Advice needed: award flight cancellation and knock on issues.

[Jacques Vert]

No

It would. We're actually commencing in PER, so easy enough to go PER to ADL and forget about SYD altogether. Downside is another day off work and missing out with catching up with friends for dinner in Sydney on the Monday evening.

At the moment, leaning towards jut paying for the SAS flights. The refund in fuel fines will roughly cover it. Towards the end of March I'll have an Amex travel credit owing too, so if I book through Amex travel I'll actually be ahead. Will mull it over.

Really appreciate you going to the effort to look up options Thank you!

No thanks required. You have until Oct so you have time to wait and see what QF/AY come up with.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

The $380 in taxes is very strange for a refund.. booking that sector alone attracts total taxes fees and charges of just EUR14 (per person) - or SEK158. How they calculated the refund - and the charge in the first place - is very weird. Unless another carrier somewhere else on the ticket has dropped their fuel surcharges significantly?

 

[Daver6]

The $380 in taxes is very strange for a refund.. booking that sector alone attracts total taxes fees and charges of just EUR14 (per person) - or SEK158. How they calculated the refund - and the charge in the first place - is very weird. Unless another carrier somewhere else on the ticket has dropped their fuel surcharges significantly?

I was surprised at how high it was. Sometimes its better not to ask too many questions perhaps?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I was surprised at how high it was. Sometimes its better not to ask too many questions perhaps?

Double edged sword. It could mean they have made a horrible mistake with the ticketing. Just make sure they haven't dome something like cancel the return out of BGO as well (check ticket numbers against all segments, not just whether the booking shows in MMB etc)

 

[Daver6]

Double edged sword. It could mean they have made a horrible mistake with the ticketing. Just make sure they haven't dome something like cancel the return out of BGO as well (check ticket numbers against all segments, not just whether the booking shows in MMB etc)

Funny you should say that. When she told me the amount I did confirm it was just that one sector.

Where/how does one check the ticket number against all sectors?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Funny you should say that. When she told me the amount I did confirm it was just that one sector.

Where/how does one check the ticket number against all sectors?

You can usually do it through individual airline’s MMB pages, or you can give the airline(s) a call.

If QF has reissued the ticket already there should be new ticket numbers. And hopefully a breakdown of the taxes and fees. Would be interesting to see how they came up with that figure.

 

[pyffii]

So as per instruction from QF, I called back today. Once again, they could find no update from AY. However, very clearly advised me that I need to talk to AY directly as they're the ones who cancelled the flight, to see what other options they might offer. So I called AY who before I really could get into it advised me that I need to deal with QF as that is who I have the booking with. So the old finger pointing. Not my problem, speak to the other person.

Had a similar experience with Iberia JNB-MAD-ATH where IB cancelled the first leg and left us with a misconnect....After being bounced between QF and IB finally found a great QF consultant in Hobart who immediately dealt with the problem by issuing us 2 "D" class seats when there was no "U" available !!! ( my wife and I are both WP )....So a great result....I therefore suggest that you call again get a senior in Hobart and hopefully get the result you really want

 

[madrooster]

Had a similar experience with Iberia JNB-MAD-ATH where IB cancelled the first leg and left us with a misconnect....After being bounced between QF and IB finally found a great QF consultant in Hobart who immediately dealt with the problem by issuing us 2 "D" class seats when there was no "U" available !!! ( my wife and I are both WP )....So a great result....I therefore suggest that you call again get a senior in Hobart and hopefully get the result you really want

FYI staff have previously gotten into trouble for doing this. They're not supposed to do it on awards.

@Daver6 was the original booking created over the phone or on the QF website?

 

[Daver6]

FYI staff have previously gotten into trouble for doing this. They're not supposed to do it on awards.

@Daver6 was the original booking created over the phone or on the QF website?

Website and I made one amendment over the phone a few days later. What's the significance?

 

[madrooster]

Website and I made one amendment over the phone a few days later. What's the significance?

If it was booked via the call centre initially I could pull the ticketing data to figure out where the difference lies.

 

[Aussiejosh]

I had a similar issue with a Cathay flight being cancelled, but the new flight they issued me departed before my connecting flight from BA got into Hong Kong. Took a few phone calls to get it sorted but the way one agent told me is that it is qantas's responsibility to make it work, but first of all they have to try with the original airline who cancelled to give other options. If they come back with no other options then qantas can make different arrangements at no cost to you. They said they would have to escalate it to a different team if it came to that (in my case the request Qantas put in with Cathay was approved after 4 weeks for a flight the following day)

Best bet is to give them a call every couple of days to follow up. Make it clear you have to arrive earlier. If worse comes to worse after a couple of weeks ask to speak to a manager.

Just don't give up.

 

[Daver6]

I think what is unique to my situation is that there is simply only one One World flight per day into Bergen from anywhere. It leaves the only other option for someone to pay for a flight on another airline. That someone would appear to be me.

 

[Daver6]

So I got onto QF today and got the HEL to BGO flight removed and confirmed a refund of $387 would be coming my way. This looks to be sufficient to cover Y flights on SAS via ARN getting me to BGO in time.

On a side note, I took the opportunity to add flights from LHR - MUC - LHR meaning my long haul departure to MLE is now from MUC and not LHR. That's saved as another ~$450 with the addition of a nice side trip for a few days. Best of all, the 5k per pax change fee was waived as they were removed in the AY flight to BGO at the same time.

Big thank you to everyone for all the advice in this thread.

 

[odysseus]

Congrats on the outcome, though disappointing it wasn't resolved by AY.

 

[Daver6]

Congrats on the outcome, though disappointing it wasn't resolved by AY.

Agree...and maybe if I fought more it might have been. But at the end of the day my time and sanity has value and I shouldn't be out of pocket.