Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[Mr H]

None of us can see into the future. This pandemic is the first one to coincide with the age of global travel and the rules change by the week. I would not expect the current restrictions - masks, Covid checks, quarantine - to last very much longer but who knows? Nobody knows for sure how an award would be affected if a route is pulled or how many alternative routes would exist. My advice would be to book something, anything and then take Qantas up on their offer of free changes to award bookings if something better comes along - but YMMV. I suspect LHR-PER is not yet loaded into the system because QF is restoring routes one by one. I would not want to miss viable alternatives in the hope of snagging the QF flight if/when they open.

 

[Princess Pia]

Hi,

I've had a read of the start of the thread, the old wiki and the last few pages, but it's hard to find the info when the original thread started in 2006!

I gather from the numbers in brackets, that a oneworld award in J is now 318K with the caveats of 3 or more carriers and 5 stopovers?

I'm planning a trip to South Africa next year, so should be able to do something that includes South Africa and a stop in Europe somewhere? Unfortunately still just outside the open window for bookings so can't take advantage of the classic reward release that started today

Is the Qantas website the best place to search for flights and put an itinerary together before booking? I've done some reward bookings in the past, but on Star Alliance and it's been a few years!

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Hi,

I've had a read of the start of the thread, the old wiki and the last few pages, but it's hard to find the info when the original thread started in 2006!

I gather from the numbers in brackets, that a oneworld award in J is now 318K with the caveats of 3 or more carriers and 5 stopovers?

I'm planning a trip to South Africa next year, so should be able to do something that includes South Africa and a stop in Europe somewhere? Unfortunately still just outside the open window for bookings so can't take advantage of the classic reward release that started today

Is the Qantas website the best place to search for flights and put an itinerary together before booking? I've done some reward bookings in the past, but on Star Alliance and it's been a few years!

Hi and welcome to AFF!

Yes, you have the basics right! 318K, 3+5, and South Africa + Europe will be fine.

Qantas is just as good a place as any to search, use the multicity tool and 'flexible' dates so it brings up the calendar. You can have a play around with the booking tool now to familiarise yourself with it and come back with any questions. Will make booking smoother down the track

 

[Spacetravel]

Is the Qantas website the best place to search for flights and put an itinerary together before booking? I've done some reward bookings in the past, but on Star Alliance and it's been a few years!

I'm by no means an expert at this so hopefully others will chime in also. Personally expert flyer is a massive help for trying to book a OWA due to the complexity and trying to hunt down award seats. Personally my process is if I know what I am looking for, first place I just do a single sector search on the QF website and see if its available. If I can't find what I want that way quickly and easily I jump into EF and do +- 3 day searches across a number of options that I am after. The AA website is also a good free way to do 30 day searches at a time but it has some drawbacks.

Once I have a feel for the routes and general award availability I start on the multi city tool with flexible dates booked and get working on that and hopefully make it to the end of all the flights without the website spitting out an error.

 

[Spacetravel]

Looking for some route ideas to maximise the value of my booking. Currently have the following booked:

SYD > YVR (QF) Stop 1
YVR > DFW > MIA (AA) Stop 2
MIA > LAX (AA) (possibly adding > LAS on the end of this) Stop 3
LAS > LAX > LHR (BA) Stop 4
LHR > SYD (QF)

This might be a hard question to answer as it comes down to personal preference of travel destinations. I'm trying to find a good 5th stop over location during my travels, fairly open to ideas leaving from LAX or LHR to somewhere. Also ideas to add extra sectors as I am a long way off the max 15. Could anyone let me know of some destination ideas I could try? This is a bit of a bucket list global trip so fairly open to some interesting ideas. The only thing I care about is limiting my risk of being forced into quarantine or trapped by a boarder closure. For reference the trip takes place March > July.

 

[Mr H]

I think it is not quite right that you need three airlines - you need two other than QF. So if there is no QF flight, 2 airlines would be fine. And you don't have to do 5 stopovers, it is a max of five, a max of 16 flights (or land sectors) and a max of 35,000 miles using QF miles which are slightly shorter than Great Circle Mapper's miles. I have just done a booking and used the QF multi-sector booking set to award flights and flexible dates. I used MEL-CMB which has wide availability as the first search term and then used the second search term to find each individual flight I wanted - saved having to reprogram everything when a sector drew a blank or an undesirable flight. Then put it all together to book as a single itinerary - and have been calling QF to tweak it as new flights become available.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Looking for some route ideas to maximise the value of my booking. Currently have the following booked:

SYD > YVR (QF) Stop 1
YVR > DFW > MIA (AA) Stop 2
MIA > LAX (AA) (possibly adding > LAS on the end of this) Stop 3
LAS > LAX > LHR (BA) Stop 4
LHR > SYD (QF)

This might be a hard question to answer as it comes down to personal preference of travel destinations. I'm trying to find a good 5th stop over location during my travels, fairly open to ideas leaving from LAX or LHR to somewhere. Also ideas to add extra sectors as I am a long way off the max 15. Could anyone let me know of some destination ideas I could try? This is a bit of a bucket list global trip so fairly open to some interesting ideas. The only thing I care about is limiting my risk of being forced into quarantine or trapped by a boarder closure. For reference the trip takes place March > July.

You could fly LAS-NYC, transit to see the TWA hotel and have drink there, then take AA to LHR. Will save a bucket of money on BA's fuel surcharges. (AA has good seats on board and a nice arrivals lounge offering at LHR.) Coming home you could do Tokyo, Hong Kong or Bali as an additional stop.

 

[Mr H]

I'm trying to find a good 5th stop over location during my travels, fairly open to ideas leaving from LAX or LHR to somewhere.

Marrakech from London. It's amazing.

Also ideas to add extra sectors as I am a long way off the max 15.

You do not have to use all 16 sectors. The more sectors, the more tax you will pay (as a general rule) and you'll probably run up against the 35,000 miles max.

The only thing I care about is limiting my risk of being forced into quarantine or trapped by a boarder closure. For reference the trip takes place March > July.

Then do not leave home if Covid restrictions are still in place because there is every likelihood you will catch Covid.

 

[Danger]

Hi,

I've had a read of the start of the thread, the old wiki and the last few pages, but it's hard to find the info when the original thread started in 2006!

I gather from the numbers in brackets, that a oneworld award in J is now 318K with the caveats of 3 or more carriers and 5 stopovers?

I'm planning a trip to South Africa next year, so should be able to do something that includes South Africa and a stop in Europe somewhere? Unfortunately still just outside the open window for bookings so can't take advantage of the classic reward release that started today

Is the Qantas website the best place to search for flights and put an itinerary together before booking? I've done some reward bookings in the past, but on Star Alliance and it's been a few years!

You only need two non-Qantas oneworld carriers. If you include Qantas, you need a minimum of three oneworld carriers. If you want to go to South Africa and Europe, you could theoretically do that quite easy on just Qatar and British Airways.

Note that different airlines release their award seats at different times. As soon as you find a seat, book it. You can add to it later and provided it meets the rules outlined in s. 14.5 of the Qantas T&Cs, it will max out at 318K for a J ticket.

 

[Princess Pia]

You only need two non-Qantas oneworld carriers. If you include Qantas, you need a minimum of three oneworld carriers. If you want to go to South Africa and Europe, you could theoretically do that quite easy on just Qatar and British Airways.

Note that different airlines release their award seats at different times. As soon as you find a seat, book it. You can add to it later and provided it meets the rules outlined in s. 14.5 of the Qantas T&Cs, it will max out at 318K for a J ticket.

Thanks for that danger. How do you go about adding to the ticket? I'll need to do this to book the return legs

 

[Danger]

Thanks for that danger. How do you go about adding to the ticket? I'll need to do this to book the return legs

Adding flights will need to be done by phoning QF.

 

[Mr H]

Adding flights will need to be done by phoning QF.

Note that this is free right now (they want to get us flying again) but pre-Covid it came with a service charge payable in additional miles.

 

[GaryLG]

Note that this is free right now (they want to get us flying again) but pre-Covid it came with a service charge payable in additional miles.

So is that confirmed that we can start and then add flights without any cost/penalty?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

So is that confirmed that we can start and then add flights without any cost/penalty?

Yes. At the moment that is how it is operating under QF’s fee waiver policy.

 

[GaryLG]

Another basic question, if I am booking just one leg to start with, how does the system know it is part of a owa booking?

I presume I have to pay the taxes, etc at the time and hope they get recalculated as the other legs are added and the points add on up to the maximum?

 

[11sjw]

Another basic question, if I am booking just one leg to start with, how does the system know it is part of a owa booking?

I presume I have to pay the taxes, etc at the time and hope they get recalculated as the other legs are added and the points add on up to the maximum?

It doesn't but the rules are within their booking system. The last OWA I booked involved no extra points and some fees when adding the last leg (SIN-PER).

 

[GaryLG]

It doesn't but the rules are within their booking system. The last OWA I booked involved no extra points and some fees when adding the last leg (SIN-PER).

Thanks. I am just trying to get the outbound flights booked to LHR and cannot really book any further flights without contacting QF so it just felt a bit strange booking 1 flight out what will be a multi city journey.

 

[Captain Halliday]

Fair enough. Has anyone else had experience with this?

Another question - in looking at MEL_Traveller's suggestion I get QF10 LHR-MEL which actually stops in PER but I cannot get it to show up as a Classic Reward for LHR-PER, why? And what to do?

Hop on the phone? Will that help?

Yes about three to four pages back in this thread.

QF offered no alternatives when JL cancelled a route, and it was a route QF operated on.

 

[GaryLG]

Yes about three to four pages back in this thread.

QF offered no alternatives when JL cancelled a route, and it was a route QF operated on.

Thaanks, yes I saw that.

 

[DC3]

Thanks. I am just trying to get the outbound flights booked to LHR and cannot really book any further flights without contacting QF so it just felt a bit strange booking 1 flight out what will be a multi city journey.

This is not that unusual. I book award flights as soon as availability opens. There are some airlines that release award seats at about 11 months out, while others are closer to 12 months. And some award seats may not be released until much later.

In waiting for multiple flights to show award availability before starting the bookings, there’s the risk of losing seats that could be booked now.