Recent content by Kiwifruit

Correct, you always check in with the operating carrier which will be LATAM in Lima who will check you through to Australia. You will need to clear Immigration in Sydney as this is your first point of entry into Australia. Then collect your bags and follow signs to "Domestic Transfers" where...

If the flights are all on the same ticket and PNR then Qantas is obliged to check your bags through to Buenos Aries from Perth so you would not need to retrieve your bags in either Sydney or Santiago. Do however be aware that some checkin agents can be a bit lax or unfamiliar with what they are...

Your itinerary looks good to me (provided you haven't exceeded the maximum mileage of 35,000 which I haven't checked). I too find the multi-trip planner to be totally unreliable once you have four or more sectors so my advice is to hold in what you can and then call to add the other sectors...

Do a search for "Norway in a Nutshell" as it's a great way of getting from Bergen to Oslo (or vice versa). I did it in winter and it was still spectacular.

A transfer of less than 24 hours is not counted as a stopover. A stopover is every point at which you break your journey for more than 24 hours. You should certainly be able to fit in US/Canada within the allowed 35,000 km mileage. For instance in your itinerary you could subject to...

And Norway is even more expensive than Iceland :)

If you try and look at too many sectors at a time the multicity search tends to error out, seems to be an IT issue with the Qantas website. Try searching just three sectors at a time as this may alleviate the issue.

I have to agree with JohnM, I think you may regret spending five weeks in Scandanavia as even when it is light the weather can be downright gloomy that time of the year. I had an absolute blast when I was in Norway in the Arctic circle during February and I'm certainly not discouraging you...

Fortunately, you are travelling outside of peak season and have a bit of time up your sleeve which makes the hunt for award seats a bit easier. With regards visiting Reykjavik (KEF) your options are limited as only British Airways (BA) and Finnair (AY) fly there at the time you are travelling...

Matters certainly don't seem to have improved, if anything the functionality of the website seems to have deteriorated as I'm getting more error messages than ever.

I had a similar problem with IB website but found I could bring up my booking in the BA website (even though itinerary doesn't include BA flights) and could successfully allocate seats on one of the IB sectors (MAD-RAK) but not the other (SJO-MAD) which seems a bit random.

My vote would also be QR particularly if you are on a route with Qsuites. Did JAL a couple of months ago JFK-HND and although good didn't compare with QR.

Seems that SQ in SIN and QR in DOH both adopt the same approach in restricting access to their better lounges to those passengers actually flying in their own premium classes. Not an approach, I favour as if this model spreads it diminishes the value of having status.

Thanks Richard, I wasn't aware of the lounge restriction for UA premier gold so it looks like TK may be the better option

Thanks guys that's just the advice I was looking for. The Star Alliance carriers I'll be flying in economy are domestic flights on Air New Zealand, AIr Canada and United so I don't have any expectation of retaining Star Alliance Gold beyond the status match, rather I'm just doing it as a means...