Award flight assistance requested

[Buzzard]

Mattg you deserve a big pat on the back for being so helpful to ramboflyer. I enjoyed reading your posts and learned from them too, think about alternative routing options and you might just get to where you want to go.

 

[Mattg]

Mattg you really are a gold mine of advice. I rang Qantas about the Iberian flights when I saw 2 J seats available thinking they might be able to book them rather than me getting more error messages but no go. The lady I spoke to could not have been more helpful. She went looking for other options and after several tries came up with 2 J seats on a direct flight on Alitalia! After much deliberation sge said the seats are exempt from fees and taxes. I have an email confirmation and booking number so all good. Thank you Sally from Brisbane call centre and Mattg!! Now all I have to do is book 2 economy seats from MEL-LAX and all done

I'm glad you were able to snag those seats to Rome! Quite a find, that was.

If you book two economy seats on QF93 MEL-LAX, I suggest purchasing the "saver" fare as it is upgradable using points. Of course, there's no guarantees, but it's certainly worth a try. From memory, upgrading to business costs 72,000 points each and premium economy is 45,000 points each. You can even choose to put in a business upgrade request, and also request premium economy as a backup option. PE's not a bad fallback option, if you ask me!

I hope you have a great trip! Sounds like it should be.

 

[ramboflyer]

I think it's worthwhile sharing my learning's from this experience which is our first overseas trip:

1. In order to book a RTW in J for 280,000 points pp you need to be flexible with your travel dates (up to 1-2 weeks in some cases) and your stopovers. In my case the return flight from London is via Johannesburg instead of say Dubai. Because we are travelling with other people who had a fairly strict timetable as they have to go back to work we were limited on both counts except the return flight when they have already gone home.
2. Ring Qantas if you cant see on the site what you are trying to book. In my case a very helpful lady found 2 J seats from Boston to Rome that apparently was not an easy thing to do. I found the Qantas site has limited functionality for ordinary punters
3. Use the vast resources in this forum. I was lucky to have Mattg spend a lot of time helping me out. BTW in case any moderators are wondering I complied with the rules of this thread.
4. Be prepared to pay fairly large fees, taxes, etc. For 2 bookings I paid about $3000. Still a lot less than actually paying full fare though.

 

[Princess Fiona]

Just to clarify :
Did you end up booking a One World 280K J Award as well as the Alitalia flights?

 

[ramboflyer]

No, due to time constraints couldn't book the one world 280000 point trip. Booked BOS/ROM in business, LON/JBG in premium economy & JBG/SYD in business. Burned about 424000 points for the 2 of us but I'm happy with the end result. Planning on lots of rail travel in the US & Europe so that's 2 out of 6 and 2 are short haul

 

[Magpie10]

Just catching up on this thread and I agree Mattg you are a marvel. Really provided some insight for us newbies, who are yet to book flights on points.

 

[support]

As per the rules for threads in this forum, this thread is now closed.