Qantas cancelled my Air France classic award flight without refund or notification - what are my options?

[adelaidefc]

In January I booked a BKK-CDG biz class classic award on Air France using my QFF points. The flight was confirmed and ticketed.
Yesterday I went to Manage my Booking and noticed it had gone. Trying to retrieve it via the PNR gave me an error.

I rang them today, and apparently my flight had been 'auto-cancelled' in mid-Feb. I received no email, no notice, and no refund. Today they attempted to re-ticket the booking, but could only do so in economy. I can't travel long-haul in Y due to disability, and can't afford a paid ticket.

They now refuse to offer me any option other than a refund, as there are no more classic award flights available at that time or on that route.

I've booked accom at both ends, planned a whole trip around this, as had a friend. I'm travelling with a kid so school holiday timings are important. If we'd turned up at BKK we'd have been stranded. It's insane.

They said a supervisor will call back. But given they didn't even tell me I no longer had a flight...I'm not holding out for it.
Any ideas?

 

[ChrisMars]

Not good. Not that common that a ticketed flight auto-cancel. What may have happened is a change of scheduled, maybe, that would have required a re-ticketing, of which Qantas is notoriously hopeless. Check the time (and flight number) to see if something has changed. This only help identify the source of the problem, and help identify who is at fault (most likely Qantas).

Is BKK just a transit point, or do you start your journey from BKK, or maybe did you plane to stay a few days in Bangkok? When is your flight?

Asking because though Qantas may have issues fixing this with a partner carrier, they may be able to accomodate you on their own flight, say SYD-PER-CDG which starts in July, or maybe SYD-LHR, assuming there is some LHR-CDG BA (or AF, or connecting via spain / IB) Will you have the chance to talk to someone that is willing (and empowered) to fix it that way is another question. If Qantas was a descent airline, it would be fixable.
Of course, if you actually depart from BKK, that doesn't help.

Anyway, good luck.

 

[adelaidefc]

Is BKK just a transit point, or do you start your journey from BKK, or maybe did you plane to stay a few days in Bangkok? When is your flight?

BKK is a transit but still an independent sector. Was going to make my own way to BKK a couple of days beforehand. Thankfully not yet booked that bit, as it was likely to be cash not points.
The cause was likely a flight number change by AF. Every other detail was the same, but something must've gone awry in the re-ticketing. Flight isn't till July.

I'm very skeptical Qantas will be able to do much. But I'm even open to a different Asian/Aus departure point if they waive any extra fees/change fees. There's no award availability to CDG from anywhere though.

 

[RichardMEL]

This seems odd. If you didn't make any change yourself then this seems unusual. Did you happen to have the AF PNR to see if that still exists? If AF changed flight numbers, which seems odd, then it was their change and they may have moved you but perhaps it did not sync properly back. Seems so weird.

Either way, i think dropping the escalation team is a viable option to try to figure out what actually happened and potentially liase with AF

[email protected]

One q.. have you called AF and asked if you're on their flight (I know QF says it was cancelled, but if you made no change or asked QF for no change, it seems odd that your booking is lost like that. Even if AF changed flight numbers, they should have moved all pax automatically and have that show in the PNR.. but what if it didn't for some reason? )

 

[jase05]

BKK is a transit but still an independent sector. Was going to make my own way to BKK a couple of days beforehand. Thankfully not yet booked that bit, as it was likely to be cash not points.
The cause was likely a flight number change by AF. Every other detail was the same, but something must've gone awry in the re-ticketing. Flight isn't till July.

I'm very skeptical Qantas will be able to do much. But I'm even open to a different Asian/Aus departure point if they waive any extra fees/change fees. There's no award availability to CDG from anywhere though.

Just a pity that the partnership is very weak between QF and AF.
There is up to 9 J award seats available on most days during July on Air France with SkyTeam partners but close to zero of that is made available to QF

 

[downgraded]

to QF

To QF or via QF?
What's the difference between what is made available to QF vs what it chooses to make available to its FFs? It is probably interested in pushing potential pax to its own CDG flights...

 

[RichardMEL]

To QF or via QF?
What's the difference between what is made available to QF vs what it chooses to make available to its FFs? It is probably interested in pushing potential pax to its own CDG flights...

From BKK?

I see no reason why QF woukd say bah, we don't want to offer those rewards to.our members.

QF is probably quite happy to offer partner rewards tbh. Lessens their points liability and not their inventory being used.

 

[jase05]

To QF or via QF?
What's the difference between what is made available to QF vs what it chooses to make available to its FFs? It is probably interested in pushing potential pax to its own CDG flights...

I don’t know what they release to QF but for the whole month of July there is hardly any availability for BKK-CDG on Air France yet if I search on my Virgin Atlantic account there is availability on most days in July and many of them have up to 9 J award seats available

 

[gidxg03]

Keep pushing and calling Qantas. Last year the same thing happened to me with an economy flight with Qatar (reward flight using Qantas points). Eventually Qantas opened a paid revenue flight with Emirates (they covered the cost). I got no where until I got a call from a team who were not part of the offshore call centre. It was a specialist team who deal with these issues. I don’t know how it got escalated but i did try emailing the Qantas execs which could have prompted the escalation. Don’t take a refund or a no we won’t help you for an answer is my advice. Make as much noise as you can.

 

[madrooster]

There is up to 9 J award seats available on most days during July on Air France with SkyTeam partners but close to zero of that is made available to QF

Are you looking at revenue inventory?

AF uses O class for both commercial as well as redemption. The inventory allocated to each purpose differs. EF for example, does not differentiate correctly.

 

[jase05]

Are you looking at revenue inventory?

AF uses O class for both commercial as well as redemption. The inventory allocated to each purpose differs. EF for example, does not differentiate correctly.

No. I checked on seats.aero first and then when and manually checked each date on the VS website. Air France has really good availability on some routes from what I’ve seen. We recently booked GVA-CDG-DXB and there were at least 4 award seats on multiple daily flights between CDG-DXB over the whole period we were looking at.
For BKK-CDG though there is multiple J awards across many days in July
If there are 4 or less seats available it shows it as in my example below


On the below example where it doesn’t have the seats remaining written in red it means that there are more than 4 award seats available. I selected 8 seats and they were available.

 

[DrGear]

I am so sorry to hear this. I'm going through an almost identical issue right now and I swear I've lost a few KG from the stress of it all.

If you jump on the thread I've linked below, there's been some real great people with some great advice that may help you too.

My issue still isn't resolved and the fact I'm now being handled by the complaints team and middle management now is the one that's preventing the issue from being resolved shows just how much the entire company now is just three monkeys in a trenchcoat.

Qantas ruined our rewards booking 2 weeks before flying

 

[adelaidefc]

I am so sorry to hear this. I'm going through an almost identical issue right now and I swear I've lost a few KG from the stress of it all.

Qantas ruined our rewards booking 2 weeks before flying

I just read your entire thread. My goodness I'm so sorry to hear what's happening to you. At least have until July to resolve this issue, and backup points in other programs if (as expected) QF fail to come to the party.
In my case award availability is scarce in all programs to Paris (just a few weeks before the olympics), but if it all goes to hell I'm sure I can pull something together to a different destination. The kid will be disappointed though. He was super keen on Paris and practicing his French. I don't think there's any outcome that won't cost me extra money or points I didn't want to spend.

I'll be watching your thread closely and wishing you the best.

 

[DrGear]

I just read your entire thread. My goodness I'm so sorry to hear what's happening to you. At least have until July to resolve this issue, and backup points in other programs if (as expected) QF fail to come to the party.
In my case award availability is scarce in all programs to Paris (just a few weeks before the olympics), but if it all goes to hell I'm sure I can pull something together to a different destination. The kid will be disappointed though. He was super keen on Paris and practicing his French. I don't think there's any outcome that won't cost me extra money or points I didn't want to spend.

I'll be watching your thread closely and wishing you the best.

Best of luck with your search for resolution too. One thing about Europe though is just how connected it all is so getting to a nearest country and getting a flight or train connection is feasible.

What’s unacceptable though is when this kind of thing happens and it ends up costing us more. There needs to be better consumer protections for these things.

 

[adelaidefc]

For those following and with more experience...what sort of timeframe should I allow QF for this? I called yesterday and supposedly they'd sent the re-ticketing request to Air France, and my booking shows 'Business', but with no e-ticket num in the Royal Jordanian tool.
And when I request an email invoice from QF manage my booking it's still ticketed in Y.
I emailed the Reward ticket escalation last Thurs with no response yet.

Every time I call it's "wait 24 hours" or "wait 24-48 hrs" or now, "wait 3-5 days".
And every day my options to find alternatives or finalise the rest of my trip start to slip away...