Booking award flights - disadvantages to booking individual sectors?

[Battymum]

I still have a couple of weeks up my sleeve - I am prepared to fly out of Melbourne or Adelaide if necessary - but then i realise all my backup plans are also on QR-

 

[KarenD]

Haha yep our backups are all QR but from other cities. The only direct flight I could find in August 2020 was from PERTH to Doha. It's all just vanished! I'm trying to book for real on the weekend so am prepared to call up if needed. Otherwise we are flexible with dates so can wait and see.

 

[Battymum]

I am willing to fly from Perth - but the only availabilty on the direct flight I am seeing is in First and I might be short on points for that.
Unless I put DH up the back!!

 

[KarenD]

Noticed the same thing. If we fly first, we won't have enough points to come home lol.

 

[Battymum]

Please let us know your outcome on Monday Karen.

 

[froggerADL]

One benefit of booking 2 one way QF Award flights is the additional flexibility if you need to change your return flight. If you book it as a return journey then you are limited to date changes only, on the same route, airline and class of travel on the inbound flights. With a one way you can make any change you like up to 24 hours before scheduled departure.

I got caught by this a couple of years ago. I booked ADL-MEL-HKT return Jetstar flights in J. I wanted to come home a few days early but there was no Jetstar availability so I was stuck. Had I booked it as one way flights I could have changed the inbound flights to the available HKT-HKG-ADL CX flights.

 

[KarenD]

Of course. Please also let me know if you find any info or if it all starts working again!

 

[KarenD]

OK i spoke to Qantas on the phone today. They can see commercial flights SYD to DOH, but also can't see any reward availability 361 days out, or any other days in August 2020, so I can't even call up to process my booking tomorrow. The only flights I can book are SYD to HKG on Cathay, HKG to DOH, DOH to LHR on Qatar but the connection times are not great and it uses more points than i would like. We are flexible with dates and can wait until next week to try again, and hope it gets resolved, but if it isn't resolved next week we will have to bite the bullet and book through HKG. Can't sit around and wait for SYD to DOH, as DOH to LHR still seems to be available and we would miss out on this flight by waiting for the flight out of Sydney. What a mess!

 

[Battymum]

There seems to be nothing for the return either. I have been looking at options this morning and figured we could go via HKG - I asked myself why i am willing to transit domestically but not through HKG? It sort of makes more sense, two evenly length flights as opposed to 1 long and one short, the lounges in HKG are great and Cathay has a great product. Its a few more points but, hopefully will be able to manage that.

 

[Battymum]

Also very tempted by first class to Perth on the return if i can manage the points and then a few days additional on the west coast before coming home. When will i ever get to fly first class, and the first lounge in DOH looks amazing.
i have a new Qantas platinum CC which will give me 20k points per month, it just depends how quickly they are posted.

 

[KarenD]

It's like you are exactly the same as me! I also have the Qantas credit card and I'm almost finished my first month, hopefully the points get posted quickly.

We planned to book tomorrow but now that's not looking likely. We are flexible so will watch it through the week and see what happens, and I think, same as you, will consider either via HKG or first via Perth as our options. Once we have the flight to London booked in, we will tackle the return flight. Also have enough velocity pts for business in Etihad on the way home so have some options if all else fails.

Still holding out hope it's just a computer glitch and they'll all be back in a few days though!

 

[KarenD]

Also starting to notice Doha to London is not available direct, and only via Helsinki

 

[Battymum]

Also Karen are you set on flying QR? We flew to LHR last year on Cathay via HKG and it was great.

We are making that trip again in a few weeks but unfortunately we did not decide this until June and there was no award availabilty to be found so we are in economy on this one
This why i am so determined to find award flights for next year. we are heading to Greece and Turkey and QR has a direct flight to Mykonos from DOH, so thats why I am set on using them.

 

[KarenD]

Not absolutely set on QR but it was looking so good, and we were all ready to book after all our "practicing". We have gotten ourselves excited about flying the "worlds best business class" on the DOH to LHR route in q suites.
I checked out the SYD-PER-DOH-LHR idea, it's a lot of extra points and i would be about 60k points short to come home (although can use velocity if needed).

With everything that is going on in HKG right now, we would prefer to avoid it if we can. I would be more inclined to book emirates but their award flights come out a lot later. Have heard to avoid BA so won't be using them, although seems to be some availability around for business and eve first.

Let's just hope the QR issue resolves itself.

 

[KarenD]

OK 10am today SYD to DOH August 20, 2020 came back online. Based on what's been happening, i panicked and booked it, but now have to sort out a change fee to add the onwards flight tomorrow, and hope it doesnt get snapped up while i'm waiting on hold or something with Qantas. But at least we have SYD to DOH booked!

 

[jaseb]

Hi all - if my itinerary / e-ticket PDF shows both a booking reference number and a "ticket no" (for each individual on the booking) - can I breath a sigh of relief? Does this mean the booking is fully ticketed?
edit: I SMS'd Qantas regardless and they have confirmed the booking is fully ticketed! Hurrah!

 

[MathNerd]

Hi all - if my itinerary / e-ticket PDF shows both a booking reference number and a "ticket no" (for each individual on the booking) - can I breath a sigh of relief? Does this mean the booking is fully ticketed?

Yes.

 

[jaseb]

As an update, we managed to get the outbound flights we wanted:

QR905 - MEL > DOH & QR037 - DOH > CDG

Now the nervous waiting game begins again whilst waiting for the dates to open up for the inbound... we were thinking we'd like to try an EK product on the way home, but as they're released ~3 weeks after the QR seats open up, we'll likely grab QR when (if) they become available. We will be finishing our trip in Munich (Oktoberfest) so have plenty of options "close by" to start the journey home from (on QR/EK):

MUN, FRA, ZRH, DUS, HAM, VIE, PRG, TXL, CDG, MXP...

 

[jaseb]

I haven't seen any flights from DOH > MEL/SYD/ADE for a few weeks now so we've settled on Europe - Doha - Singapore and will make our way home from there...

I'll keep an eye on flights in case they are released and if so will have the booking changed to get us all the way home directly from DOH if possible.

 

[Battymum]

I have a IST-SIN leg booked on QR.
Did not hold much hope for getting an award flight to SYD - and one way flights even in economy seemed very expensive. But miraculously I was able to get us on a BA flight home. (Had to buy top up points to do it -which makes me sad)
Actually looking forward to a couple of days in Singapore - have not been there before.