A bit OT, we often travelled international 1-2 times per year school holidays and in the past it has been relatively easy to get a couple of J rewards with QF (as a P1) although more often than not these had to be released, I would travel on revenue to maintain my status. In my experience the OW partners do not seem to have the same restrictions around school holidays as QF. We already have the MEL-NRT with JL one day apart. There looks to be pretty good AY availability for 3 PAX on the same flight SIN-HEL, HEL-CDG, then CDG-HEL-SIN, this of course may change in 6 months time. Depending on what happens with CX I may look at them but they are not at the top of the list at the moment. Looking at possible options it seems to be quite doable with the baulk of travel available with the OW airlines. I will be relying on status and seat requests as a fallback back option, I have at least one flight with JL and just need a second OW carrier in the mix. There are domestic flights we will need get us from ADL-to any departure port in AU and then back ADL, the internal domestic flights break the mileage cap so these will need to be on a seperate PNR.
That makes it a bit easier having one person revenue, as I do find 2x J far more possible — the big challenge I've always encountered is getting flights in and out of Australia during school holidays. JL is fairly good, as was CX in the before times, but QF was pretty atrocious, but I guess that changes when you're P1.
There will be excellent availability in AY in the future once people twig that they have installed seats that don't recline.
I don't think so!
But many of the greatest Australians come from New Zealand.I don't think so!
I don't have much experience, but the one OWA I booked had less than 50miles left according to GCmaps, and got ticketed without issues. Had to cancel since, and I only book simple awards one leg at a time for flexibility.
For the QF reward flights, I would normally check online on the day seats were released and if I could not book them would request seat release. Requesting on the day of release worked for some routes while others I needed to wait a few days or longer. My plan has always been to get the reward seats for Mrs&MissM for a location that we were happy/ willing to go too, once these were locked in I would just sit back and wait for the J sales to come along and then book my flights. As a 3 PAX travelling group we realised long ago that x2 J rewards x1 J in revenue (J sale promotion) was often was around the same price, sometimes higher or lower than 3 in Y revenue when travelling in school holidays.
I am aware that AY have introduced this new seat type and looking at the reviews on YouTube (limited) seem to suggest it is not a bad product. Most of the reviews I have seen are relatively short flights between HEL-LHR or LHR-HEL (trial flights?). For the routes I am looking at these are night flights and as long both flights (SIN-HEL or HEL-SIN) are flat, no incline etc. happy to give it a whirl and see what happens.
I called back and the agent said the direct flight is part of a married segment and that they would have to cancel our MEL-DOH flight and try to add it back manually and add the direct flight manually. Shut that concept down very quickly after reading about the married segments in the past.
Correct, once she said they would have to cancel the MEL-DOH to be able to book the direct flight DOH-MLE, I just couldn't take that risk of something going wrong and losing MEL-DOH.
I've had different experiences with this kind of class only change - one time no need for ticket change and another, the Agent insisted on reticketing. Luckily no need for an increase in taxes and fees.
I called back again as my credit card wasn't charged.
According to the e-ticket:
