Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[Captain Halliday]

I was just told by a QF call agent that I can't look up segments separately and have them under 1 "oneworld RTW" flight.

A.k.a
SYD-KUL MH140
10:10PM-5:00AM(+1)
next day
KUL-HKG MH72
9:15AM-1:05PM
[in KL for only 4 hours 15 minutes]

QF agent said that since MH wasn't showing SYD-KUL-HKG as one award flight, I would be unable to book the above as one of my five oneworld RTW flights.

What are people's experiences with segment stitching? Is the agent clueless or actually knowledgeable and I can't actually book this?

CX, AA & QR use Married Segment Control. I'm not aware of MH using it, but it's possible.

If another AFFer can't provide a definite answer you might want to HUACA.

 

[Radio8tiv]

I had an issue with married segment, but after directing the csr that each was available as seperate segments, I was able to get it put up to supervisor level and they were able to book it under a invol reroute.

 

[travelislife]

I have added a CX flight without issue before, also without needing to do a 24 hour stopover. Also had HKG as a previous transit on the itinerary too.

In my case I had booked BNE-HKG-JFK all on CX with an 8 hour transit in HKG, and then later added HEL-HKG-SGN on AY (HEL-HKG) and CX (HKG-SGN) with a 20 hour transit in HKG.

I did have a minor drama at the time of booking when there was only Y available for the CX leg HKG-SGN, but has since been fixed once J seats became available for that particular flight.

**************************

Trying to book Japan domestic flights on JAL is proving to be difficult, with available seats shown on BAEC but the QF call centre operators cannot see any available seats. I am wanting to book flights in September and I am wondering if I am calling too early, assuming this because JAL's own award system doesn't allow for booking domestic flights greater than 2 months away. However when asking the QF call centre to check for award availability 1-2 months away, they still can't see anything, despite award seats showing on both BAEC and JAL.

Has anyone here been able to book Japan domestic flights on JAL as part of a 280k award fare?

Can definitely book the seats shown as available on BAEC. It is a common problem with QF agents. I think they need to open a different window/system for JAL flights.

You just have to get the right person who knows how to do it. Took me 3 goes for my Christmas flights last year that were shown as available on BAEC but kept getting computer says 'no' from Qantas reps.

 

[Kangol]

I had an issue with married segment, but after directing the csr that each was available as seperate segments, I was able to get it put up to supervisor level and they were able to book it under a invol reroute.

Involuntary reroute - creative! Interesting how they'd get around the lack of point to point availability..

 

[madrooster]

Involuntary reroute - creative! Interesting how they'd get around the lack of point to point availability..

It's the wrong way to do it. The airline involved can still cancel the seat on you, even after ticketing. I've seen CX and QR do exactly that.

 

[Kangol]

It's the wrong way to do it. The airline involved can still cancel the seat on you, even after ticketing. I've seen CX and QR do exactly that.

That's what I'd be afraid of. Airlines releasing seats is a different story. Reader beware.

 

[Radio8tiv]

It's the wrong way to do it. The airline involved can still cancel the seat on you, even after ticketing. I've seen CX and QR do exactly that.

this has me a little worried now, I have had sooo many changes (additions, and dropped flights) and different csr playing with my trip I'm not sure if what I have is going to work. My trip has been ticketed now for about 2 months but I don't fly out till Nov, not only do I have a few invol reroute(about 5) I also have a few different ticket numbers (2 for the main passenger, 3 for the secondary passenger) it's all a bit of a mess, but since it's my first 280k I thought that's how it was done.
Any advice to insure this will all work would be greatly appreciated (happy to PM the trip booking ref if need be)

 

[madrooster]

this has me a little worried now, I have had sooo many changes (additions, and dropped flights) and different csr playing with my trip I'm not sure if what I have is going to work. My trip has been ticketed now for about 2 months but I don't fly out till Nov, not only do I have a few invol reroute(about 5) I also have a few different ticket numbers (2 for the main passenger, 3 for the secondary passenger) it's all a bit of a mess, but since it's my first 280k I thought that's how it was done.
Any advice to insure this will all work would be greatly appreciated (happy to PM the trip booking ref if need be)

PM me the booking ref and passenger names as verification and I'll have a look at the full PNR history. Inexperienced QF agents have a habit of issuing as invol reroute when it's the wrong thing to do and not escalating appropriately.

When I say wrong, I mean wrong in terms of procedure as it causes more grief later on eg. seats getting cancelled, changes to the itinerary requiring full manual tax calculations, refunds not going through automatically (and then taking weeks for manual processing) etc.

I had a 280k PNR which had a grand total of 1164 changes logged in the PNR history. Now that's what you call a mess...

 

[CaptainCurtis]

Is east to west travel a requirement or is Perth - Kuala Lumpur - London - LAX - NYC - Hong Kong - Sydney okay?

 

[grussellt]

This award is distance based and doesn't need to be configured as RTW as long as you meet all other requirements. You should be fine on that routing but you can do a dummy run (multi-city) to test it.

 

[XeroChance]

Is east to west travel a requirement or is Perth - Kuala Lumpur - London - LAX - NYC - Hong Kong - Sydney okay?

As mentioned by grussellt, it doesn't need to be E->W. Presuming you want PER-KUL direct, if you intend on doing a dummy booking keep in mind you can't search Malaysia Airlines availability on Qantas, thus its best to substitute it for a nearby city like Singapore.

When I was looking for SYD-KUL, I used British Airways Executive Club program to look up availability, but for my dummy bookings I tested using SYD-CGK(Jakarta) because Singapore had low availability (yes! even with 1x BA and 2x SYD and multiple options via other Aus cities).

 

[grussellt]

If you want to test the distance (without availability) you can use ITA which is a very useful tool.

 

[XeroChance]

gcmap works well too for finding distance in miles and the mapping facility is quite popular with flight bloggers.

 

[footy99]

gcmap works well too for finding distance in miles and the mapping facility is quite popular with flight bloggers.

I use mileage monkey. There are a few handy tools around.

This is a bit generic but does anyone have a standout oneworld airline for business class? I have an awful lot of options for getting from Doha to the US (any initial port is fine - PHX is the final destination) and am not particularly constrained on time or mileage so figured I would shoot for the best product.

 

[exceladdict]

I use mileage monkey. There are a few handy tools around.

This is a bit generic but does anyone have a standout oneworld airline for business class? I have an awful lot of options for getting from Doha to the US (any initial port is fine - PHX is the final destination) and am not particularly constrained on time or mileage so figured I would shoot for the best product.

I don't think you'll be disappointed by QR. My TR below (21 flights) has DOH-IAH which is both my longest and most comfortable flight of all time, on their 772 (I'm yet to fly 'real' first class).

 

[footy99]

I don't think you'll be disappointed by QR. My TR below (21 flights) has DOH-IAH which is both my longest and most comfortable flight of all time, on their 772 (I'm yet to fly 'real' first class).

Cheers. Yeah Doha to LAX is a nice long possibility, similar to that. I've tried some of their shorter flights to Europe and Nepal but never a big one like that.

 

[Daver6]

I use mileage monkey. There are a few handy tools around.

This is a bit generic but does anyone have a standout oneworld airline for business class? I have an awful lot of options for getting from Doha to the US (any initial port is fine - PHX is the final destination) and am not particularly constrained on time or mileage so figured I would shoot for the best product.

QR is the stand out for me. Not flown JAL though.

 

[XeroChance]

What are people's experience with having longer than standard layovers? From my many many searches on Qantas and BA, I seem to be prevented from accessing flights where I connect at transit city overnight, and this may or may not result in a Qantas agent screaming at me (from experience about segment stitching).

Might be better if I explain with an example;
I'm hoping to go from YYC (Calgary) - LHR (London) - HEL (Helsinki).
Heading to Helsinki will allow me to experience the various (CX, AA, BA, QF (hopefully open by then)) lounges at Terminal 3 Heathrow.

YYC-LHR BA102 lands in London at 12:10PM, giving me connecting options at 4:10PM, 6:05PM, or 7:25PM on Finnair or British Airways, arriving from 9:00PM-12:05AM.
I know that Finnairs AY1332 departs at 10:30AM is scheduled with an A350-900, which alot better than A321/A320 products that Finnair/BA normally use on European flights.

Landing at 12:10PM, and departing at 10:30AM the next day is a layover of only 21hrs 20mins, just under the 24hr OneWorld layover definition, as well as avoiding a Helsinki arrival at night.

However this connection doesn't come up anywhere. Anyone have any experience with forcing long layovers?

 

[Radio8tiv]

What are people's experience with having longer than standard layovers? From my many many searches on Qantas and BA, I seem to be prevented from accessing flights where I connect at transit city overnight, and this may or may not result in a Qantas agent screaming at me (from experience about segment stitching).

Might be better if I explain with an example;
I'm hoping to go from YYC (Calgary) - LHR (London) - HEL (Helsinki).
Heading to Helsinki will allow me to experience the various (CX, AA, BA, QF (hopefully open by then)) lounges at Terminal 3 Heathrow.

YYC-LHR BA102 lands in London at 12:10PM, giving me connecting options at 4:10PM, 6:05PM, or 7:25PM on Finnair or British Airways, arriving from 9:00PM-12:05AM.
I know that Finnairs AY1332 departs at 10:30AM is scheduled with an A350-900, which alot better than A321/A320 products that Finnair/BA normally use on European flights.

Landing at 12:10PM, and departing at 10:30AM the next day is a layover of only 21hrs 20mins, just under the 24hr OneWorld layover definition, as well as avoiding a Helsinki arrival at night.

However this connection doesn't come up anywhere. Anyone have any experience with forcing long layovers?

I have four <24 hour transits in my upcoming trip (DOH HEL TXL and BNE), I didn't have too many problems with getting them put through although at times I did need to educate the csr about the difference between transits and stopovers. Just put each leg through separately in the multi city tool at Qantas when searching for these flights (and obviously input it as the next day)
Married segment control as far as I'm aware (I'm no expert) does not apply when using different carriers so in your example using BA and AY should be no issue

 

[jaybeedee]

I'm starting to build my itinerary with dummy bookings and I can get a reasonable anount of availability, but if I try and ticket it or go back to change dates I have to re-enter everything.

How do people do the planning - just try dummy bookings for lots of individual segments and take notes, or try and book the full itinerary ?

In terms of changes can one (either through the call centre or through the website) go back and insert intermediate cities. In my case we want to go rome-MAdrid with a couple of weeks in spain and then Athens. I can see availability for FCO-MAD and MAD-ATH, I would like to look at maybe some internal flights within spain but I would prefer to lock in the main legs and then come back and play around with the choices. Is this possible ? I am WP so I think I am only up for the change fee , not the assistance fee.

It seems reasonable availability in J in the northern hemisphere, but I am struggling with QR in and out of Doha (we want to visit my brother and just about every routing offered involves EK). I am assuming getting to and from NZ to the US will be the tightest segments.

Thanks to all the contributors to the thread.