Qantas cash booking changing flight

[implsv]

Hi all,

Just hoping for some quick advice.

I had a round trip ticked booked with cash to USA flying qantas.

There is reward availability for one of the flights from aus to USA.

I rang up qantas to see if they can make a change to my existing itinerary. Cancel the first flight and then rebook the classic rewards and they advised me cannot be done.

Is this correct? What is the way around this?
Could I just book the outbound classic rewards leg and then call up and then cancel to outbound leg on my cash itinerary?

Then I would have two separate itinerary’s but is there any other downside?

I really would have thought Qantas could have made the change but doesn’t seem like it.

Thanks

 

[encryptededdy]

is there any other downside?

A return flight is significantly cheaper than two one-ways, generally speaking, so most likely cancelling one way will not refund you anywhere near 50% of your fare. Additionally, you should check what the fee is for cancellation on your fare type (probably $200 or $400).

The only case where this doesn't apply is if you've booked a Flex Fare, in which case refunds are free and pricing is more or less the same one way vs. return.

With that said though, you should be able to cancel half of your ticket.

 

[RichardMEL]

As above if you cancelled the outbound flight it would need to be repriced as a one way ex-USA (so in USD) and could be quite a deal more expensive for a number of reasons. Plus you'd want to be very sure the reward seat actually existed.

You may not save as much as you might think by doing this. eg price out the one way back from the US for your date and see how that works out.

Technically you should be able to do this via QF but it would be messy.... and I'd be wary of issues with agents too (sadly)

 

[implsv]

Thank you for the advice.

Ended up with a full cancellation and then booked the trip again separately.