Call centre can't see flights....

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m_diggity

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Hi All,

With the recent issues of Emirates cancelling their Sydney to Bangkok flight, I was able to change our award booking to QF23.
I jumped the gun a little bit, and after speaking with a QFF call centre consultant, I accepted the following:

MEL - SYD departing at 06:45
SYD - BKK departing at 09:50

I have since discussed this with my better half, and she stated "why don't we fly up to SYD the night before, and that way we can enjoy a little sleep in, and not stress about missing the international connection". I couldn't agree more. So I began the process of trying to change our domestic flight to a late night departure from MEL the night before QF23. We would get an airport hotel (at our own expense), have a couple of drinks, and make a night of it.

I knew I had made a mistake with accepting the new itinerary (if I had thought of this when speaking with QFF I could have asked them to change the MEL - SYD leg for free), and I am willing to pay the 5000pt per person change fee.

I rang Qantas call centre twice yesterday. First consultant was not very helpful at all, and I could barely understand what he was trying to tell me. I HUACA and got another consultant who was very helpful. However, they were unable to see the same flights (let alone 80% of the flights that showed availability on QFF website) that I could see, and said the latest flight they can see available was at 9:30am! I understand that sometimes there are phantom award availability, but not 25+ flights on MEL - SYD???
They also said the flight (QF492) is fully booked, and there is no award availability in both Y and J. Yet online when I search MEL - SYD as a stand alone booking, it is wide open!!
I refer to this thread (and tried to post in that one, but assume it is locked/too old). Surely this isn't a case of phantom availability??? Its MEL - SYD we are talking here, 5 months in advance.
Expertflyer is showing J9 C9 D9 I9 U9 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 O9 G0 X9 E9 on the date I am wanting.
QFF is showing (at least) 2 award seats in business. Expertflyer is showing U9!!!
I can't understand why Qantas call centre can't change me to this flight??

I tried ringing again tonight, and the same issue. The agent is currently 'working' on it, and will call me back. But I don't have high hopes....That's 3 seperate consultants telling me the exact same thing.
Does this have anything to do with the recent change of flight to QF23? It is so strange.
I'd love to hear other peoples thoughts, and experiences...
Sorry for the long winded post.
 
What do you mean? If they marry a segment it somehow blocks out 80% of actual award availability? Sorry for my inexperience with this.

Marrying segments is a way for QF to control inventory between two points - either by restricting it, or making it available (their choice),.

They may have decided that only certain connections will be allowed from the QF23 - perhaps designed to allow leisure travellers to take those (poor) connections but force pax on company $$ to fork out full fare if they want the better flights. Essentially marrying segments means that you can't always rely on individual sectors being available as a guarantee to longer flight will be available - the airline may not want you to!

(You might have SYD-SIN and SIN-LHR available, but QF wants people to pay $15K to fly SYD-LHR, so they will restict the award availablility so you can't fly straight through SYD-SIN-LHR)
 
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Marrying segments is a way for QF to control inventory between two points - either by restricting it, or making it available (their choice),.

They may have decided that only certain connections will be allowed from the QF23 - perhaps designed to allow leisure travellers to take those (poor) connections but force pax on company $$ to fork out full fare if they want the better flights. Essentially marrying segments means that you can't always rely on individual sectors being available as a guarantee to longer flight will be available - the airline may not want you to!

(You might have SYD-SIN and SIN-LHR available, but QF wants people to pay $15K to fly SYD-LHR, so they will restict the award availablility so you can't fly straight through SYD-SIN-LHR)
Cathay apparently does this too. On a Qantas award flight.
 
Marrying segments is a way for QF to control inventory between two points - either by restricting it, or making it available (their choice),.

They may have decided that only certain connections will be allowed from the QF23 - perhaps designed to allow leisure travellers to take those (poor) connections but force pax on company $$ to fork out full fare if they want the better flights. Essentially marrying segments means that you can't always rely on individual sectors being available as a guarantee to longer flight will be available - the airline may not want you to!

(You might have SYD-SIN and SIN-LHR available, but QF wants people to pay $15K to fly SYD-LHR, so they will restict the award availablility so you can't fly straight through SYD-SIN-LHR)

I.e. in the eyes of the airline you are trying to change a Melbourne - Bangkok booking. They may have restricted/allocated a certain number of seats MEL-BKK (two of which you have), but when they search for availability on the MEL-SYD leg it may be looking as if the whole MEL-BKK booking.

Have you called up and just ask first about looking to book the MEL-SYD flight you can see online? Don’t even mention your BKK flights. Once (if?) they find the flight, then say, oh we actually have an existing booking that we are looking to change to that flight and see if the issue comes up.

A lot of the agents wouldn’t even know what married segments mean, but this is a way of ‘leading them in’. As I have done this before and then they go, oh that’s strange there is definitely availability (as they have seen it on the single leg search) and manage to do a manual override.

Not guaranteeing anything but worth a try.
 
I.e. in the eyes of the airline you are trying to change a Melbourne - Bangkok booking. They may have restricted/allocated a certain number of seats MEL-BKK (two of which you have), but when they search for availability on the MEL-SYD leg it may be looking as if the whole MEL-BKK booking.

Have you called up and just ask first about looking to book the MEL-SYD flight you can see online? Don’t even mention your BKK flights. Once (if?) they find the flight, then say, oh we actually have an existing booking that we are looking to change to that flight and see if the issue comes up.

A lot of the agents wouldn’t even know what married segments mean, but this is a way of ‘leading them in’. As I have done this before and then they go, oh that’s strange there is definitely availability (as they have seen it on the single leg search) and manage to do a manual override.

Not guaranteeing anything but worth a try.

I like that idea. I think I’ll use that in the furure.

The last phone agent ended up getting it sorted out, but not really in the way I was hoping...
She was adamant that she could not get QF492 apart of the booking.
What I ended up having to do, was split the booking. She got me to manually book QF492 as a seperate booking first, which cost me 32K QFF points, and $72 in taxes. She then cancelled my QF406 flight, and refunded me $68 in taxes, and 24K points.
So now I am out of pocket $4, 8K in points (she didn’t charge me the 5K points per person change fee) and have two seperate tickets
Like I said above, she was adamant that this was the only way to get that flight the night before.
I wonder how I would have gone if I tried your method from the start..

I am slightly worried as now there are two seperate bookings, and we now have to collect our luggage in Sydney, and re-check it the following morning.
I’m sure it will all work out, but having it all on one booking ref/PNR was the result I was wanting.
If I try and find the positives - I purchased 2K in points for only $4! And get to enjoy the MEL business lounge for more time now.
 
I like that idea. I think I’ll use that in the furure.

The last phone agent ended up getting it sorted out, but not really in the way I was hoping...
She was adamant that she could not get QF492 apart of the booking.
What I ended up having to do, was split the booking. She got me to manually book QF492 as a seperate booking first, which cost me 32K QFF points, and $72 in taxes. She then cancelled my QF406 flight, and refunded me $68 in taxes, and 24K points.
So now I am out of pocket $4, 8K in points (she didn’t charge me the 5K points per person change fee) and have two seperate tickets
Like I said above, she was adamant that this was the only way to get that flight the night before.
I wonder how I would have gone if I tried your method from the start..

I am slightly worried as now there are two seperate bookings, and we now have to collect our luggage in Sydney, and re-check it the following morning.
I’m sure it will all work out, but having it all on one booking ref/PNR was the result I was wanting.
If I try and find the positives - I purchased 2K in points for only $4! And get to enjoy the MEL business lounge for more time now.

That sounds like how it was explained to me except there was no availability left of the flight I wanted to keep as only 2 seats had been released and I’d already grabbed them in the original booking. I wanted to detach and change the second flight. So I had to cancel it all first then immediately the agent grabbed the flight I’d just cancelled and rebooked it, then added on the new flight I wanted. I was charged change fees and more in taxes.

You will be fine grabbing the luggage in Sydney and rebooking next day on different PNRs. That isn’t something I’d be stressing over.
 
That sounds like how it was explained to me except there was no availability left of the flight I wanted to keep as only 2 seats had been released and I’d already grabbed them in the original booking. I wanted to detach and change the second flight. So I had to cancel it all first then immediately the agent grabbed the flight I’d just cancelled and rebooked it, then added on the new flight I wanted. I was charged change fees and more in taxes.

You will be fine grabbing the luggage in Sydney and rebooking next day on different PNRs. That isn’t something I’d be stressing over.
Easy to collect luggage at Syd dom, take it to the hotel then just check in the next day.
 
Easy to collect luggage at Syd dom, take it to the hotel then just check in the next day.

I was more worried about having seperate PNR’s, and possibly not being able to land in Sydney the night before QF23.
I think I am stressing over nothing, and all will be fine.
 
I like that idea. I think I’ll use that in the furure.

I am slightly worried as now there are two seperate bookings, and we now have to collect our luggage in Sydney, and re-check it the following morning.
I’m sure it will all work out, but having it all on one booking ref/PNR was the result I was wanting.
If I try and find the positives - I purchased 2K in points for only $4! And get to enjoy the MEL business lounge for more time now.

I'm nowhere near as seasoned as some on this forum so please someone correct me if I'm wrong - SYD do not hold your luggage overnight, so you would have still needed to collect your luggage after the domestic flight and re-check it in the morning for your international flight even on the same PNR.
 
I'm nowhere near as seasoned as some on this forum so please someone correct me if I'm wrong - SYD do not hold your luggage overnight, so you would have still needed to collect your luggage after the domestic flight and re-check it in the morning for your international flight even on the same PNR.
I think the PNR was probably more the concern after the last post. But it will be fine. Only an extraordinary event will cause any issues and we just can’t be worried about those as they are out of our control.
 
To go back to the original question - back when QF has the 20% off awards sale- on the last night of the sale the 20% off stopped working, so I rang to book a specific EK flight that I had gone all the way through to the payment screen on. The call centre (South Africa) could not see that flight. And yes I did HUACA. So it can happen that call centre see different a availability to online.
 
To go back to the original question - back when QF has the 20% off awards sale- on the last night of the sale the 20% off stopped working, so I rang to book a specific EK flight that I had gone all the way through to the payment screen on. The call centre (South Africa) could not see that flight. And yes I did HUACA. So it can happen that call centre see different a availability to online.

That is worrying, I have some flights from NYC-AUS (currently in CX J) that I was going to change today to EK F - flights come up in QF & AS searches (but I haven;t gone right through to the payment stage) - hopefully the agents can also see them when I ring up!!
 
Have seen this too. Saw 2 x QF F SIN-MEL pop-up one night which I wanted to add to an existing booking. QF CSE could not see it at all. It was late and I gave up.

Checked again the next morning and still there. By the time I called back, 1 had gone but the CSE was able to get the second seat open for me and add in to the booking.

Got to love all the (in-)consistency issues with QF's services, offerings etc.

Regards,

BD
 
Sometimes agents forget to log in by status and can't see seats (for example one time they couldn't see the seats I could but then said 'oh, wait while I log in as silver' and then they could see them). But this is unlikely if multiple agents give the same answer.
 
That happened to me on Monday night. I could see quite a few seats in F to DFW in November and the agent couldn't see any? She said it was MY computer?
 
Same thing happens sometimes when you try to book a First Class award, say MEL>LAX and it comes up MEL>SYD>LAX with MEL>SYD in economy. Really, 9 months out and there's no J award seats MEL-SYD available the whole day?
 
Well no 'phantom' availability for me this time upgrading to EK F, there was the first time I went to book my NYC-AUS return fights on CX. Could it be carrier specific?
 
Same thing happens sometimes when you try to book a First Class award, say MEL>LAX and it comes up MEL>SYD>LAX with MEL>SYD in economy. Really, 9 months out and there's no J award seats MEL-SYD available the whole day?

Known issue - give them a call.

Regards,

BD
 
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