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This is probably going to cause even more fun for me than a situation would otherwise would have. I have Etihad AUH-LIS-AUH J flights booked as a Virgin award in a few months, originally on a Thursday. It's not a daily direct flight and they have been changing the days around, so it's shifted...

Sorry, while I originally joined AFF as a traveller, I ended up working in travel a few years ago. I’ve been dealing with airfare distribution recently and did think where I was posting before I used the terms. In the old system of getting airfares from airlines to distributors to...

This mess is going to get worse as the NDC uptake increases, airlines get away from their legacy PSSes, and then they can start removing the concept of etickets and the rules they enforce. There are already things appearing that break the old rules, such as the RBD being "Y-C" which is nominally...

Hmm, you are right I can see plenty on EK DXB-CPT (even F seats) and some other places in sub-Saharan Africa and the Seychelles. Just nothing in Europe, Asia or Northern Africa, even when it shows up in the opposite direction. I think I could live with a trip to the Seychelles.

I moved to Dubai a few months ago, and have a stack of QF points I'll need to use up. While I'll occasionally head back to Australia, there is obviously a lot more opportunity to use them with EK or One World carriers going to other countries. I don't have any problem finding award flights on...

My understanding is that you are supposed to disclose the minimum fees on the prior pages (even if it is buried at the bottom in tiny writing), but maybe they’d argue being able to pay at the airport let’s then avoid that. Some of the product like the SMS don’t make sense unless activated prior...

I'm still surprised that they get away with those fees, but obviously they do. Or GoToGate (reasonably-priced on Google Flights and Skyscanner) who charge $4 to SMS you your PNR, $4.50 for SMSes of gate/time changes, and $30 to do the online checkin for you. Someone must be paying for those.

Upfront disclaimer: I work for FC but I'm not an agent. Things will certainly be different in future, and not all the people or companies will remain. That said, I think there are still a few things that they do which will will continue. Any ordinary person can do it, but will they? There...

I work for Flight Centre, but I'm not an agent, andI may be wrong so take this with a grain of salt. The information I've seen is that you need written (not text) confirmation in a format that is acceptable to the UAE government, but it's not clear what that is. It also needs to be recent, I...

Some government taxes in certain countries are non-refundable, so you wouldn't get them back. However if you use the credit to go to any other destination you'll also lose them, and they don't usually make up a lot of the value so largely it's not an issue. Refunds go to the original form of...

Another likely factor is that not all bookings are direct QF bookings, they have bookings from travel agents and OTAs too. Even though the current system is terrible, it's largely a single system for QF-direct, real TA and OTA bookings. If they build a better system, how are agent bookings...

I imagine part of it is history of PSS/GDSes, part of it is history of the airline / agent relationship, and part of it is the difference between "credit vouchers" that are done as ticket exchanges and those which are just a money value. When you have a credit in the form of exchangeable...

Seeing a flight for "offline point" makes sense if you understand what is actually happening behind the scenes in the airline's PSS and the GDSes. I have more experience with Sabre and QF uses Amadeus, but it should be similar. This is simplification of what actually happens, but hopefully...

I think that the ratio of credits versus refunds will make quite a bit of difference, and for QF and VA how soon domestic restrictions are relaxed. More credits means the airlines get to keep the money for now, which obviously helps since it reduced the negative cashflow due to refunds. With...

I I think everyone agrees it would be good, it’s just that if we’re going to do it we want to do it well, and given a fixed about of development capacity do we do that, or something else which people also want. I’d love to also tell people they can get a free stopover on their trip (obviously...

With many OTAs you can’t, they need to offer you a fare family up-sell, and a lot don’t do that for long-haul flight or meta-search traffic. We’re actually debating at work right now about how many people would use it, so if it’s worth the development effort versus doing something else people...

I’ve checked and this is what is happening, the “light” is a light combined with a standard Getaway, and the rules for the sale getaway don’t allow combination with other fare families.

I can’t say for sure (I can check when I get to work with GDS access) but that kind of thing normally happens when the “Getaway” is a sale Getaway, and the “Light” is actually one leg Light and one leg Getaway (so taking rules from the more restrictive Light) but the Light can only be combined...

I booked with JetAbroad about Easter last year for a Germany-Colombia multi-leg open jaw that no-one else would sell me at a vaguely reasonable price. The fare components were two half-returns, but everyone priced them as one-ways except Jet Abroad, for some reason I haven't been able to figure...

The majority of international leisure travelers (excluding maybe the likes of AFF members) also don’t often make changes to long haul flights either, so I don’t think too many of their target market will be concerned by not being able to do that.