Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[11sjw]

Thanks heaps.

I gather you have to have one of the paid subscriptions to see award seats?

I believe so. They do have 5 day free trial period.

 

[BriarFlyer]

Were you trying to book ADL-DFW or just SYD-DFW?

Interestingly when i search ADL-DFW there is no availability but when i search just SYD-DFW i get availability like you see above.

When i seperate the legs using the multi-city booking tool it is succesful.

My question: is this booking successful right through to payment? I ask because I'm having trouble with booking 2-leg QF flights domestic-international or international-domestic. Using the multi-city tool I can select the 2 flights but it errors out before payment.

I've tried this on several routes and in the end I booked the international flight alone, so I didn't miss the award seats. I thought I'd just call and add the domestic legs later. But nope. Several calls, several operators say that it can't be done. They don't know why, they just can't book it even though the domestic flights are showing as available awards.

Most frustrating.

 

[Noah Count]

I ask because I'm having trouble with booking 2-leg QF flights domestic-international or international-domestic. Using the multi-city tool I can select the 2 flights but it errors out before payment.

Errors just before payment is normally an indication that the seat is not available. When this happens I will normally check EF and if needed will contact QF.

 

[gilldo]

Were you trying to book ADL-DFW or just SYD-DFW?

SYD-DFW was one leg I looked at as part of a multi-city booking.

Even by itself (to prove a point) I couldn't do it.

 

[BriarFlyer]

Errors just before payment is normally an indication that the seat is not available. When this happens I will normally check EF and if needed will contact QF.

EF shows 8 seats available on the domestic flight that QF operators "can't" add to one of my QF international flights, already booked. Sorry if this is off-topic, but it's an indication of the frustrations we face putting together an itinerary. I'm wondering if this is another of those instances where they won't let me add flights during some designated peak-hour time as was alluded to up-thread.

 

[Noah Count]

@BriarFlyer I do understand the frustration as I have recently finished putting together a trip that started out as J however in the process noticed a SYD-SIN F (BA) seat which you do not normally see and was able to be booked so the trip changed to F. In the end I was able to get 4 sectors in F - x2 BA and x2 JL. As a side note if booking F, x4 international sectors (wide body) is the minimum I am after to justify the extra points. During the booking process I often saw phantom availability with BA and also had issues with domestic sectors which QF had to fix. I also ran into issues with agents telling me they could not see availability that I could see. On a couple of occasions the agent said let me try another way and was able to make it work, my take on this is there must be more than one way to add bookings and some agents are just better than others.

 

[adenda]

Yep - had similar experiences with agents checking "another system" to sucessfully find seats that were otherwise unavailable. And only the better agents seemed to know about it.

 

[Danger]

Recent reports here suggest the Qantas booking engine has reached a new low of usefulness.

 

[BillW]

I've posted a separate query in an insurance thread but, relating to this thread it had been my intention to construct a multi city OW Award itinerary that ended in Britain or Europe. But the insurance PDFs I am looking at state that the travel must commence and end in Australia.
Is there a way around this?

 

[Danger]

I've posted a separate query in an insurance thread but, relating to this thread it had been my intention to construct a multi city OW Award itinerary that ended in Britain or Europe. But the insurance PDFs I am looking at state that the travel must commence and end in Australia.
Is there a way around this?

Are you located in Australia? If so, how are you getting to Britain or Europe? I'm very familiar with the ANZ cover and you only need to charge $250 to the card before travel commences, which would be before departing Australia. That doesn't have to be on your actual, big OWA.

 

[MTAB]

I apologise if this is too big an ask but basically I am trying to book a Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward with which has the following basic structure: early March (1 to15) CNS to YUL; 14-16 days in YUL; YUL to SYD; 2/3 days in SYD; SYD to CNS. I want to get one J ticket (for the wife) and one Y ticket (for me).

It has been a very frustrating experience; I chose an itinerary and dates and after the Search Flights function it will often give an error message (indicating one or more of my links has no award flights), I then have to try different dates and/or intermediate airports, etc. One (almost) solution I have found is the one below. As can be seen there are lots of transits and inefficient routings but at least I got the J routing for 318,000 points and $2279.83 and the Y routing for 132,000 points and $1638.53. Unfortunately whenever I try to add the SYD to CNS last flight the whole itinerary has an error message. To me the itinerary looks likes it abides by the rules but I must be missing something. Also inexplicably I can’t get exactly the same combo of flights for Flight 2 — it only offers me QF 553 and CX 138 for Y, not a major problem as there is only an hour gap between the two QF flights.

Flight 1: 14 March QF 713 CNS-BNE
Flight 2: 14 March QF 549 BNE-SYD
CX 138 SYD-HKG
Flight 3: 15 March CX 723 HKG-KUL
QR 849 KUL-DOH
Flight 4: 16 March QR 1397 DOH-CMN
AT 208 CMN-YUL
Flight 5: 30 March BA 94 YUL-LHR
BA2033 LHR-DOH
Flight 6: 1 April QR904 DOH-MEL
QF 486 MEL-SYD

Any insights or suggestions would really be appreciated but I will understand if none are forthcoming, I realise it is a big ask.
I may try and use Award Flight Assist as I sense it may be able to save me time (both planning and travel) and money. I suspect that whatever my final itinerary (if I can find a reasonable one) I’ll need to pay to get it booked as it requires securing both the Y and J sets of flights.

I also apologise if I haven’t posted this in the correct place (one world award...).

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Are you located in Australia? If so, how are you getting to Britain or Europe? I'm very familiar with the ANZ cover and you only need to charge $250 to the card before travel commences, which would be before departing Australia. That doesn't have to be on your actual, big OWA.

YMMV but I specifically asked ANZ’s CC underwriters if they would cover a nested trip and they said ‘no’. Although I didn’t pursue that in writing.

 

[craven morehead]

@Mattg

 

[Noah Count]

@MTAB have you considered flying into the likes of YYZ, JFK, BOS, ORD and getting a revenue set from these locations to YUL. If you could get into YYZ you could catch the train to YUL, from the US to CA flights are quite cheap. Finding flights into major hubs is usually easier and you may have to call QF to get any other sectors you find added to your booking. As for price some of the carriers you are using have high carrier charges. Have a look at the OW thread there is heaps of good information there.

 

[MTAB]

Thanks for your time and suggestions. I have tried YUL-JFK-LAX-SYD, YUL-ORD-LAX-MEL, YUL-DFW-SYD etc all which can all be done OW. Unfortunately these tries each take about ten minutes to explore and all failed either from a lack of award flights or the dreaded “i” indicating one of the supposed long haul J flights will be by Y. Your suggestion of having a paid leg does open up more possibilities.
YYZ is not attractive any more; I need a car and for the last twenty years or so (minus the COVID years) we have typically landed there, got a car and driven to Ottawa-Hull and environs our primary destination to catch up with my in-laws and Canadian relatives and friends. We are getting older (72+) and I just can’t face the thought of the 401 in winter. My MIL is 93 so we need to see her soon and I thought YUL would provide an easier drive.

 

[RichardMEL]

Understand that you want to go to YUL direct as much as possible, but I also agree nearby locations would be easier - specially those with a large oneworld presence such as NYC, ORD, BOS. You can then get separate flights into YUL and still get your car and all that. Though it seems YOW may also suit since you mention Ottawa? AC's Canada dominance means you're going to be very limited for options directly into Montreal.

I'm also very confused why you would look at routings involving the other side of the planet ie LHR and DOH/HKG/KUL to get to North America. I understand direct routings are going to be very difficult to find specially with just a few months notice, but given your ages and not wanting to deal with the rigmarole do you REALLY want to be bouncing around Asia, the ME and UK (and adding huge surcharges eg APD) if you don't actually want to stay in any of those places? You only appear to want to go to YUL and SYD or am I missing something obvious here?


Reward space into YUL will no doubt be very limited to as tend to be much smaller guage aircraft and even single class flying in. Have you looked at, for example, the J/Y combo reward to NYC, DFW or ORD for example and then 2xY into YUL< or even paid tix on AC? Or QF SYD-YVR then purchase AC to YUL?

Finally why not break up the trip into international and domestic? For example look for SYD-Canada as rewards and you could do CNS-SYD-CNS as separate tix - either reward or revenue (I tink these would possibly be much easier to deal with) and reduce the complexity that way. It may cost a little more in points I understand, but I have the impression points balance is not the prime concern here.

My four cents worth.

good luck.

 

[RichardMEL]

Additional thought. Not oneworld, but what about Westjet as QF partner in Canada? If you can get to YVR on QF for example, or say another WS gateway then you can redeem potentially on WS who seem to have decent service to/from Montreal. Again you may need to split rewards to make this work.

 

[Noah Count]

@MTAB As you published your travel travel dates I did a quick search on the QF web site for x2 PAX in J, if you do not have the points for both to travel in J, Y was also avail on the same flights. This has a long layover in NRT but if both in J you would be able to spend the time in the JL lounge or have a look at the other OW lounges at NRT. You would also have to over night at BOS however there are hotels near the airport. The fees and taxes for x2 in J would be $1475.56. There is also availability to get CNS-MEL, if you are not aware of the codes U is J see last image. To book this you need to start in MEL and call QF to add the domestic flight CNS-MEL as the QF multi-city booking engine will error if you try to book more than 5 sectors. Booking from MEL rtn to CNS can be done online and I was able to get through to the payment page. Not sure if this works for you but it seems like a feasible option to meet your dates and getting to YUL. All flights are J with the exception of YUL-PHL but that is only 1.5 hours. Also the taxes are significantly lower than the $3918.36 you had in your original post and with the dollars you save in taxes you could drop the internal US flights and pay to fly direct BOS-YUL and YUL-LAX. Good luck.

 

[MTAB]

Thank you so much for your efforts. What you have researched looks as though it will work well. I really appreciate all your suggestions.
I am keen on one J and one Y as I am small and have never seen the added value of J (either $s or points) unless of course my employer paid for it! I am OW Lifetime Gold so I don’t need the J for OW lounge entry.

Post automatically merged: Nov 16, 2021

Additional thought. Not oneworld, but what about Westjet as QF partner in Canada? If you can get to YVR on QF for example, or say another WS gateway then you can redeem potentially on WS who seem to have decent service to/from Montreal. Again you may need to split rewards to make this work.

Thanks, much appreciate the suggestion. I will take this onboard in exploring options.

 

[MTAB]

Understand that you want to go to YUL direct as much as possible, but I also agree nearby locations would be easier - specially those with a large oneworld presence such as NYC, ORD, BOS. You can then get separate flights into YUL and still get your car and all that. Though it seems YOW may also suit since you mention Ottawa? AC's Canada dominance means you're going to be very limited for options directly into Montreal.

I'm also very confused why you would look at routings involving the other side of the planet ie LHR and DOH/HKG/KUL to get to North America. I understand direct routings are going to be very difficult to find specially with just a few months notice, but given your ages and not wanting to deal with the rigmarole do you REALLY want to be bouncing around Asia, the ME and UK (and adding huge surcharges eg APD) if you don't actually want to stay in any of those places? You only appear to want to go to YUL and SYD or am I missing something obvious here?


Reward space into YUL will no doubt be very limited to as tend to be much smaller guage aircraft and even single class flying in. Have you looked at, for example, the J/Y combo reward to NYC, DFW or ORD for example and then 2xY into YUL< or even paid tix on AC? Or QF SYD-YVR then purchase AC to YUL?

Finally why not break up the trip into international and domestic? For example look for SYD-Canada as rewards and you could do CNS-SYD-CNS as separate tix - either reward or revenue (I tink these would possibly be much easier to deal with) and reduce the complexity that way. It may cost a little more in points I understand, but I have the impression points balance is not the prime concern here.

My four cents worth.

good luck.

That’s a valuable four cents. Really helpful suggestions. I’ll explore tonight and see what’s possible. One of our trips to Canada was direct to YOW ( via LAX and ORD) but generally I have found YOW OW flight availability a bit limite and this time I didn’t consider it — but I will now. In earlier days I din’t mind YYZ so much as I had good friends and family there and the 401 in non-snow months was OK. Now, my TO friends and family have very sadly all passed away.