Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[Daver6]

BA J or CX J from HKG to LHR? Which is preferable?

I'd choose CX over BA.

 

[motef]

I would choose CX

 

[ozflier]

I am hoping that my next OWAward booking will hold – it is in March 2022.

I have a decision to make and would be grateful for your thoughts.
I accept that a large crystal ball is needed when offering an opinion on the following.

Two of us are trying to fly Brisbane to Amman in business and current booked flights are

Day 1 BNE 0050 – HKG 0740 on CX

Day 1 HKG-DOH on QR at 2025.

Issues

• My partner both hate overnight long distance flights
• There is no daytime flight BNE-HKG on QF. None on the horizon either according to QF press releases – would need to go via SYD.
• QR offer direct services from BNE/SYD/MEL to DOH usually daily . However, despite business class award seats on offer on EF and available using AA and BA airpoints , QF does not offer J award seats ( ? political reasons )
• I am not comfortable hanging round HKG on day 1 either being incredibly bored in the terminal for over 12 hours or maybe risking going landside and travelling downtown ( who knows what the Chinese government will think about Aussies then)
• I could fly QF to SIN arrive 1750 then connect on QR to DOH departing at 2025.( award J seats available on both ) However, there is no legal connecting time in SIN so QFF cannot issue a thru ticket BNE-DOH transiting on Day 1. ( I’d need to stay overnight )

Options

• Either keep the current booking departing 0040 and spend 12 hours in HKG.
• Connect to HKG via SYD depart on QR at 0500 BNE arriving HKG 1505 via CX and depart on QR at 2025 no doubt after spending some time in the J lounge. There is a QF flight to HKG that will connect but no J award or “I” seats on offer.

I have changed this booking 4 times from the original date in 2020 and am cautiously hopeful that it will go ahead this time– I just want to reduce the chances that some glitch may adversely affect the earlier flights in this booking .

Really grateful for your advice.

 

[Daver6]

I am hoping that my next OWAward booking will hold – it is in March 2022.

I have a decision to make and would be grateful for your thoughts.
I accept that a large crystal ball is needed when offering an opinion on the following.

Two of us are trying to fly Brisbane to Amman in business and current booked flights are

Day 1 BNE 0050 – HKG 0740 on CX

Day 1 HKG-DOH on QR at 2025.

Issues

• My partner both hate overnight long distance flights
• There is no daytime flight BNE-HKG on QF. None on the horizon either according to QF press releases – would need to go via SYD.
• QR offer direct services from BNE/SYD/MEL to DOH usually daily . However, despite business class award seats on offer on EF and available using AA and BA airpoints , QF does not offer J award seats ( ? political reasons )
• I am not comfortable hanging round HKG on day 1 either being incredibly bored in the terminal for over 12 hours or maybe risking going landside and travelling downtown ( who knows what the Chinese government will think about Aussies then)
• I could fly QF to SIN arrive 1750 then connect on QR to DOH departing at 2025.( award J seats available on both ) However, there is no legal connecting time in SIN so QFF cannot issue a thru ticket BNE-DOH transiting on Day 1. ( I’d need to stay overnight )

Options

• Either keep the current booking departing 0040 and spend 12 hours in HKG.
• Connect to HKG via SYD depart on QR at 0500 BNE arriving HKG 1505 via CX and depart on QR at 2025 no doubt after spending some time in the J lounge. There is a QF flight to HKG that will connect but no J award or “I” seats on offer.

I have changed this booking 4 times from the original date in 2020 and am cautiously hopeful that it will go ahead this time– I just want to reduce the chances that some glitch may adversely affect the earlier flights in this booking .

Really grateful for your advice.

That really is unfortunate about not being able to grab QR flights out of AU I presume it's the same problem out of PER?

Have you considered other destinations in the region that QR might fly to? Maybe NZ?

I agree that overnight flight on CX from BNE to HKG isn't ideal. You start the entire trip with a rubbish sleep and then spend 12 hours feeling tired either at the airport or in town. Sorry I don't have better advice.

 

[ozflier]

Yes, same problem out of Perth and the AKL flight connects thru BNE and the same lack of QFF award J seats applies.

 

[AL10]

I'd choose CX over BA.

Thanks for that. I ended up booking JAL from home to LHR. Few days stopover in Tokyo. Then will add on sectors.

 

[acinod]

Is there a spreadsheet/tool available that tells me what all the different possible flight routes are?

The best I've used at the moment is Google Flights

Google Flights

www.google.com

 

[Jacques Vert]

Is there a spreadsheet/tool available that tells me what all the different possible flight routes are?

The best I've used at the moment is Google Flights

Google Flights

www.google.com

Not sure exactly what you are looking for but I find this website can be helpful: ✈ FlightConnections - All flights worldwide on a flight map!

Set "alliances" to Oneworld.

(Note: Not necessarily 100% accurate.)

 

[motef]

A good tip i believe i read in this thread is Wikipedia to start with.

Search for the airport in Wikpedia by the Airport code ie SYD and every lisiting has the section "Airlines and Destinations - Passenger" have a look at the Oneworld airlines and see where they fly to and then keep doing that for all the destinations your are interested in and slowly build up some potential routings



Then use Great Circle Mapper to check the distances and segments and you can come up with a few potential options to stay within the rules

You will notice a few times i have said options. Its really important to have options for example if you are loking at SYD - LHR dont just look at SYD - SIN - LHR, also think about SYD - HND - LHR, or SYD - DOH - LHR or SYD- YVR - LHR etc

 

[Jacques Vert]

I agree that Wikipedia is an excellent source and I use it regularly along with ✈ FlightConnections - All flights worldwide on a flight map!. Sometimes I find using the list on Wiki is best, and sometimes seeing routes on a map helps to give perspective. The two together work well for me.

 

[GaryLG]

Not sure exactly what you are looking for but I find this website can be helpful: ✈ FlightConnections - All flights worldwide on a flight map!

Set "alliances" to Oneworld.

(Note: Not necessarily 100% accurate.)

Looks like you can only set alliances with an account which needs payment - are there any alternatives?

 

[Jacques Vert]

Looks like you can only set alliances with an account which needs payment - are there any alternatives?

Sorry, I forgot I have a subscription; it's been too long since we have been able to fly internationally.

For those who don't want to pay you can leave alliances as "All" and pick out the routes/airlines for the alliance of your choice. A little bit tedious perhaps.

 

[GaryLG]

Sorry, I forgot I have a subscription; it's been too long since we have been able to fly internationally.

For those who don't want to pay you can leave alliances as "All" and pick out the routes/airlines for the alliance of your choice. A little bit tedious perhaps.

No need to apologies, I just hoped you knew some trick but yes of course it's easy enough to do.

 

[SYD]

Looks like you can only set alliances with an account which needs payment - are there any alternatives?

Doesn’t the OW RTW booking / planning engine provide this info? ie provide direct and connecting flight options between cities to build up the itinary.

Enjoy great savings on your Round the World flights.

Booking Round the World flights is easier and smarter with oneworld. Choose from over 1100 cities when you book a oneworld Explorer Round the World ticket.

rtw-qantas.oneworld.com

But obviously (unfortunately!) it doesn’t show award availability….

 

[vetrade]

Doesn’t the OW RTW booking / planning engine provide this info? ie provide direct and connecting flight options between cities to build up the itinary.

Enjoy great savings on your Round the World flights.

Booking Round the World flights is easier and smarter with oneworld. Choose from over 1100 cities when you book a oneworld Explorer Round the World ticket.

rtw-qantas.oneworld.com

But obviously (unfortunately!) it doesn’t show award availability….

The old OW website used to have a particularly handy mapping feature whereby you could select a city and the map would display every destination route available from there flown by any OW airline. Could also filter for direct or indirect flight options and select which particular airline/s you wanted to display.

Sadly, the new and improved website scrapped that tool and the mapping tool they have now doesn't have anywhere near the functionality of the old one, to the degree that it hasn't been useful to me at all. One example; if you build an itinerary starting with SYD - JNB - ARN........ it shows a direct connection between JNB and ARN, when the reality is that there are none and you can only fly to ARN indirectly via DOH or LHR.

 

[SYD]

The old OW website used to have a particularly handy mapping feature whereby you could select a city and the map would display every destination route available from there flown by any OW airline. Could also filter for direct or indirect flight options and select which particular airline/s you wanted to display.

Sadly, the new and improved website scrapped that tool and the mapping tool they have now doesn't have anywhere near the functionality of the old one, to the degree that it hasn't been useful to me at all. One example; if you build an itinerary starting with SYD - JNB - ARN........ it shows a direct connection between JNB and ARN, when the reality is that there are none and you can only fly to ARN indirectly via DOH or LHR.

Ah, that’s how it remember it. Haven’t tried to use it for ages.

The OW app (any probably website) does provide options between city pairs upto 2 stops. Although not every conceivable connecting combo but you’d hope it had most/all non-stop/direct options.

Although a warning, I put in SYD-LHR next year and QF1 and BA16 show as “non-stop” services!

 

[Jacques Vert]

Doesn’t the OW RTW booking / planning engine provide this info? ie provide direct and connecting flight options between cities to build up the itinary.

Although a warning, I put in SYD-LHR next year and QF1 and BA16 show as “non-stop” services!

Indeed, and as @vetrade said, the current version of the website is cough. You have to choose the cabin class, number of travellers, put in the city pairs you want to visit, complete a full RTW itinerary, enter the date of travel, and then you get a list of flights/connections for that date only (doesn't allow for routes that have less than daily flights or different number of flights/flight times on different days).

The Oneworld tool has its place but if you only want to identify route options from a particular city, then I find Wikipedia and Flight Connections are much more useful and much quicker.

 

[GaryLG]

The old OW website used to have a particularly handy mapping feature whereby you could select a city and the map would display every destination route available from there flown by any OW airline. Could also filter for direct or indirect flight options and select which particular airline/s you wanted to display.

Sadly, the new and improved website scrapped that tool and the mapping tool they have now doesn't have anywhere near the functionality of the old one, to the degree that it hasn't been useful to me at all. One example; if you build an itinerary starting with SYD - JNB - ARN........ it shows a direct connection between JNB and ARN, when the reality is that there are none and you can only fly to ARN indirectly via DOH or LHR.

The other problem with the site is the rules are different for OW Explorer so it gives you errors for things that you can do on an award flight.

 

[moa999]

I agree that Wikipedia is an excellent source and I use it regularly along with ✈ FlightConnections - All flights worldwide on a flight map!.

Useful now that mileagemonkey has seemingly bit the dust

 

[vetrade]

After some info on JNB - MRU award availability. BA affiliate Kulula flies this route 3 times a week but there doesn't seem to be any award seats available at all. Has anyone got experience with awards on this route?
Thanks