Questions regarding checking award availability using QF

[tsergori]

Hi all

I'm hoping to book award seats using AA miles and have a few questions for the friendly experts out there.

I'm using the QF website to search for availability and found this (possibly unusual) situation.

When I search CBR-HKG for 4 adults with flexible dates, I initially see only economy seats available (even after searching business availability). But when I click on "select flights", to my pleasant surprise I see business seats available (via MEL or SYD on QF and CX). Is this unusual to find business seats when the QF website initially indicates no availability? If I call AA, would they see these business award seats or not?

For the return trip, one business class option I see is QF 128 (HKG-SYD arriving 7.55am) connecting to QF 771 (SYD-CBR departing 3.20pm). This is quite a long layover and for such a short trip between SYD and CBR, we'd be happy just to fly economy. Most SYD-CBR flights are on the Dash-8 with no business class. What I would like to do is fly QF 128 (HKG-SYD) in business and then from SYD to CBR in economy involving a reasonably short layover. So, I did a multi-city search involving (1) CBR-HKG (2) HKG-SYD and (3) SYD-CBR. But when I do this, the QF128 (HKG-SYD) does not show business availability . Is this normal? I've repeated this "exercise" a few times and can routinely find business awards when searching CBR-HKG return, but when I do a multi-city search for (1) CBR-HKG (2) HKG-MEL/SYD then (3) MEL/SYD-CBR no business seats show up. This seems strange and I wonder whether the AA agent would do the "multi-city" search and find no business availability. Anyone encounter a similar situation before?

Thanks in advance for any and all answers and comments!

Cheers

(Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere, I searched without success.)

 

[tsergori]

Hi all

So I called AA in the US, twice, and got the same answer both times [the seats are not available].

First, let me show two screen captures to illustrate the problem. When I search for award seats for 4 adults on CBR-HKG return, I see the following availability. Note that CX138 seems to have business seats available (and other combinations of flights also show business seats available).





But when I do a multi-city search, for the same dates, for (1) CBR-SYD (2) SYD-HKG (3) HKG-SYD (4) SYD-CBR, you can see that for the SYD-HKG leg, CX 138 does not show availability for business award seats.





I checked with the CX website (Asia miles) and indeed saw no availability.

Both AA agents I spoke to could not see the availability.

I don't have enough Qantas points to try to book the QF884+CX138 combination, so I have no idea if Qantas can really do this or if there is some error in their software.

So the bottom line (I think) is that unless you can see availability for each individual leg, it is likely that AA cannot find award seats even if *some* Qantas searches show available seats.

Cheers

 

[opusman]

I think what you're seeing is the CBR-SYD leg only in business class. This is a "gotcha" with QF award redemptions - they will happily book you a J domestic leg connecting to a Y long-haul leg, and charge you the full amount of points as if it was J all the way.

 

[oz_mark]

As opusman says, this is a gotcha in the QFF system. Basically there is a clause:

14.4.3 Where mixed-class travel is booked on a Trip, the Points required for that Trip will be calculated using the Points level for the highest class of travel flown on that Trip.

So, effectively, when any leg of a trip is in business, and the rest in economy, the whole trip is counted as business.