Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[ozflier]

Ohh yes that could be an option, would need to get more time off work. But E1206/ A$1,785 in taxes one way is hard to swallow .
I just flew back AMS-MEL in First Class 2 weeks ago with Emirates and the taxes were E882/ A$1,304. They must have gone up again.

Emirates has a bad name for taxes and ,needless to say , Emirates can't be used on a OWA.
Otherwise, I cannot see any obvious availability getting over to CMN in J!

 

[Mr H]

Emirates has a bad name for taxes and ,needless to say , Emirates can't be used on a OWA.
Otherwise, I cannot see any obvious availability getting over to CMN in J!

Depends how many flights you are willing to take. AT serves heaps of destinations, and some of them are bound to be served by other OW airlines. The bottleneck will be getting into and out of Australia.

 

[cjd600]

Emirates has a bad name for taxes and ,needless to say , Emirates can't be used on a OWA.
Otherwise, I cannot see any obvious availability getting over to CMN in J!

Looking at his flights it doesnt appear to be a OWA, regardless of where this is posted. Just using QF points, trying to fly J

 

[squid01]

Hi,
Very useful information here for someone trying to book for the first time!
After slugging through credit cards for the past couple of years me and my partner finally have 640,000 point to book a RTW trip!

I've been trying to book for the past week or so and im finding it incredibly hard.
Our itinery is:
MEL - CUN - 06/03/23
CUN - LHR - 14/03/23
LHR - HKT - 01/05/23
HKT - KUL - 09/05/23
KUL - MEL - 12/05/23
Ive done it on the website, and managed to get the point to cap at 318,000 per person, however I then get the error message

We could not find a fare for the requested itinerary (5685 UI)

I called 13 13 13, and the girl was absolutely clueless. She didnt seem to understand the RTW trip at all, and kept telling me that I was the issue, for ever changing reasons:
-Flights are not available (Even though I can see them on the website, and she could magically see them later)
-I am not allowed to book because I am a bronze member?
-You cannot book business class if a single connecting flight is economy class

Any advice?

Don't mention OWA and certainly don't mention RTW to them. Just give them all the flights and if you are within the rules it should cap out. Only start busting out the OWA rules if it doesnt cap out and you are positive you haven't broken any rules.

Failing that, hang up and try again. If you get too much resistance just try with another person. You will have to go through at least half a dozen morons to get to someone who has half a clue.

Once you do get it ticketed, they will throw you off the line and put your itinery into the ticketing cue. Whatever you do, do not just wait for it to be ticketed. Call up multiple times a day and if it gets towards 24hrs then demand it be ticketed while you are on the line. When it hasn't been ticketed for over 24hrs then you are at a very high risk of losing those flights.

Good luck. Booking this stuff is an absolutely horrific experience.

 

[Mr H]

Don't mention OWA and certainly don't mention RTW to them. Just give them all the flights and if you are within the rules it should cap out. Only start busting out the OWA rules if it doesnt cap out and you are positive you haven't broken any rules.

Agreed. But I would also tell them up front that it is a complicated booking with x number of flights and you really appreciate their patience and support in making it happen. That way they are less likely to become irritated and/or hang up mid call. Also knowing the phonetic alphabet helps, although they often seem to prefer Zebra.

 

[Guvner]

Hi Everyone, I'm trying to book some Qantas J Class rewards seats in April next year from Melbourne. Into Casablanca on the 4th April and out of Barcelona on the 29th or thereabouts. I'll do it s 2 separate tickets.
Can't find anything in J to Casablanca so I'll keep looking everyday but I managed to find a BCN - DOH / DOH - MEL through the multi city function, the first leg being in economy. BUT when I work though the booking it comes up with an error at the end. I've tried a couple of times to get through to Qantas but after a few hours I have had to give up. Has anyone struck this before? Are there any pixies in the system I'm not aware of that may be causing this?
I did try to break the 2 sectors up into 2 separate tickets, whilst it looked like I would be able to book BCN-DOH, it wouldn't let me search for DOH-MEL
Any advice or work arounds gratefully received.
Thanks.

I had the same issue trying to do an ATH-DOH-MEL itinerary. Same error appeared when using Multi-City as you see when entering two non-contiguous flights. Eventually the site spat out a single "legal" itinerary using the "default" search which suited me, so yes, it seems to be a married segment issue.

re: can't start the search from DOH... what I have done in the past is booked a MEL-SYD flight using multi-city for earlier in the year and added a DOH-MEL flight as the second leg to close the loop on another already booked MEL-DOH itinerary for later in the year. I needed to do both trips so thought "what the hay".
i.e.
Booking 1 MEL-DOH March
Booking 2 MEL-SYD Feb, DOH-MEL April (see below, no errors)
Booking 3 SYD-MEL Feb

There are pro's and cons to doing it this way. Obviously the domestic booking can be anywhere to anywhere, and the dates of all legs can be changed after booking if there's availability, so it's horses for courses.
Although this is off topic for OWA's.

(example only)

 

[gourmet333]

Emirates has a bad name for taxes and ,needless to say , Emirates can't be used on a OWA.
Otherwise, I cannot see any obvious availability getting over to CMN in J!

I'm sorry, I'm obviously being a bit thick re this. But I didn't know that Emirates can't be used on a oneworld reward! I flew on points AMS-MEL in First class on Emirates on points 2 weeks ago.

16-Mar-2022
CLASSIC FLIGHT 1 ADT REF 53NISY

-227,500

Would it be that my original booking may have had Qanats flight numbers that were then operated by Emirates.

 

[squid01]

I'm sorry, I'm obviously being a bit thick re this. But I didn't know that Emirates can't be used on a oneworld reward! I flew on points AMS-MEL in First class on Emirates on points 2 weeks ago.

16-Mar-2022
CLASSIC FLIGHT 1 ADT REF 53NISY

-227,500

Would it be that my original booking may have had Qanats flight numbers that were then operated by Emirates.

You are getting confused with a "Classic Award" and a "Oneworld Classic Award". This thread is only for Oneworld classic awards.

 

[vetrade]

Gourmet333, like many others, Emirates is a Qantas partner airline. You can use QF points to book classic reward seats on any partner airlines, but Emirates is not a member of the One World Alliance. You have to use only OW member airlines for any flights you want to include as part of a OW Award booking such as QF, QR, BA, MH, IB, AA, AY, JL and some others

 

[Maybloomer]

Hi,
Very useful information here for someone trying to book for the first time!
After slugging through credit cards for the past couple of years me and my partner finally have 640,000 point to book a RTW trip!

I've been trying to book for the past week or so and im finding it incredibly hard.
Our itinery is:
MEL - CUN - 06/03/23
CUN - LHR - 14/03/23
LHR - HKT - 01/05/23
HKT - KUL - 09/05/23
KUL - MEL - 12/05/23
Ive done it on the website, and managed to get the point to cap at 318,000 per person, however I then get the error message

We could not find a fare for the requested itinerary (5685 UI)

I called 13 13 13, and the girl was absolutely clueless. She didnt seem to understand the RTW trip at all, and kept telling me that I was the issue, for ever changing reasons:
-Flights are not available (Even though I can see them on the website, and she could magically see them later)
-I am not allowed to book because I am a bronze member?
-You cannot book business class if a single connecting flight is economy class

Any advice?

Trying to get into Latin America on OTW is a bit tricky on the Qantas web site, I tried years ago to get to MEX, could finally manage it via Barcelona with Iberia but getting the same errors when trying it from Australia. You may need to get creative getting J class to the US across the Pacific as a Bronze, e.g. via Tokyo or KUL.

 

[aikman]

There's J seats available on QF10 on Sundays in April. Might help some of you get home after your Easter holidays.

Ohh yes that could be an option, would need to get more time off work. But E1206/ A$1,785 in taxes one way is hard to swallow .

QF/BA all in J is now an option on 30/4 with taxes a measly €345.

 

[MJHoops]

Good luck. Booking this stuff is an absolutely horrific experience.

Is OWA worth it then, unless you can book it entirely online? (and even then you have to hope for no schedule changes by the partners)

 

[sqrt()]

Is OWA worth it then, unless you can book it entirely online? (and even then you have to hope for no schedule changes by the partners)

I think it definitely can be worth it even if you have to go through some call centre pain. Getting $10 000 + in J ticket value for churning a few credit cards is great. There's been a lot of horror stories here in the past few months/years, which definitely went into my consideration when booking a OWA, but when we don't hear that many good stories, its not because they haven't happened, it's because people are much more liable to raise issues than say "my booking completed successfully and i enjoyed my trip."

That said, I haven't seen any stats on booking/trip success for OWAs

 

[MJHoops]

I think it definitely can be worth it even if you have to go through some call centre pain. Getting $10 000 + in J ticket value for churning a few credit cards is great. There's been a lot of horror stories here in the past few months/years, which definitely went into my consideration when booking a OWA, but when we don't hear that many good stories, its not because they haven't happened, it's because people are much more liable to raise issues than say "my booking completed successfully and i enjoyed my trip."

That said, I haven't seen any stats on booking/trip success for OWAs

Good points you make. I agree it’s not much of a forum post to say I made a booking uneventfully. Most of my posts have been gripes lately, sorry all.

I guess my comparator is booking OWA or classic reward as long as it can be done totally online. At least then it’s only a chance rather than guarantee you have to call up and enter the Orwellian world. And of course I can see the value there if getting J awards in exchange for points

By the way, I noticed JL taxes and charges ($110ish) very reasonable compared to BA and QR ($400ish)

 

[Guvner]

The first half of this thread is full of posts regarding successful bookings.

 

[muppet]

The first half of this thread is full of posts regarding successful bookings.

Sure, but the first half of this thread is from a different time.

 

[FishFood]

Is OWA worth it then

It took about a week of me calling daily to arrange it, but in hindsight it was worth it since the points were just sitting there otherwise.

There are so many ways to improve the process but the fact that so many of us in this thread persist is because it can be a good deal if we make it work.

 

[vetrade]

Yes, OWAs can be fantastic value. I had a myriad of problems with cancellations, schedule changes and trouble finding replacement availability but we leave next week and have 13 flights in J. Our first long haul sector is SYD - JNB which would cost us over $5000 each alone. Our total taxes ended up being $1600 each with multiple flights on BA and QR included, so for us the economics of the OWA are obvious.

 

[Ponky]

So I am in a bit of a quandary with the tail end of my OWA booking that comes back from the US via Tokyo in mid November. I have JFK-HND and NRT-MEL all in J, with a J flight back to Perth the following morning.

At the moment, transit between Haneda and Narita is not possible due to Japan's border rules, and even now with the COVID situation in Japan it's really hard to know what to think in terms of whether they will be open to independent tourism by them. So I can either white knuckle it up until the point of departure (in late Sep) or try and change it now to something back to Australia out of Haneda. The best option I can find is a mixture of PE/Economy/Business via BKK/KUL. I can bear the 3 hour BKK-KUL in economy, but the thought of runnning the call centre gauntlet gives me chills.

Is it worth chancing it for another couple of weeks and see what the Japanese government does, or try to salvage what I can, with all the inherent risks of changing my flights?

 

[aikman]

Is it worth chancing it for another couple of weeks and see what the Japanese government does, or try to salvage what I can, with all the inherent risks of changing my flights?

This sounds like a question that only you can answer depending on your personal risk tolerance and circumstances but here's an idea. Current worst case scenario for you is that you get stranded in USA. If you have enough points why not book a flight home under a separate ticket as a last resort backup. It might give you some peace of mind and also buy you more time on deciding what to do with your OWA.