group-of-5
Intern
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2010
- Posts
- 53
Hi All!!
We had been planning a longer trip to Europe with two of our adult children, but we couldn’t get everyone to agree on timing, destinations etc. My wife, however, had already booked her holidays with her employer, and they are always difficult to deal with regarding changes to leave. So we were trying to decide what to do with the time. We saw a Trip-a-deal (No flaming please) package to Vietnam/Cambodia. We have never used them before, normally doing our own thing, but thought we would give them a try, mainly because the timing worked out. We just made a spur of the moment decision.
We knew that we would be at the tender mercies of Trip-a-deal regarding the flights booked for us, but hoped that common sense would prevail. There were some obvious choices that made sense, but of course they have chosen a particularly convoluted set of flights. I suspect this is for their own convenience to have all tour participants arrive on the same flight to make the hotel transfers easier and cheaper for them. We knew the risks.
The travel time over is 19 hours – BNE-MEL(QF), MEL-SGN(VN), SGN-HAN(VN). The travel time back is 17 hours – REP-HAN(VN), HAN-SYD(VN), SYD-BNE(VA). So a lot of flights/transits.
The flights back aren’t really an issue, we can probably cope with anything that happens, but the flights over have left me with a few questions that I’m hoping this group might be able to provide advice on. It’s been a long time since I’ve done such a complicated itinerary involving multiple airlines and domestic to international transfers, and service levels/available staff have dropped in that time.
For clarity, all 6 flights have been ticketed on a single eTicket with a single reservation code. It has linked to it individual reservation codes for each of the 3 airlines involved. It is a little hard to tell but it appears that the ticket has been issued by VN. If I view the reservation on either the QF or VN websites, I see all 6 flights on the itinerary listed, on VA, I just see the last 2 sectors.
The 1:55hr domestic-international transit in Melbourne is probably the one of concern. It should be fine, but you don’t want anything to go wrong! I’m hoping that other readers can provide their experiences to my questions/comments below:
Looking forward to your responses……..
We had been planning a longer trip to Europe with two of our adult children, but we couldn’t get everyone to agree on timing, destinations etc. My wife, however, had already booked her holidays with her employer, and they are always difficult to deal with regarding changes to leave. So we were trying to decide what to do with the time. We saw a Trip-a-deal (No flaming please) package to Vietnam/Cambodia. We have never used them before, normally doing our own thing, but thought we would give them a try, mainly because the timing worked out. We just made a spur of the moment decision.
We knew that we would be at the tender mercies of Trip-a-deal regarding the flights booked for us, but hoped that common sense would prevail. There were some obvious choices that made sense, but of course they have chosen a particularly convoluted set of flights. I suspect this is for their own convenience to have all tour participants arrive on the same flight to make the hotel transfers easier and cheaper for them. We knew the risks.
The travel time over is 19 hours – BNE-MEL(QF), MEL-SGN(VN), SGN-HAN(VN). The travel time back is 17 hours – REP-HAN(VN), HAN-SYD(VN), SYD-BNE(VA). So a lot of flights/transits.
The flights back aren’t really an issue, we can probably cope with anything that happens, but the flights over have left me with a few questions that I’m hoping this group might be able to provide advice on. It’s been a long time since I’ve done such a complicated itinerary involving multiple airlines and domestic to international transfers, and service levels/available staff have dropped in that time.
For clarity, all 6 flights have been ticketed on a single eTicket with a single reservation code. It has linked to it individual reservation codes for each of the 3 airlines involved. It is a little hard to tell but it appears that the ticket has been issued by VN. If I view the reservation on either the QF or VN websites, I see all 6 flights on the itinerary listed, on VA, I just see the last 2 sectors.
The 1:55hr domestic-international transit in Melbourne is probably the one of concern. It should be fine, but you don’t want anything to go wrong! I’m hoping that other readers can provide their experiences to my questions/comments below:
- I will check in online before going to the airport, but I’m not sure if I will have to do that on the QF or VN websites, or both. I’m hoping to have all our boarding passes for the 3 flights over. I would normally purchase seat selection for the long sectors, but the fare bucket used by Trip-a-deal doesn’t allow that, so It’ll be the lucky dip at online check in!
- I am hoping that our bags will be tagged all the way from Brisbane through to Hanoi. That way we won’t need to deal with them in MEL. I understand that we will need to collect bags and go through customs in SGN, before doing a bag drop for the flight to HAN. I am hoping that there is an interline agreement between QF and VN in MEL, but it isn’t listed anywhere I searched. QF do seem to sell VN sectors, so I hope that interline bag transfers will operate in MEL.
- As I want to make sure the bags are tagged correctly through to HAN, I want to avoid the self-check in at QF BNE. It’s nice to be able to talk to a bio-robot. In the old days, there used to be a manned “international transfers” check in desk at BNE domestic that dealt with this stuff. Does that still exist or are there other manned check-in alternatives available (economy/no status anymore)?
- If we did have to pick up and recheck in our bags in MEL, is 1:55 going to be enough time, assuming of course the BNE-MEL flight lands on time?
Looking forward to your responses……..
