Changing bookings many times

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rpmsol

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Jun 11, 2006
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I am often quoting IT consulting type work inclusive of travel, so like to minimize the cost while maintaining flexability and picking flights home that suit my family life. I also need to be very responsive to my clients, so often don't know exactly what days I will travel.

I have recently started making (K) bookings for multiple days when I may need to travel, and the night before that travel day, if I dont need to travel, I shift the booking a couple of weeks forward. (I used to do it a day earlier, but got caught out a couple of times and had to buy very expensive seats.) This means that Qantas have a fair bit of MYmoney in THEIR account, but I dont get stuck paying for maximum price economy or missing out on my preffered flights, or possibly the only appropriate flights. Seems to be a good deal to me.

So my question is - Do Qantas frown on this sort of behavior? Will I get a rude shock one day and find out that I have made too many changes to a single flight booking after reaching a limit on numbers of changes?

Does any body else do this?

The only risk I see of using this buying strategy is that if forget to make the change, I end up paying for the flights.

Cheers,
Paul.
 
A few gotchas you may need to be aware of.

Your tickets are valid for one year from the purchase date. Changing the date does not extend the validity, so you need to use them within one year of purchase.

If Qantas increase their fuel fines, or other charges my experience is that they will reassess the fare when you change it. Might lead to a few extra $ being charged.

If you have used 1/2 your ticket and need to have it changed, it can take a really long time (like 15 minutes) for Qantas to recalculate the fare. Online changes also may not be available for these half used tickets.
 
Thanks Mal,

No worries about the year.... as I do a couple of return flights a week. The trick is picking the days I need to travel more than a day in advance!

That reminds me of a gotcha that I have already been hit with. When a booked fare class reduces in price, e.g. by $1, to change the booking, you need to go up to the next level, which can be quite expensive.

Cheers,
Paul.
 
rpmsol said:
That reminds me of a gotcha that I have already been hit with. When a booked fare class reduces in price, e.g. by $1, to change the booking, you need to go up to the next level, which can be quite expensive.

No probs. Others will be sure to turn up with their own advice as well.

As for the gotcha you listed, I thought that had been resolved for online changes. Certainly when I tried to change a ticket around 7 weeks ago it offered me cheaper fares than my current one (and let me use some of the credit towards the change fee).

Oh, and one last piece of advice - stick with buying your tickets through Qantas, or through another airline/TA who lets you make changes easily. Very annoying to have to make changes at 6am on a Sat/Sun morning and have no-one answering the phone, or being slugged an extra $20+ for every change over and above the Qantas change fee. The online change system at Qantas is actually pretty good and prevents these issues normally.
 
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Actually, the increase in fare applied to a Super Saver fare. I'm tending to stick with the Y fares now, unless I know for sure I'm going to travel. (Changing a cheap fare a few times doesn't make it very cheap at $38.50 per change).
 
rpmsol, I know exactly your position - the same as mine. I started about 3 years buying Flexi Saver fares for my outbound flights ex-BNE and all additional flights in my itinerary K class or above for similar reasons to yours.

You should print out a copy or bookmark this link to know your position for all of the fares. I have also nearly lost my K class fares because of late arrival to airports, as similar to you I change my flights regularly.

I rarely change via the web, because I'd rather talk to the Premium Desk and because I am on premium fares, can change without fee (other than uplift to the next fare basis). Alas, I'll lose that access on 1 March 2007 :(
 
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