Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[Jacques Vert]

Have you tried to book it online?

I have seen on this thread where some Qantas agents count transits as stopovers in completing the OW award bookings.
I am trying to complete my booking and have so far booked
MEL - DOH - JNB (QR)
JNB - DOH - CDG (QR)
LYS - LHR - YYZ (BA)
BOS - NRT - SYD (JL)
When I try to book the last flight from SYD to MEL 2 agents have said that because you change terminals from international to domestic in SYD this 2 hour transit counts as a stopover which I can accept, but this makes my 6th stopover.
My mileage count is under the 35K allowed.
Can anyone let me know where I can find the stopover/ transit discussion in this thread.

Have you tried to book it online?

I agree with some others who have suggested that mileage may be the issue. Although Great Circle Mapper calculates it at 34,521 I've seen a couple of instances recently where QF has been 50miles+ more than GCmap. This seems to be a growing issue with Oneworld Awards.

 

[Gonetroppo]

Hi Serfty and Kangol! Yes, it's ticketed (and so far hasn't debited a non-RTW number of points, it's stayed at the RTW amount for J). I have since posed the same question to the QF call centre and the rep says it's not a problem. We've just booked some VA award seats to get from BNE-SYD at the start. OOL-SYD is a good idea, thanks Kangol. If anyone's interested, we've gone with a 'wonders of the world/bucket list' whirlwind itinerary (legs in brackets are additional to the RTW booking):
(BNE-SYD) SYD-PEK PEK-HKG-BLR (BLR-VDY VDY-HYD-JAI JAI-AGR) DEL-DOH-AMM-CAI CAI-AMM-FCO (FCO-BCN)-GRU-GIG (GIG-IGU IGR-AEP/EZE-SCL) SCL-SYD-BNE

Hoping to score some cheaper Easter Island tickets at the end.

Just a quick update on this one ('overshooting' original departure city at end of trip). Today we received a proactive call from QF saying that our itinerary actually wasn't possible, and that the system had ticketed it anyway was just a system limitation that they had to manually flag and sort out on our booking.
A big relief - I didn't quite believe the 2 reps who said it was AOK to 'overshoot', and I was worried it would only be picked up properly at the last minute.
Anyways, James from the Hobart contact centre fixed it all up magnificently and has saved the day - he is a customer service legend and a OWA expert. I wish we had his direct number - this trip would have been finalised months ago.

 

[Kangol]

Just a quick update on this one ('overshooting' original departure city at end of trip). Today we received a proactive call from QF saying that our itinerary actually wasn't possible, and that the system had ticketed it anyway was just a system limitation that they had to manually flag and sort out on our booking.
A big relief - I didn't quite believe the 2 reps who said it was AOK to 'overshoot', and I was worried it would only be picked up properly at the last minute.
Anyways, James from the Hobart contact centre fixed it all up magnificently and has saved the day - he is a customer service legend and a OWA expert. I wish we had his direct number - this trip would have been finalised months ago.

Wow, so they let you get away with it?
Sounds like a once in a lifetime situation.

 

[Gonetroppo]

Wow, so they let you get away with it?
Sounds like a once in a lifetime situation.

No the magnificent James found some BNE-SYD award seats that no previous reps could see (despite showing online the whole time!) and added them in Lost a bit of $ on the Virgin seats hubby booked for that leg but worth it to have the bags checked through and for the OWA ticket to not self-implode.

 

[knightfall88]

Thanks for all the help guys.

I am doing a Oneworld Award in First but splitting into 2 trips, manage to finally book the first half of the trip.

Going to do
Sydney-London with Qatar then London-Tokyo with JAL which is exactly what I wanted. I'll then fly back to Sydney on my own fare and continue to second half in the next 12 months. Second half will likely be Tokyo-New York with JAL, New-York-New-Orleans in AA Business, New Orleans-LA in AA Business, then LA-Sydney in Qantas F.

Fees and taxes were definitely high at $1000 per person for only the first 2 flights but personally for me it had to be Qatar and JAL.

 

[Kangol]

Thanks for all the help guys.

I am doing a Oneworld Award in First but splitting into 2 trips, manage to finally book the first half of the trip.

Going to do
Sydney-London with Qatar then London-Tokyo with JAL which is exactly what I wanted. I'll then fly back to Sydney on my own fare and continue to second half in the next 12 months. Second half will likely be Tokyo-New York with JAL, New-York-New-Orleans in AA Business, New Orleans-LA in AA Business, then LA-Sydney in Qantas F.

Fees and taxes were definitely high at $1000 per person for only the first 2 flights but personally for me it had to be Qatar and JAL.

You found award space for both SYD-DOH-LHR legs in F?
Thought they didn't release DOH-LHR QR F awards to anybody.

 

[knightfall88]

You found award space for both SYD-DOH-LHR legs in F?
Thought they didn't release DOH-LHR QR F awards to anybody.

I left out some details. You're probably right. DOH-LON had to be either DOH-HEL (Helsinki) in F then HEL-LON in Business. Or DOH-LON direct in Qsuites. I opt for the Qsuites.

 

[knightfall88]

Just a quick update on this one ('overshooting' original departure city at end of trip). Today we received a proactive call from QF saying that our itinerary actually wasn't possible, and that the system had ticketed it anyway was just a system limitation that they had to manually flag and sort out on our booking.
A big relief - I didn't quite believe the 2 reps who said it was AOK to 'overshoot', and I was worried it would only be picked up properly at the last minute.
Anyways, James from the Hobart contact centre fixed it all up magnificently and has saved the day - he is a customer service legend and a OWA expert. I wish we had his direct number - this trip would have been finalised months ago.

Can you explain this overshooting the original city? I think I may encounter this issue down the track.

I am from Sydney but will depart to Europe from Perth (will buy my own ticket to Perth likely) but I was hoping to return from my whole OWA trip direct to Sydney. I thought as long as I am under the miles, it's an easy problem to solve.

 

[Kangol]

Can you explain this overshooting the original city? I think I may encounter this issue down the track.

I am from Sydney but will depart to Europe from Perth (will buy my own ticket to Perth likely) but I was hoping to return from my whole OWA trip direct to Sydney. I thought as long as I am under the miles, it's an easy problem to solve.

Frequent Flyer Terms and Conditions | Qantas

These Terms and Conditions form the basis of Qantas Frequent Flyer, to protect both Members and the Qantas Group.

www.qantas.com

14.3.5 A Classic Flight Reward Itinerary must contain no more than one departure from the city or country of first departure on that Itinerary.

 

[knightfall88]

Frequent Flyer Terms and Conditions | Qantas

These Terms and Conditions form the basis of Qantas Frequent Flyer, to protect both Members and the Qantas Group.

www.qantas.com

14.3.5 A Classic Flight Reward Itinerary must contain no more than one departure from the city or country of first departure on that Itinerary.

Thanks. Understood. Essentially he was departing from Sydney twice which is a nono even though his second Sydney departure was a transit stopover.

 

[Danger]

I've been helping a colleague put one of these together. He emailed QFF to try to get a definitive answer on the surface sectors (wrongly) being considered as two of the five stops:

"With respect to the oneworld classic five stop award, I am aware that surface sectors are permitted and that the distance between the two points is counted in the 35K maximum mileage. However, can you please confirm that only the disembarkation point is counted as a stop, not both the disembarkation point and the next port of embarkation? For example, if I was to fly SINMEL and then make my own way to BNE before travelling BNEAKL, could you please confirm that only MEL is counted as one of the five stops and not both MEL and BNE?

Speaking of outsourcing, here's the response:

"The stop over will count as one trip due the booking that you have paid. If you stop over in another country or city to your next connecting flight to your destination, that will count as one trip."

That's copied verbatim from the email he got from QFF. Please tell me he and I aren't the only ones who cannot fathom what the heck the Manila agent is trying to say.

 

[aikman]

I've been helping a colleague put one of these together. He emailed QFF to try to get a definitive answer on the surface sectors (wrongly) being considered as two of the five stops:

"With respect to the oneworld classic five stop award, I am aware that surface sectors are permitted and that the distance between the two points is counted in the 35K maximum mileage. However, can you please confirm that only the disembarkation point is counted as a stop, not both the disembarkation point and the next port of embarkation? For example, if I was to fly SINMEL and then make my own way to BNE before travelling BNEAKL, could you please confirm that only MEL is counted as one of the five stops and not both MEL and BNE?

Speaking of outsourcing, here's the response:

"The stop over will count as one trip due the booking that you have paid. If you stop over in another country or city to your next connecting flight to your destination, that will count as one trip."

That's copied verbatim from the email he got from QFF. Please tell me he and I aren't the only ones who cannot fathom what the heck the Manila agent is trying to say.

You will only use one of your stopovers but it also means you cannot stop over in either BNE or MEL again.

 

[zoom&boom]

Have I just made the biggest Rookie Mistake ever....

As part of my planned trip, the first sectors were hopefully SIN-HEL-ARN. My problem is that I could only ever book SIN-HEL at -361 on AY. When I waited for the HEL-ARN sector the next day to book multi city SIN-HEL-ARN, SIN-HEL was then not available. I booked SIN-HEL as a single trip as this was not a multi cities. It is a Classic Reward. Am I able to add to this sector as my sectors become available at-361/360? I couldn’t use QR as I need to use them later on in the itinerary.

Can someone please put me out of my misery either way....

Thanks
Zoom

 

[flychrisfly]

Have you tried to book it online?

I agree with some others who have suggested that mileage may be the issue. Although Great Circle Mapper calculates it at 34,521 I've seen a couple of instances recently where QF has been 50miles+ more than GCmap. This seems to be a growing issue with Oneworld Awards.

My GC map shows 34959, which is close to the limit and will differ to QF's calculations. Maybe pay for the LYS side trip separately or do BOS before YYZ? Also, the claim about having too many stopover is ridiculous for two reasons: a) as discussed above, it's a rubbish explanation, and b) it would only bring you to 5 stop overs, as the final destination is not included in that count.

 

[Danger]

Have I just made the biggest Rookie Mistake ever....

As part of my planned trip, the first sectors were hopefully SIN-HEL-ARN. My problem is that I could only ever book SIN-HEL at -361 on AY. When I waited for the HEL-ARN sector the next day to book multi city SIN-HEL-ARN, SIN-HEL was then not available. I booked SIN-HEL as a single trip as this was not a multi cities. It is a Classic Reward. Am I able to add to this sector as my sectors become available at-361/360? I couldn’t use QR as I need to use them later on in the itinerary.

Can someone please put me out of my misery either way....

Thanks
Zoom

Yes. What you've done is fine and shouldn't cause any issues. The recommendation is always to book flights when they become available, rather than wait for the whole thing. It's one reason why your initial outlay of points may well be over 140K/280K/420K. You will need to phone QF to add your additional flights, though and there's a cost to that (5K change plus a service fee unless in a premium cabin).

 

[DC3]

... I booked SIN-HEL as a single trip as this was not a multi cities. It is a Classic Reward. Am I able to add to this sector as my sectors become available at-361/360? I couldn’t use QR as I need to use them later on in the itinerary ..

Forget all about multi-city. Now that you have started the process and have a PRN, you just phone the QF Call Centre to keep adding or changing segments. 5,000 points per passenger for each time that you phone and change.

Will max out at 280,000 points for business class, plus all the the 5,000 point changes.

 

[Princess Fiona]

I’m extremely worried right now. I called up yesterday to add a couple of sectors to a QF One World Award in F. Seemed to go ok but I didn’t receive the new tickets and my card wasn’t charged.
Called up today to query it and they tell me CX have auto cancelled two sectors HND-HKG and HKG-SIN and we are now waitlisted for those flights while they try to sort it out with CX.
Anyone else have experience of this and if so is there anything I can do myself or just wait for them to fix it?
There are a lot of F flights on there which I’m worried will cancel if they don’t hurry up and sort it out.

EDIT Departure is early October

 

[zoom&boom]

Yes. What you've done is fine and shouldn't cause any issues. The recommendation is always to book flights when they become available, rather than wait for the whole thing. It's one reason why your initial outlay of points may well be over 140K/280K/420K. You will need to phone QF to add your additional flights, though and there's a cost to that (5K change plus a service fee unless in a premium cabin).

Forget all about multi-city. Now that you have started the process and have a PRN, you just phone the QF Call Centre to keep adding or changing segments. 5,000 points per passenger for each time that you phone and change.

Will max out at 280,000 points for business class, plus all the the 5,000 point changes.

Thanks for the very quick responses. I thought I was correct but being the first of these great value rewards I started to doubt myself.
I’ll have a fee fees to add stuff but even then it will still be great value.

Thanks again
Zoom

 

[Danger]

I’m extremely worried right now. I called up yesterday to add a couple of sectors to a QF One World Award in F. Seemed to go ok but I didn’t receive the new tickets and my card wasn’t charged.
Called up today to query it and they tell me CX have auto cancelled two sectors HND-HKG and HKG-SIN and we are now waitlisted for those flights while they try to sort it out with CX.
Anyone else have experience of this and if so is there anything I can do myself or just wait for them to fix it?
There are a lot of F flights on there which I’m worried will cancel if they don’t hurry up and sort it out.

EDIT Departure is early October

I don't have any experience but if QF sold you the seats but failed to ticket, surely it's up to QF to fix. What were you supposed to do, phone Cathay to ticket it for you?

 

[DC3]

... but I didn’t receive the new tickets and my card wasn’t charged.
Called up today to query it and they tell me CX have auto cancelled two sectors ...

I phoned Monday night and added some segments (2 x CX, 1 x QF) to an existing booking. Informed to expect a new e-ticket within the hour. Tuesday afternoon, and no e-ticket and no cc charge, so rang again. Mysteriously a totally different cc was quoted, as being refused. Re-processed, advised that e-ticket will be expedited, and will be within 10 minutes.

Tuesday night. No e-ticket although cc had been charged. Phoned again and all looked good. No CX or other issues. Received an e-ticket a few minutes later and all is fixed.

May be totally unrelated to your issue but it pays to keep on top of it, as you have done.

Edit: Most recent e-ticket was not auto-generated and needed manual intervention by the Call Centre to issue