Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[AL10]

I couldn't find much JL availability for September 20, so booked QR from Europe to Asia.

 

[motef]

I couldn't find much JL availability for September 20, so booked QR from Europe to Asia.

What were your airports you ended up booking?

 

[flapper]

I am wondering if anyone else has had this occur to them. On my OWA, booked at the 280k rate, I've actually been under charged the number of points. It first happened when I added a trans-Atlantic flight. I made 2 subsequent changes and wasn't charged the extra points or the 5,000 pts change fee. I discussed it with 2 agents when I made the last 2 changes, they said they would fix it but the points were never deducted. Yes, the taxes were paid & tickets reissued. I asked one agent if they would eventually have corrected it and he said no. I did find out they have to manually calculate the points you have already been charged because they couldn't figure it out and I had to help them go through my account. I was completely open about the extra points not being deducted.
I'm slightly concerned that at some stage they will figure it out and cancel my booking. I would also like to make another change but it's not worth the extra points I would be charged if they re-calculate to 280k.

 

[AL10]

What were your airports you ended up booking?

Singapore had lots of availability. Same with kul and bkk.

 

[motef]

Singapore had lots of availability. Same with kul and bkk.

What was the originating airport?

 

[zoom&boom]

You can’t add a revenue flight to a Qantas One World Classic Award.

They will be separate bookings on different PNRs.

Thanks Captain. Do you know if at checkin if I show the checkin staff the two different PNRs then I could be booked straight through?

 

[Captain Halliday]

Thanks Captain. Do you know if at checkin if I show the checkin staff the two different PNRs then I could be booked straight through?

I don’t believe so. The IT systems will still see them as separate trips.

 

[ellen10]

Well after 9 weeks, 9 flights and 12 months of planning we are home from our first "oneworld award" in J.

We flew on a variety of airlines, CX, BA, IB, QR and home on QF. All flights were smooth, great staff and excellent food and service (actually our QF flight home had the friendliest staff). We experienced many different Business lounges and our favourite was the final QF Singapore lounge for food and service.
This experience and opportunity would not have been possible without this wonderful thread, and with the knowledge, experiences and encouragement from all who contribute. My more "well off" travelling friends cannot believe all that we experienced and achieved on this trip.

My passion is travel, so it was a good day many years ago when I discovered Australian Frequent Flyer and then devoted so many hours, days, weeks and years of reading threads, contributing and making notes.

"We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfilment" Hilaire Belloc.

Thank you all!!

 

[ozflier]

I'm doing some planning for a OWA to europe next March.
I'm looking for intra UK flights on BA - eg lhr to aberdeen and belfast but business class just does not come up at all on the QFF award search ( it does on the BA one).
I know the flights are short but there are other advantages to J.
Has anyone had this issue and resolved it of are we stuck with an economy award seat?

 

[zoom&boom]

I don’t believe so. The IT systems will still see them as separate trips.

Thanks Cap’n. Thought as much. I’ll allow 3 hours for the transfer and pray for Nordic efficiency

 

[11sjw]

With the total disappearance of QR award availability in J recently from Europe to east coast Aus what are people’s recommendations and experiences on getting from HEL back to Australia for two people?

I took QR to SIN and then ended up on CX SIN-PER (via HKG!!!)

 

[cjd600]

Thanks Cap’n. Thought as much. I’ll allow 3 hours for the transfer and pray for Nordic efficiency

Various reports seem to suggest HEL is quite efficient on the transfers

 

[motef]

Is it allowed under the rules to travel through a city twice?

We are looking at SYD-SIN (3days) -MLE-DOH (less than 24hrs)-CDG
and on the return HEL-DOH (less than 24hrs)-SIN (less than 24hrs)-SYD

So we would be going through SIN and DOH twice

SIN would be a stopover once and a transit once

DOH would be a transit both times?

Thanks

 

[Captain Halliday]

Is it allowed under the rules to travel through a city twice?

We are looking at SYD-SIN (3days) -MLE-DOH (less than 24hrs)-CDG
and on the return HEL-DOH (less than 24hrs)-SIN (less than 24hrs)-SYD

So we would be going through SIN and DOH twice

SIN would be a stopover once and a transit once

DOH would be a transit both times?

Thanks

Yes, that’s fine.

 

[aikman]

Hi, I have struggled with the routing rules that allow 2 transits and 1 stopover each city.

Would an itinerary that includes the following trips breach the rules?:
MEL-NRT-FRA (stop)
CDG-HEL-NRT-CTS (stop)
NRT-MEL

The part I am struggling with is whether in last leg NRT is a ‘stopover’ or whether it would be considered a third transit and therefore not allowed.

Thanks for any help!

Your third visit to NRT is a stopover and is therefore allowed.

According to the T&Cs a Transfer (or transit) is

'Transfer' in relation to:
(a) an Australian domestic Itinerary, means a break of journey at an intermediate point when onward travel takes place on the same calendar day; and
(b) for all other Itineraries, including those containing a domestic to international connecting flight, means when a passenger arrives at an intermediate point and is scheduled to depart within 24 hours of arrival

Assuming your flight into CTS landed more than 24 hours before you are scheduled to leave NRT then it is not a Transfer. It fits the definition of a Stopover because the time between you land into CTS and depart from NRT is more than 24 hours.

'Stopover' in relation to:
(a) an Australian domestic Itinerary, means a break of journey at an intermediate point when onward travel does not take place on the same calendar day; and
(b) for all other Itineraries, including those containing a domestic to international connecting flight, means when a passenger arrives at an intermediate point and is not scheduled to depart within 24 hours of arrival

 

[vetrade]

Your third visit to NRT is a stopover and is therefore allowed..............................

Your interpretation of the Ts & Cs is incorrect and the statement above is definitely, 100% not true!

The definition of a stopover is premised on the fact that there is a period of more than 24 hrs between connecting flights - not one flight plus a bicycle ride, not one flight plus a boat trip or one flight and a car trip, etc. etc.

CTS is the stopover city and robbegong's travel between CTS and NRT is a land leg. It is preposterous to suggest that he would be counted as having consecutive stopovers in two different cities without having flown a sector between them. The two cities either end of a land leg are deemed to be a single stopover in the city in which he landed i.e. CTS in this case. The departure from the second city (NRT in this case) is counted as a transit only. It cannot be a stopover because there was no flight into NRT (after CTS).

We have flown 3 x J OW Reward itineraries in the past 5 - 6 years and none of them would have been allowed if what you suggest was true. In each of those itineraries we have used cash flights, train or car journeys to enable us to have several stopovers more than the 5 allowed by combining 2 or more cities into one stopover as per the rules.

 

[Lomandriel]

Correct. As others have said, depending on what airlines are in the itinerary, you may be able to book seats on multiple airlines through other sites (e.g. Qatar, Jordanian)



Have you got a "high end" credit card with travel insurance. Read the T&Cs carefully to see if they will cover you for your trip and anticipated activities. There are other threads on AFF that discuss Travel insurance in detail.

We have flights through Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Wideroe on behalf of Finnair, British airways and Qatar airways. So far I have tried Cathay pacific's website and I can select seats using the itinerary. I will try the other airlines shortly and see what we can book. Being a couple is it generally best with 1 - 2 - 1 configurations to get one on the side and one in the middle so you can have direct access to each other (having never sat in business class)?

That said, one thing I am uncertain about - we paid for the taxes and surcharges for both our oneworld redemptions through a Westpac credit card which I now wish to cancel to avoid the annual fee. Qantas has fobbed me off and said I need to check with each individual airlines whether I need this card for proof of purchase? I have done some googling and supposedly Cathay Pacific is quite specific that this proof of purchase could be required. I can't find a contact centre with Cathay to answer this nor a facebook messenger chat like Qantas... the cathay pacific centre i did get through on bookings has no clue with redemption of oneworld and fobbed me back to qantas. They do say it is 'probably' safer to bring the credit card, but again it is just a wishy washy personal opinion and she had no 'official' idea of the correct answer. Didn't help with the language barrier with Cathay staff ( i presume it is HK based judging by the responder).

Does anyone have experience or know with all of the airlines we are going with whether this is an issue in terms of cancelling my credit card? I would have the statement and physical card still (albeit deactivated). I am abit worried it will jeopardize the booking? But at the same time it logically doesn't seem to make sense as we booked the flights with points so apart from the taxes /fees etc there are no costs associated with the flights to prove up? Apart from our qantas FF points?

Surely others have had same issues?

I do have a few credit cards but most require booking/using the credit card to purchase flights. GIven I only paid for fees/surcharges to redeem our qantas FF points for the oneworld award I assume my westpac altitude black card would not cover free insurance (I got the amex and mastercard bundle of the westpac altitude in order to get the 120k qantas points last yr).

We are not entering senior age (30s more like it) , but pre-existing is technically i had a knee recon to repair a torn acl last yr. I'm back at sports and all so functionally I should be assessed normally IMHO, but I fear being excluded out of legalities and fine print. Not only that i presume besides snowboarding on piste, alot of policies may specifically not address odd winter items in Scandinavia - e.g. dog sledding, reindeer sledding, ice fishing etc. - all standard Scandinavian winter activities? Sorry to go off topic... i did raise a seperate insurance forum post on this but had not a single response so am not sure where all the Scandinavian travellers have been getting their insurance from....

 

[vetrade]

You can search seatguru.com to see the seat maps of each airline's planes and get info on seats to avoid. For couples, having access to eachother across the aisle is no big deal because usually communications are infrequent once you settle in and start watching movies etc. We usually like to get window seats one in front of the other so that neither has to sit beside someone else (notwithstanding privacy screens)

It won't matter if your CC has been cancelled, just take it with you to show if required - some airlines may want to sight it but that's as much as they require.

 

[DC3]

... It won't matter if your CC has been cancelled, just take it with you to show if required - some airlines may want to sight it but that's as much as they require.

Adding to this, several years back I had to show my cc that was used for the booking at the ICN check-in counter. It had expired months beforehand but I was aware of the requirement when I booked. It was sighted and handed straight back, and that was it.

 

[exceladdict]

We have flights through Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Wideroe on behalf of Finnair, British airways and Qatar airways. So far I have tried Cathay pacific's website and I can select seats using the itinerary. I will try the other airlines shortly and see what we can book. Being a couple is it generally best with 1 - 2 - 1 configurations to get one on the side and one in the middle so you can have direct access to each other (having never sat in business class)?

That said, one thing I am uncertain about - we paid for the taxes and surcharges for both our oneworld redemptions through a Westpac credit card which I now wish to cancel to avoid the annual fee. Qantas has fobbed me off and said I need to check with each individual airlines whether I need this card for proof of purchase? I have done some googling and supposedly Cathay Pacific is quite specific that this proof of purchase could be required. I can't find a contact centre with Cathay to answer this nor a facebook messenger chat like Qantas... the cathay pacific centre i did get through on bookings has no clue with redemption of oneworld and fobbed me back to qantas. They do say it is 'probably' safer to bring the credit card, but again it is just a wishy washy personal opinion and she had no 'official' idea of the correct answer. Didn't help with the language barrier with Cathay staff ( i presume it is HK based judging by the responder).

Does anyone have experience or know with all of the airlines we are going with whether this is an issue in terms of cancelling my credit card? I would have the statement and physical card still (albeit deactivated). I am abit worried it will jeopardize the booking? But at the same time it logically doesn't seem to make sense as we booked the flights with points so apart from the taxes /fees etc there are no costs associated with the flights to prove up? Apart from our qantas FF points?

Surely others have had same issues?

I do have a few credit cards but most require booking/using the credit card to purchase flights. GIven I only paid for fees/surcharges to redeem our qantas FF points for the oneworld award I assume my westpac altitude black card would not cover free insurance (I got the amex and mastercard bundle of the westpac altitude in order to get the 120k qantas points last yr).

We are not entering senior age (30s more like it) , but pre-existing is technically i had a knee recon to repair a torn acl last yr. I'm back at sports and all so functionally I should be assessed normally IMHO, but I fear being excluded out of legalities and fine print. Not only that i presume besides snowboarding on piste, alot of policies may specifically not address odd winter items in Scandinavia - e.g. dog sledding, reindeer sledding, ice fishing etc. - all standard Scandinavian winter activities? Sorry to go off topic... i did raise a seperate insurance forum post on this but had not a single response so am not sure where all the Scandinavian travellers have been getting their insurance from....

Wow, learned something new today, have never been asked to show a card on check in.

For travel insurance purposes, refer to the PDS, but my understanding is that the amount you spend on award surcharges may qualify towards the minimum spend required to activate insurance, depending on your cards policy etc etc. Of course, closing the card means you'd lose this.

I have previously paid the fee for complimentary insurance to be assessed to include a pre existing medical condition. If I recall correctly it was $160 for the assessment and then an additional $100 or so in premium. Definitely want to compare the cost to just buying insurance outright (and how the policies compare). Some of the recent changes to some complimentary insurances has significantly nerfed them (Bankwest world card for example).