Thinking out loud - is that because this is the most likely route for regular people (as distinct from points addicts like us) to want to redeem and their whole points currency breaks down if regular people can't get seats on their preferred domestic routes?
Is this an example of the QF version of "married segments" for which Cathay used to be famous for?
I think married segments is about segments only being available as a pair and not singly - but maybe it works both ways.
Married segmants definitely work both ways - they are merely a means of inventory control by airlines. Some flights you can only book if paired with another flight and some flights are not bookable if you do try to pair them with some other flight.
Yes, but only if there are J award seats available
Only peripherally. Yes, it is a form of inventory control but it's not an example of specifically linking, or separating, specific pairs of flights
Pretty sure this would work ok, but not many ppl start off a OWA with only one dom flight
I think it's more to do with preserving the J awards for their P1 & WP business customers on their regular interstate trips
Hence the theoretical. In practice it would be nigh impossible.
I’d be worried about this needing to be reticketed and then opening up the issues of flights potentially dropping off from partner airlines in the meantime. At least that’s what has held me off pressing that ‘Request Upgrade’ button on my own OWA.
Interesting and disappointing.
But they don’t. However, QF can only offer awards that partner airlines make available.
Perhaps my post was ambiguous. I wrote "Agents have told me they have been explicity instructed not to book awards on other flights for OWA itineraries", in the context of QF domestic flights, specifically on the MEL - SYD route. I certainly didn't want to give the impression that QF was blocking access to awards on any other airline's flights. I was making a direct comparison of people being able to log into the QF website and booking J awards on multiple flights daily flying MEL - SYD or SYD - MEL but anyone calling QF to add those MEL - SYD J award seats to their OWA itinerary were blocked from doing so.
The only document that matters is the "E-Ticket Itinerary & Receipt" with the QF logo in the top left corner and your booking reference on the right top corner. If you haven't received an updated one of those since you last made changes to your itinerary, then you are not properly ticketed yet. If you added or changed international flights then you should have been given new E-Ticket numbers too.
The agent is 100% wrong and just shows they don't even understand the basic rules. You cannot add flights via online MMB to an existing OWA booking. You can only do that via the call centre. You also cannot merge bookings under any circumstances and if you make another booking and cancel it, you may well find your points taking a while to be credited back to you.
My issue is i currently have a BNE-HND flight which is what i want
Unfortunately that's often the case with married segments - you can see them, and book each individually but you can't book both as connecting flights. (MS can also operate the opposite way by only allowing you to book some combos of connecting flights, no individually)
