Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

[MEL_Traveller]

Hi ! Thank you for your quick response

Would you suggest that if I were to keep my same itinerary, my next step (given I want to return to Perth) can be anywhere in Europe to Perth?

And if I can’t find that I could do for example Europe to Asia anywhere and it would still fall within the rules?

I think realistically I could find a Europe to HK or Europe to KL flight

You can take any routing you want… via Africa (BA to JNB and Qantas to PER), via Colombo to Singapore then QF to PER, BA to China or Japan and then Cathay and/or Qantas to Perth. Just gotta find the availability! Not to forget AY’s connections to Asia.

You could connect from anywhere on europe with Iberia, British Airways or Finnair to London and onwards… or to any of the oneworld gateways in Europe (served by Sri Lankan or Qantas, such as Paris, or even JAL).

So Milan-Helsinki-London-home is perfectly fine.

As long as your layovers/transits are under 24 hours and you don’t exceed your 16 flights.

edited to correct spelling

 

[DC3]

So refund email came through about 2 hours ago ~30 hours after I cancelled, but logging into Amex I dont see any credit for the taxes/fees yet.

Patience, Grasdhopper

 

[madrooster]

The computer thinks AKL is Australia and thus the instant you "return to Australia (country if origin)" you can't add more sectors at all - for any classic rewards because it won't be able to price it. Thats not a OWA rule but just a general classic rewards rule.

For clarity, yes, there is a website bug where if you start in NZ, it seems to treat it as Australia as the country of origin which is obviously incorrect.

However, more generally, once you return to your country of origin, you can still add segments but they must be purely domestic.

So for example, PER-MEL-BNE-LAX-JFK-LHR-HKG-SIN-BNE-SYD-DRW-PER is fine. Similarly, cough-HND-LAX-JFK-LHR-HND-CTS-ITM-cough is fine.

In the case of NZ, in actual practice, you can't add any further segments as there's no QF domestic in NZ.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

For clarity, yes, there is a website bug where if you start in NZ, it seems to treat it as Australia as the country of origin which is obviously incorrect.

However, more generally, once you return to your country of origin, you can still add segments but they must be purely domestic.

So for example, PER-MEL-BNE-LAX-JFK-LHR-HKG-SIN-BNE-SYD-DRW-PER is fine. Similarly, cough-HND-LAX-JFK-LHR-HND-CTS-ITM-cough is fine.

In the case of NZ, in actual practice, you can't add any further segments as there's no QF domestic in NZ.

Which is also potentially another set of options for xxC_M_Mxx2026… could fly back to MEL/SYD/BNE from anywhere in Asia or USA - or maybe even the new Finnair service to MEL - and then back to PER!

 

[xxC_M_Mxx2026]

Which is also potentially another set of options for xxC_M_Mxx2026… could fly back to MEL/SYD/BNE from anywhere in Asia or USA - or maybe even the new Finnair service to MEL - and then back to PER

Thank you! I don’t know if I have misinterpreted the below ‘
‘You can have up to five stopovers (where you stop for more than 24 hours – these are the main cities you wish to visit).’

Is it if I were to fly back to Aus (to Melb) for example, how do I add on Melb to Perth without it being counted as a stopover?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Thank you! I don’t know if I have misinterpreted the below ‘
‘You can have up to five stopovers (where you stop for more than 24 hours – these are the main cities you wish to visit).’

Is it if I were to fly back to Aus (to Melb) for example, how do I add on Melb to Perth without it being counted as a stopover?

À stopover is more than 24 hours.

If you land in MEL at 0700 and depart any time that day it’s considered a transit. Or if QF had a flight to PER that left before 7am the next day.

You can have unlimited transits (subject to a couple of rules lh,e not tra siting the same city more than twice).

Just because you might use a separate line in the multicity tool, it doesn’t mean those are all stopovers. They are transits if they are under 24 hours, just like when you are flying to London via Madrid. If you’re in madrid less than 24 hours, it’s a transit.

That’s why I was suggesting, for example, that you could fly Guangzhou to Hong Kong on Cathay. Very short flight, but fun service in business class, and as long as you have plenty of flights up your sleeve, you might as well.

You can even enter and visit the city on a transit… arrive Madrid 1pm on a Tuesday for example and leave the next morning at 11am and it’s not a stopover.

 

[xxC_M_Mxx2026]

Oh I see!
So that means for example with my itinerary

Perth > Guangzhou via KL (flight #1)
Hong Kong > Tokyo (flight #2)

Firstly this is counted as a surface segment so the Kms from Guangzhou to HK get added to the total max 35k Miles however I could add on a reward flight Guangzhou to HK and it wouldn’t impact the above flights (total 2 of 5 of the flights allowed)?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Oh I see!
So that means for example with my itinerary

Perth > Guangzhou via KL (flight #1)
Hong Kong > Tokyo (flight #2)

Firstly this is counted as a surface segment so the Kms from Guangzhou to HK get added to the total max 35k Miles however I could add on a reward flight Guangzhou to HK and it wouldn’t impact the above flights (total 2 of 5 of the flights allowed)?

Exactly. But i wouldn’t be calling your breakdowns as ‘flights’. They are trips, or segments.

À trip is a flight or series of consecutive flights that doesn’t include a stopover or change between airline points tables.

If PER-KUL-CAN is all on MH, and you’re in KUL for less than 24 hours, that’s a trip, not a ‘flight’.

Multiple trips and segments make an itinerary. You are not limited to five trips. You could a lot more.

You are only limited by the five stopovers. But you could have ten trips between stopover 1 and 2 if you wanted to! Just all of those would have to involve stops less than 24 hours.

PER-KUL-CAN = a trip
CAN-HKG-TYO = a trip

But you could also do PER-KUL-CAN-HKG-TYO as a single trip… if TYO was your first stopover!

IiRC the max is 16 segments. So as long as you don’t exceed that (including the surface segments) you can max out!

 

[algae]

If PER-KUL-CAN is all on MH, and you’re in KUL for less than 24 hours, that’s a trip, not a ‘flight’.

Just to clarify any confusion for others reading this, you don't have to do a each 'trip' only on a single airline. You could mix airlines if you want.

In this particular case MH is the only Oneworld airline that serves these two routes.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Just to clarify any confusion for others reading this, you don't have to do a each 'trip' only on a single airline. You could mix airlines if you want.

In this particular case MH is the only Oneworld airline that serves these two routes.

Agree. I was just struggling with the nomenclature for the OP, because they’re not ‘flights’, which I think was confusing.

Trips really only matter outside OWA where a trip can become two segments if you switch between airline tables… increasing the price. Not really an issue for OWA.

 

[serfty]

For clarity, yes, there is a website bug where if you start in NZ, it seems to treat it as Australia as the country of origin which is obviously incorrect.

However, more generally, once you return to your country of origin, you can still add segments but they must be purely domestic.

So for example, PER-MEL-BNE-LAX-JFK-LHR-HKG-SIN-BNE-SYD-DRW-PER is fine. Similarly, cough-HND-LAX-JFK-LHR-HND-CTS-ITM-cough is fine.

In the case of NZ, in actual practice, you can't add any further segments as there's no QF domestic in NZ.

There as another website bug which may be related to NZ and OZ being treated as the one country.

Last year I was looking to start a oneworld classic award with BNE-xAKL-KUL-... for later this month. Before I had finished researching and was ready to book, the KUL flight was removed from the schedule. However I was still able to ticket a bare bones BNE-xAKL-xSYD-xSIN-KUL-HEL-xLAX-BNE with KUL-HEL- etc from August. It priced as a Qantas oneworld classic award and auto-ticketed accordingly. The plan being to come back an add segments later. Although I knew it, the fact did not hit me at the time this was an invalid routing.

Well has that not been a pain! The booking fails to auto ticket after any change and this has revealed the anecdotally varying competence in Qantas call centre staff. I will only refer to the successes below other than one standout fail which I decided to HUACA after the comment along the lines of "you can't backtrack between states in the USA"!

At the start of this year, I managed to change it to BNE-xAKL-xSYD-xSIN-xKUL-xHKG-BKK-HKG-xHEL-xLAX-DFW-xLAX-BNE, I started at 9am, finished the call after 11am with the promise to call back once the manual ticketing had been completed. I was duly called around 2pm to arrange the extra +++ and it was ticketed shortly there after.

Earlier this month I wished to change the last -xLAX-DFW-xLAX-BNE to xDFW-xSEA-BLI-xSEA-DFW-xLAX-BNE, a 2½ hour call which ended after the above 'backtrack' comment.

Spending a weekend to recuperate I decided to cut my losses and held the BLI fight with AAdvantage for 25K miles and USD11.20. Then I called to have the last DFW-xLAX-BNE moved to exactly the same flight numbers a week later. That took 5 minutes to grab the seats and 1½ hours to ticket. I then ticketed the AA booking.