Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[frequentflier]

Welcome to AFF

Consider splitting 2 +1 which would make it a bit easier. YVR - TPE sound like China Airline (CI) which is NOT a OW carrier (skyteam) so becareful on the Qantas search engine.
HKG/NRT/HND come to mind for YVR as the main hubs to fly to. QF also does fly there from SYD but exceptionally limited seats.
FJ also has a flight to NAN but I'm not sure if FJ is part of the OWA yet.
Otherwise you could consider backtracking via Europe - you should have enough miles to be able to go that direction too.


Also how are you doing YUL - YVR. There's no OW carrier in Canada (unless that's a surface segment).

Excellent point re CI, hadn't realised that. Thanks. Yes surfact sector in Canada, I should've clarified.

The 2+1 split is a good idea. You mean so that we can do 2x J and 1x Y on certain sectors if needed?

Hypothetically, if I booked YVR-NRT-Aus and then YVR-SYD magically popped up later, could I call and switch out the NRT leg for the direct YVR-SYD flight? Believe so, but haven't booked OWA before. I have seats.aero subscription for alerts, but still seems very unlikely.

 

[elanshin]

Excellent point re CI, hadn't realised that. Thanks. Yes surfact sector in Canada, I should've clarified.

The 2+1 split is a good idea. You mean so that we can do 2x J and 1x Y on certain sectors if needed?

Either in that split or one person travels in a different route / timing.

Hypothetically, if I booked YVR-NRT-Aus and then YVR-SYD magically popped up later, could I call and switch out the NRT leg for the direct YVR-SYD flight? Believe so, but haven't booked OWA before. I have seats.aero subscription for alerts, but still seems very unlikely.

Yes that is possible. But I'd say that it's even harder to find a flight to NRT/HND as it's NA summer and Japan is still super popular.

Honestly your chances of going across the pacific are very slim with YVR without touching US Mainland. You may want to consider expanding to include YYZ (Toronto). But your most realistic option is back tracking across Europe.

Edit: I can see 2J and 1 W (Premium economy) for QF SCL - SYD on Aug 20 and Sep 1 - not sure if this needs higher status to see though.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

If you can get to Asia from YVR, you can consider an extra stop on the way home for better availability. For example QF flights from Manila or Jakarta might be available. So you could do tokyo-mnl/cgk-Australia, or HKG-mnl/cgk-Au etc.

 

[DejaBrew]

A very warm welcome aboard AFF @frequentflier

 

[elanshin]

Just checking if anyone knows about the status of New Zealand for OWA atm. Does the computer still think AKL is in Australia and thus if we start at AKL the computer won't let us stop in Australia afterwards?

 

[cloudsurfer]

Either in that split or one person travels in a different route / timing.


Yes that is possible. But I'd say that it's even harder to find a flight to NRT/HND as it's NA summer and Japan is still super popular.

Honestly your chances of going across the pacific are very slim with YVR without touching US Mainland. You may want to consider expanding to include YYZ (Toronto). But your most realistic option is back tracking across Europe.

Edit: I can see 2J and 1 W (Premium economy) for QF SCL - SYD on Aug 20 and Sep 1 - not sure if this needs higher status to see though.

Is splitting a group (in this scenario 3 people) between J and Y possible on a OWA leg? I don't see how it can be done when booking a full itinerary online, but are you suggesting a call centre can do so? I figure if, as you say, 'one person travels in a different route/timing' that persons OWA would be on a totally separate booking, which could prove tricky to mirror the other 2 people.

 

[elanshin]

Is splitting a group (in this scenario 3 people) between J and Y possible on a OWA leg? I don't see how it can be done when booking a full itinerary online, but are you suggesting a call centre can do so? I figure if, as you say, 'one person travels in a different route/timing' that persons OWA would be on a totally separate booking, which could prove tricky to mirror the other 2 people.

You'd need to end up with 2 separate PNRs which yes would cause issues and more hassle if you need to make changes or things happen.

You could however book lots of the other legs as 3 then ask for a split in the PNR when adding another sector with 2 in J and 1 in another class later.

Alternatively there are trip reports here of say parent 1 going one direction to the destination and parent 2 with child going another route and meeting up at the end point. It's all about what you're comfortable doing, whats available and how much of dealing with problems you like when things ago awry.

If you don't like to deal with it, but still want to do this, find a Travel agent who can do points bookings.

 

[casket_kite_2z]

Hi all,

Looking to book my first Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward, but have a couple of questions that I can't seem to find answers to in the guide.

1. Is a 'layover' counted as 1 of the 5 stopovers if I've booked separate tickets, even if time on ground is under 24 hours? ie.
PER > KUL (4:05pm landing on day 1)
KUL > DOH (2:40am departure on day 2)

2. If I'm still waiting for reward seats to be released for later months, can I book earlier flights even if the total of these flights does not reach the reward cap? If I add flights later will the cap still be honored once reached?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Hi all,

Looking to book my first Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward, but have a couple of questions that I can't seem to find answers to in the guide.

1. Is a 'layover' counted as 1 of the 5 stopovers if I've booked separate tickets, even if time on ground is under 24 hours? ie.
PER > KUL (4:05pm landing on day 1)
KUL > DOH (2:40am departure on day 2)

2. If I'm still waiting for reward seats to be released for later months, can I book earlier flights even if the total of these flights does not reach the reward cap? If I add flights later will the cap still be honored once reached?

On a classic OWA (oneworld award) you are allowed up to 5 stopovers.

A stopover is defined as more than 24 hours.

So arriving 405pm and departing 240am will be a transit, not a stopover.

Don’t understand where the separate tickets comes in?

You can book flights as they become available. The price of the ticket will be the sum of the individual flights booked until such time as the cal is reached. Once you reach the cap it is automatically recognised by the system.

You’ll have to pay the 5000 point fee for each time you make a set of changes. That’s per passenger, but you can make multiple changes at a time. So adding one or three flights, or adding one flight and changing three others will still only cost you 5k points.

 

[casket_kite_2z]

On a classic OWA (oneworld award) you are allowed up to 5 stopovers.

A stopover is defined as more than 24 hours.

So arriving 405pm and departing 240am will be a transit, not a stopover.

Don’t understand where the separate tickets comes in?

Thanks for your quick response.

Sorry should have used the term "flights" not "tickets". Just to clarify, the flights I'm looking to book are separate through the multi-city booking tool. ie.
PER > KUL, then KUL > DOH
not
PER > KUL > DOH

This does lead me to another question - does anyone have any experience with booking this way and any potential issues that would arise from missing flights due to delays with earlier departures? Does travel insurance generally still cover you for these types of issues given it's an 'award' booking?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Thanks for your quick response.

Sorry should have used the term "flights" not "tickets". Just to clarify, the flights I'm looking to book are separate through the multi-city booking tool. ie.
PER > KUL, then KUL > DOH
not
PER > KUL > DOH

This does lead me to another question - does anyone have any experience with booking this way and any potential issues that would arise from missing flights due to delays with earlier departures? Does travel insurance generally still cover you for these types of issues given it's an 'award' booking?

Almost all oneworld award tickets will involve separate flights, often on different airlines, with connections.

You can either book these using the multi-city tool, or sometimes you’ll be offered connections just be searching a city pair (for example MEL-SFO might return Qantas to LAX and American LAX-SFO).

As all these flights and connections are on the one ticket, you’ll be protected in the event one of these flights is delayed. The airline will get you to your destination - whatever that is - by whatever means they can. If you PER-KUL arrives late, they might put you on the next flight, or another airline to get to DOH.

Travel insurance may cover you for delay expenses, food and accommodation if the delay is longer than 6 hours, but mostly the airline will take care of all that anyway.

But whether you have an award or paid booking doesn’t really matter, travel insurance works the same way.

 

[casket_kite_2z]

Almost all oneworld award tickets will involve separate flights, often on different airlines, with connections.

You can either book these using the multi-city tool, or sometimes you’ll be offered connections just be searching a city pair (for example MEL-SFO might return Qantas to LAX and American LAX-SFO).

As all these flights and connections are on the one ticket, you’ll be protected in the event one of these flights is delayed. The airline will get you to your destination - whatever that is - by whatever means they can. If you PER-KUL arrives late, they might put you on the next flight, or another airline to get to DOH.

Travel insurance may cover you for delay expenses, food and accommodation if the delay is longer than 6 hours, but mostly the airline will take care of all that anyway.

But whether you have an award or paid booking doesn’t really matter, travel insurance works the same way.

Thankyou so much, really appreciate your help!!!

 

[Jacques Vert]

Thankyou so much, really appreciate your help!!!

And if you are delayed and miss a flight, make sure you keep all your receipts.

 

[avioslover]

Just booked the following, 2 pax all J, for mid next year and thought I'd share my experience.

MEL-LAX-JFK=EWR-(CTY)-YUL-(CMN)-LGW=LHR-CMB-MEL

As many are aware, due to Qantas' very limited point of sale countries, flights departing from such locations (e.g. CMB, GRU) don't show up in award tools (you need to cross-reference availability from other carriers) and are only bookable as an additional leg. However, it seems flights departing CMN are not bookable even in this way. Flights that only stopover in CMN are also seemingly not bookable via the multicity tool despite being bookable individually. Because of this, I intended to book all legs except YUL-(CMN)-LGW using the multicity tool then cop the 5k point penalty to add that over the phone.

Now, I booked the above for 2 people, but as separate itineraries, because for the LAX-JFK leg, I couldn't find availability on the exact same flight in J, but did manage to find flights with departure times within an hour of each other. However, when I went to book the 2nd itinerary, I received the dreaded 15079-23951-420 error. I dropped a couple more legs from the itinerary and managed to get past the error but didn't yet pay. I then clicked 'Start Over' to try add some more legs but found that the reward seats for the legs I had added in that last attempt hadn't been released.

So off I went to make the booking over the phone and it was as painful as I expected. It took a while for me to get across that some of the reward seats that I was trying to book were still being held in a lost booking attempt and weren't actually unavailable. They got confused and assumed I was referring to my first, successful booking, but did eventually manage to recover my lost booking attempt.

This has been said many times before, but if you book over the phone, never use the term "Oneworld" at any point, say you want to book a business classic reward and just list out your legs. Also don't mention implicit stopovers as they will think you mean explicit, separate legs. The reward availability is obviously different when entered that way. Once they've searched the intended route you can then mention departure time and any expected stopovers if needed. I didn't make either of those mistakes by the way, but the operator still managed to do the wrong thing...

We got there in the end though and apparently there was phantom availability on the LHR-CMB leg and that's presumably why I was getting an error online. So we moved that flight to a different day and all was good. Amending my original successful booking was much simpler and the 5k point cost was worth the time saving.