Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[yld200]

I had issues yesterday booking some AA award flights. They said the flights weren't available on 'their system', but when he checked the website he could see the availability. He put me on hold for about 40mins and sorted it out with some senior rep, he said they had to manually add the flights in to be able to book them? Don't know if that's related at all.

If that's not the issue, are you sure you're not breaking any of the award rules?

Not breaking any rules as far as I know. I only have ADL-DOH-DXB (stop) DXB-ANK (stop) and want to add LHR-JFK because the only availability suits my needs. I can see 3 flights on the 15th of October but QF rep cant see any, could see them online but wouldnt let them book it.

Strange... 2nd operator said they tried to book it online but it failed, thinks its an issue on AA's end.
Not breaking any rules as far as I know. I

 

[There'sOnlyOneJimmy]

Not breaking any rules as far as I know. I only have ADL-DOH-DXB (stop) DXB-ANK (stop) and want to add LHR-JFK because the only availability suits my needs. I can see 3 flights on the 15th of October but QF rep cant see any, could see them online but wouldnt let them book it.

Strange... 2nd operator said they tried to book it online but it failed, thinks its an issue on AA's end.
Not breaking any rules as far as I know. I

Seeing a stop in DXB makes me wonder whether you have an EK flight in your itinerary. If so, then that's you're issue: EK isn't a OneWorld partner, so can't be in a OneWorld Classis Award fare... :-(

 

[inline64]

After months of planing and many hours on the phone to Qantas I have been able to book the following flights for August and September , thanks to what I have learnt on the forum.

MEL to LAX J
LAX to LAS F
LAS to JFK F
JKF to BCN J
BCN to LHR J
LHR to FCO J
FCO to ATH E
ATH to DOH J
DOH to DXB F
DXB to MEL J

I have had some real challengers and learnt some good and some not so good lessons along the way but the bottom line is I got the around the world in business for 560,000 points and $2132.00 for 2 people, I feel proud of what I have done and now for the accommodation any tips??????

The first and economy flights are outside the OTW 280,000 points

 

[Daver6]

After months of planing and many hours on the phone to Qantas I have been able to book the following flights for August and September , thanks to what I have learnt on the forum.

MEL to LAX J
LAX to LAS F
LAS to JFK F
JKF to BCN J
BCN to LHR J
LHR to FCO J
FCO to ATH E
ATH to DOH J
DOH to DXB F
DXB to MEL J

I have had some real challengers and learnt some good and some not so good lessons along the way but the bottom line is I got the around the world in business for 280,000 points and $2132.00 for 2 people, I feel proud of what I have done and now for the accommodation any tips??????

How did you manage to get F flights in a 280k J booking?

 

[inline64]

I should clarify that the 1st class and economy flights where outside of the OTW 280,000 points.

 

[Kangol]

After months of planing and many hours on the phone to Qantas I have been able to book the following flights for August and September , thanks to what I have learnt on the forum.

MEL to LAX J
LAX to LAS F
LAS to JFK F
JKF to BCN J
BCN to LHR J
LHR to FCO J
FCO to ATH E
ATH to DOH J
DOH to DXB F
DXB to MEL J

I have had some real challengers and learnt some good and some not so good lessons along the way but the bottom line is I got the around the world in business for 560,000 points and $2132.00 for 2 people, I feel proud of what I have done and now for the accommodation any tips??????

The first and economy flights are outside the OTW 280,000 points

Don't want to burst your bubble, but you could get better value from the booking if your travel plans allow it. Your itinerary, excluding F segments and including surface segments (which is how the award is calculated), comes to just over 25k miles. There's 10k of travel you could be taking advantage of.
If you added a PER-MEL or AKL-MEL J return at the start and end, you'd still have plenty of spare miles. If you had trips planned for other domestic/NZ ports outside of MEL before the trip started, you could add on those legs in J and still be on top. Food for thought. If you can't be bothered, then great!

 

[yld200]

Seeing a stop in DXB makes me wonder whether you have an EK flight in your itinerary. If so, then that's you're issue: EK isn't a OneWorld partner, so can't be in a OneWorld Classis Award fare... :-(

All flights are QR at the moment, so EK is not the issue here. I know QR presents its own issues, but I'll see how that pans out during the process.

Flights are still there today so I'll try again later on.

 

[roomer]

here's a tip that newbies like myself (although i think i might say i can take the L plates off)
if you are using a computer for accessing the Qantas site, make sure you go to the bottom of the screen and click on viewing tips and check all the parameters are showing green. This then shows that what you are seeing is real time and what the Qantas operator should be seeing.

Had a situation where I was wanting to book my last flight to complete my itinerary. After keeping an eye out nearly every day, it finally surfaced and when I went to book the operator says no, none are available. I said with confidence, please check again as it is showing on my site and I know it is showing it correctly. He did and it was booked! Mission Accomplished

 

[adrianb]

Just adding our upcoming trip to the list in case it helps anyone - one of the biggest things for me was seeing what's possible from this thread! Our wedding is April 1st (2017) and we've booked our honeymoon on a couple of 280K fares a couple of days after.

We ended up with a bunch of extra flights up our sleeves but ran out of stops. 10 business and 2 economy flights (apparently the fare classes for a 280K award don't let you book AA First seats within the US).

What we've ended up with is:

MEL-PER - QF - Economy (Self-funded) Wedding!
PER-HKG - CX - Business (STOP) 30hrs in HK - had to burn a stop here because finding awards flights to Maldives is terrible.
HKG-MLE - CX - Business (STOP) 5 nights in Maldives
MLE-DOH - QR - Business
DOH-AMS - QR - Business (STOP)
Transit/Land - Amsterdam -> Paris (& Reims) -> Barcelona 3 nights each in Amsterdam, Reims & Barcelona, 1 night in Paris. Travelling between them on the train.
BCN-MAD - IB - Business
MAD-JFK - IB - Business (STOP) 5 nights in NYC - Hamilton tickets acquired!
LAG-SDF - AA (Codeshare) - Economy (STOP) 4 days of bourbon trail in a V8 Camaro!
SDF-CLT - AA (Codeshare) - First (Self-funded - separate award booking) NHRA drag racing at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Clearly this part of the trip is about indulging my inner redneck - and some sort of tolerance test for my amazing bride to be
CLT-DFW - AA - Economy 23h40m transit - more than enough time to do a tour of the Dallas Cowboys home ground (AT&T Stadium) & get some In N Out burger
DFW-SYD - QF - Business
SYD-MEL - QF - Business Home for a rest!

Because we're flying from Melbourne (where we live) to Perth (where the wedding is) a week early we booked and paid for that leg separately or it would have counted as a stop.

By far the biggest drama was getting J seats in/out of Maldives. There were very few awards seats and we tried all kinds of combinations through HK and SG on a variety of different airlines. We would have loved to have just had a transit through to MLE and kept that stop up our sleeve for something on the US West coast or visiting some family in Toronto but had to compromise. The helpfulness and ability to put together workable itineraries of the CSRs at QF varied depending who you got.

We ended up having to book through the QF Customer Service as it said the trip was valid and let us pick flights and everything via the website and then coughped out when you went to pay. Even with a valid itinerary it took 3 different attempts and over a week to get it done with QF help. The booking fee was waived.

 

[yld200]

3rd time lucky - Last night I was able to add an AA flight to my itinerary which is still in early stages, but looks like this:

All flights are x2 for me and the SO.
MEL>ADL QF J
ADL>DOH QR J A350
DOH>DXB QR Y (Stop)
DXB>DOH QR Y
DOH>ESB (Ankara) QR J (Stop)
MAD>LHR IB J
LHR>JFK AA J (Stop) 777-300ER

Next flights will be JFK>NRT and NRT>MEL plus filling in the gaps a bit.

The plan is to go to Istanbul from Ankara with a paid flight, then pick up a car and drive through to Rome while stopping in Bosnia to visit my family. From there I'm not 100% but we'll work something out. Not the most exotic RTW trip because we're doing some family visits along the way, but will be an awesome experience for us nonetheless.

So far I've paid $1730 in taxes which while I was on the phone felt like it was high but the agent said the QR flight taxes had gone up since my last booking. Once I got off the phone I checked my flights against ITA Matrix and it came through at $1600 total which isn't that far off QFs calcs.

Next stop, working out how to get from JFK>NRT... Is anyone else having issues with searching on BA for JL availability? When I try to search it keeps tripping over asking for a stop over...

 

[Doctore1003]

Next stop, working out how to get from JFK>NRT... Is anyone else having issues with searching on BA for JL availability? When I try to search it keeps tripping over asking for a stop over...

You should be able to set up an account with JAL and search with them directly (though their site is a little bit clunky!)

 

[Geoffrey]

PER-HKG - CX - Business (STOP) 30hrs in HK - had to burn a stop here because finding awards flights to Maldives is terrible.
HKG-MLE - CX - Business (STOP) 5 nights in Maldives
MLE-DOH - QR - Business
DOH-AMS - QR - Business (STOP)

By far the biggest drama was getting J seats in/out of Maldives. There were very few awards seats and we tried all kinds of combinations through HK and SG on a variety of different airlines. We would have loved to have just had a transit through to MLE and kept that stop up our sleeve

Yeah I really struggled with the Australia-Maldives legs as well... I couldn't find anything good and didn't have time for a stopover in HKG or DOH, so I did MLE-CMB-KUL with SriLankan, followed by KUL-SYD with Malaysia Airlines. The flights connect pretty well but there's only one J seat that's released for each day, so if you don't want to fly in Y it doesn't work for couples

 

[fairbasa]

Woohoo, all booked! Had to fly indirectly a couple of times, hopefully some more direct flights might open up later but at least it's all locked in!

MEL-ADL 737 QF J
ADL-DOH A350 QR J
DOH-HEL A320 QR J
HEL-TLL ATR72 AY Y STOP
TLL-HEL ATR72 AY Y
HEL-MIA A330 AY J
MIA-CUN 737 AA J STOP
CUN-DFW A321 AA J
DFW-JFK 737 AA J STOP
JFK-YVR 777 CX J STOP
YYC-YVR A320 AC Y (Cash fare - Outside award)
YVR-NRT 787 JL J STOP
NRT-SYD 777 JL J
SYD-MEL A330 QF J

Taxes: $700.900 pp

 

[flychrisfly]

Woohoo, all booked! Had to fly indirectly a couple of times, hopefully some more direct flights might open up later but at least it's all locked in!

MEL-ADL 737 QF J
ADL-DOH A350 QR J
DOH-HEL A320 QR J
HEL-TLL ATR72 AY Y STOP
TLL-HEL ATR72 AY Y
HEL-MIA A330 AY J
MIA-CUN 737 AA F/J STOP
CUN-DFW A321 AA F/J
DFW-JFK 737 AA F/J STOP
JFK-YVR 777 CX J STOP
YYC-YVR A320 AC Y (Cash fare - Outside award)
YVR-NRT 787 JL J STOP
NRT-SYD 777 JL J
SYD-MEL A330 QF J

Taxes: $700.900 pp

Wow, great itinerary and cheap too! And I love Tallinn, New York, Vancouver, Cancun and Tokyo - I'll have to hang on to this itinerary and use it myself - thanks for doing all the hard work!

 

[EestiTiger]

Wow, great itinerary and cheap too! And I love Tallinn, New York, Vancouver, Cancun and Tokyo - I'll have to hang on to this itinerary and use it myself - thanks for doing all the hard work!

That HEL-TLL flight is a good one. Climbs to altitude and then starts the descent Rear entry only so seats at the back are best!

 

[roomer]

Goes to show how flying with BA ups the taxes, I have less stops than yours but was obliged to fly BA from Paris to Houston via LHR -my taxes were ~$1250 pp, other than that it was just flying Qatar and Cathay

 

[Geoffrey]

DFW-JFK 737 AA J STOP

How did you get AA domestic J (which is coded as F)?

 

[fairbasa]

How did you get AA domestic J (which is coded as F)?

My understanding is that all those Domestic F flights are being re-coded as J early next year. This itinerary is for August/Sept. When I logged in to the AA site through my AA ref to select seats it showed as 'First'.

 

[fairbasa]

That HEL-TLL flight is a good one. Climbs to altitude and then starts the descent Rear entry only so seats at the back are best!

Yea I've done it quite a few times now to visit in-laws (although not since it's changed from Flybe to Nordic). I swear they spend the whole flight just vectoring for the approach. I used to love the flybe flight attendants uniforms, Mrs fairbasa and I always thought they looked like dental nurses. Also felt sorry for them having to pull out and wheel the duty free cart on a 15min flight

Only problem with it I had was no award space on the flight immediately after the QR flight lands in HEL, so we're going to have to over night in HEL. Don't really want to jump on the Finnair bus down to the port then catch a 90min ferry after flying for so long.

 

[Geoffrey]

Right, but does it mean that the QF customer service representative was able to book it as part of a J award?