for me to stop talking before he said it again.

 

[flapper]

I've spoken to them about 5 times in the past 10 days to make changes and query ticketing which hadn't arrived. Two of the calls were with very capable Aussie agents who each mentioned that the QF system was playing up. A lot of bookings are apparently being diverted for manual ticketing which would normally be automatically processed in around 5 - 10 minutes. That's led to a backlog and I've been assured all my flights are confirmed and "safe" but the actual ticketing could take 48hrs because of the no. of flights and the re-calculation of taxes.

P.S. I did some changes with a lady at the CPT call centre and she was brilliant, but not so my experiences with the Asian agents. After 2-3hrs waiting for a callback, the 2 Manilla (?) agents I got seemed absolutely clueless as to what a OW Award was or how to add/change flights. One put me on hold and then the call dropped out after 15 minutes. The other pretended he couldn't hear me, saying there was static on the line (it was crystal clear to me), before hanging up on me. The give-away was the fact that he kept saying he couldn't hear me but he still waited for me to stop talking before he said it again.

I've had a number of calls "drop out" after being told I can't add a flight to an existing booking and this is after checking they have my number and requesting they call me back if the call drops out. The other day (AKL CC) I was told the points system wasn't working and it will take 2 days to reissue the ticket but at least that time they were able to recalculate the taxes. I called back and a Cape Town operator was able to reissue the ticket while I waited - it did take about 45 mins. I think most of that time was him waiting to get through to the ticketing line.

 

[flapper]

Does anyone know if the "Frequent Flyer" system is back up? I added some flights to my OWA today and they couldn't reissue as the system was down. They couldn't even recalculate the taxes. They told me to call back later which I did but it was still down. I don't want to wait on hold for 4 or more hours if it isn't back up. I used the call back earlier and that took 4 hours despite saying 30 mins to 1 hour but I'm not being offered a call back atm.

I had 5:30Hr wait on hold I got through to Cape Town who after trying said the sytem was back up and calculated the taxes and points - tried to charge extra even though I am already at 318K for J but accepted it when I pointed it out. It took about 50 mins and she said the ticket will resissue in 10 mins. After 30 mins I rang back it still said waiting time over 2 hours after about 3 hours I went to bed. I woke up at 3:30am for a pee and rang - still a 2 hour wait time. I woke up at 6:30 and called a 1-2 hour wait but offered a call back. AKL called back 2 hours later. He said it hadn't been done properly and the taxes were over charged by over $400. He sorted it all out and I had the email before the called ended - it took about 20 mins. Not sure why Cape Town takes over 45 mins and then get it wrong anyway. All this because QF system was down and they couldn't or wouldn't organise someone to call me back when it was back up. Wait time today for NB is about 4 hours btw.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Indeed the system has been fixed! For the last couple of weeks trying to get to the payment page for an award USA-UK came back with 'error, unable to find fare'.

 

[paul66]

I am booking my first RTW and so am at a basic level so I need help. Have booked Syd-HKG-MAD-OPO. I will eventually add MAD-SFO-SYD-CNS when bookings open up. Do I need to do anything to activate the RTW ticket or does it happen automatically ? Also you will see I am backtracking through Madrid. . Is this allowed.?

 

[flapper]

I am booking my first RTW and so am at a basic level so I need help. Have booked Syd-HKG-MAD-OPO. I will eventually add MAD-SFO-SYD-CNS when bookings open up. Do I need to do anything to activate the RTW ticket or does it happen automatically ? Also you will see I am backtracking through Madrid. . Is this allowed.?

The most important thing is not to call it RTW, some people on here will have a fit, lol. Its OWA no need to RTW. You can stop over once in a city and transfer twice. The points should max out if you meet all the rules. You can do a dummy booking to try it out. I have had the Cape Town CC tell me the points only max when you fly back to Oz. I can't find that rule and it has never been applied to me HOB & AKL will calculate points as a OWA if you meet all the rules even before you book the flight back to Oz.

 

[JohnM]

Fit averted.

 

[Sydney BE]

So excited. Finally locked in our latest attempt. I've never flown business before and this is our delayed honeymoon from 2020. Wedding was delayed til this year so now it'll be our delayed honeymoon and 1 year anniversary trip. Can't believe we first started planning this trip in 2018. Now fingers are crossed everything works out with covid and borders reopening

We are booked in for mid next year
Syd-hkg-tpe
Tpe-hkg-cmb
Cmb-doh-hel-kef
Ams-lhr-jfk
Jfk-hnd
Hnd-syd

We were trying to add hnd to gmp return and have Seoul as our last stop instead of Tokyo but they were having difficulty because it counted amsterdam as an additional stop because we are doing a land segment. It didn't really make sense as its still under the miles and segment limit. I wasn't really in the mood to argue about it so just asked to leave it off and we will stop in Tokyo.