US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

[travelislife]

Parents just departed on F trip to Europe, their CDG-BKK return flight was cancelled in Sept so spoke to US air who said bad luck reticket with one World then spoke to THAI who put them on F the next day but was now missing their connecting to PER. Only solution Thai offered was Bus on Perth flight 10 days later so now an extended holiday ion BKK on the way back. Lucky they were flexible!

10 days later! That's nuts, wouldn't have thought Thai's business class on that route would be booked solid like that.

 

[bigsleep55]

Have now booked another PER-MEL J return for October for $50 fee plus $28 in fees - as above, the cost of the 30000 miles was bought during the share promo so was less than $350 from memory. I will miss USDM.

Hmm that is weird, I spoke with USDM last night and DRW-PER return fees/taxes/booking charges all came to $206 odd for two passengers. Seemed high to me. I paid slightly more for return to PEr-YVR in June/July. Is there something they are doing with is wrong?

 

[bcworld]

Hmm that is weird, I spoke with USDM last night and DRW-PER return fees/taxes/booking charges all came to $206 odd for two passengers. Seemed high to me.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. US$50 booking fee + A$57 in taxes per pax.

 

[jspeedinc]

Booked MEL-SYD-NRT-TPE-HKG-ADL-MEL, QF and CX J, ~$150 tax, just hoping now that QF21 is a 4 class config or a refurb

 

[FrankC]

Booked MEL-SYD-NRT-TPE-HKG-ADL-MEL, QF and CX J, ~$150 tax, just hoping now that QF21 is a 4 class config or a refurb

What is the destination & stop over, if any?

Cheers

 

[jspeedinc]

What is the destination & stop over, if any?

Destination is Taipei, with a stopover at Hong Kong on the way back.

 

[Limewood]

Destination is Taipei, with a stopover at Hong Kong on the way back.

When is it for?.

 

[jspeedinc]

When is it for?.

Leaving on the 4th of December, week stopover at Hong Kong before returning to Adelaide at the start of February.

 

[Glider_]

Just put a hold on my first USDM booking for September next year;

PER - HKG - LAX CX J
SFO - LAX - HKG - PER CX J (with dom F SFO-LAX)

220,000 points total, and $153.17 tax fee (though I didn't quite catch whether the tax was total or per person)

Took about an hour all up, Eric sounded tired and unenthusiastic but not rude and he persevered to help me. I did lots of looking on QF for the flights I was interested in beforehand and I'm glad I did. I got fairly close to the dates I was after, and lay-flat on those looong sectors. Winner winner chicken dinner!

Unfortunately USDM could not see any of the F HKG-LAX availability I had found, which was disappointing but not surprising. I'm not sure if that's worth a HUACA since I asked him to look at specific flight numbers on specific dates and he said they were no-go's. An F award remains my holy grail.

 

[vitagen]

Glider, QF engine seems to pick up a lot of phantom availability for CX so that could be the problem.

 

[exceladdict]

Glider, QF engine seems to pick up a lot of phantom availability for CX so that could be the problem.

I learned that one the hard way as well! Also appears to show Iberia phantoms as well. Strongly recommend awardnexus as a validation point for any seats you find on QFF, helps you conserve those AwardNexus credits.

In other news, just ticketed a booking for 2x J itinerary, Mrs Excel and I are very excited:

PER-DOH-IAH(14h)-CLT-JFK(14d)-HEL-LHR(4d)-DOH(8h)-HKG(8h)-PER

120,000 Miles + ~$350US Fees/Taxes, argued strongly that it should be a 110,000 price but after eight coughulative hours on the phone ended up giving in. Excuse was "it's because of your stopover in Europe".

Will blog shortly about the booking experience.

 

[Flashback]

I learned that one the hard way as well! Also appears to show Iberia phantoms as well. Strongly recommend awardnexus as a validation point for any seats you find on QFF, helps you conserve those AwardNexus credits.

In other news, just ticketed a booking for 2x J itinerary, Mrs Excel and I are very excited:

PER-DOH-IAH(14h)-CLT-JFK(14d)-HEL-LHR(4d)-DOH(8h)-HKG(8h)-PER

120,000 Miles + ~$350US Fees/Taxes, argued strongly that it should be a 110,000 price but after eight coughulative hours on the phone ended up giving in. Excuse was "it's because of your stopover in Europe".

Will blog shortly about the booking experience.

They are exactly right, as the stopover is in a higher region then 120,000 miles applies.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I learned that one the hard way as well! Also appears to show Iberia phantoms as well. Strongly recommend awardnexus as a validation point for any seats you find on QFF, helps you conserve those AwardNexus credits.

In other news, just ticketed a booking for 2x J itinerary, Mrs Excel and I are very excited:

PER-DOH-IAH(14h)-CLT-JFK(14d)-HEL-LHR(4d)-DOH(8h)-HKG(8h)-PER

120,000 Miles + ~$350US Fees/Taxes, argued strongly that it should be a 110,000 price but after eight coughulative hours on the phone ended up giving in. Excuse was "it's because of your stopover in Europe".

Will blog shortly about the booking experience.

the price at 120k is correct.

but the itinerary should have taken about 20 minutes to complete... what was with the other 7hrs 40 mins?

 

[anat0l]

the price at 120k is correct.

but the itinerary should have taken about 20 minutes to complete... what was with the other 7hrs 40 mins?

Hanging up and calling again until there was an agent willing to book the routing and his giving up on trying to get it for 110k.

 

[exceladdict]

the price at 120k is correct.

Didn't realize that - thanks for pointing it out. I now realise how arrogant I sounded. My apologies.

but the itinerary should have taken about 20 minutes to complete... what was with the other 7hrs 40 mins?

- Partly that every itinerary combination was referred to the rates desk (I think due to the HOU-CLT-JFK leg not being the first technical flight out
- Partly due to me learning through this process of the phantom CX and IB availability that shows on QF site
- Partly because some reservationists insisted on checking direct routes before going with my "preferred routings"
- And partly because of multiple itinerary changes I requested after being advised of the taxes imposed on IB award flights ($600US/Person for JFK-MAD-LHR), again, learned through the process, first time's the hardest!

The hours were of course split over multiple calls with HUACA's thrown in and different itineraries being tested. Interestingly, two reservationists mentioned that there's a new rule that they're only allowed to research one week's worth of flights per call. One actually requested I HUACA.

 

[exceladdict]

Hanging up and calling again until there was an agent willing to book the routing and his giving up on trying to get it for 110k.

Only got the routing finalised on the last call - when the price jumped to 120k (two previous itinerary quotes via LHR were at 110k which were probably the ones the errors!).

 

[mos]

Recently ticketed a couple of USDM award tickets to the US for my wife and I in March/April 2015 - we're flying together on the outbound and returning on different dates (by choice).

Outbound PER - SYD (QF J) - NRT (JL F) - ORD (JL F) for 2 pax.
Return IAD - DOH - PER (QR J) for my wife, ORD - HKG (CX F) - MEL (CX J) - PER (QF J) for me.

Overnight connections in SYD and NRT on the outbound, ~8 hours for my wife in DOH on the return leg. Our dates weren't particularly flexible so we were happy to take what was available.

My itinerary priced as expected at 140k points + $226 taxes and booking fee. My wife's was 135k points + $196 - I'm guessing they priced it as SWP to Middle East, 75k points in F on the outbound and 60k in J on the return. I queried the points and the agent rechecked with the rates desk, came back with the same price so was happy to ticket it.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Recently ticketed a couple of USDM award tickets to the US for my wife and I in March/April 2015 - we're flying together on the outbound and returning on different dates (by choice).

Outbound PER - SYD (QF J) - NRT (JL F) - ORD (JL F) for 2 pax.
Return IAD - DOH - PER (QR J) for my wife, ORD - HKG (CX F) - MEL (CX J) - PER (QF J) for me.

Overnight connections in SYD and NRT on the outbound, ~8 hours for my wife in DOH on the return leg. Our dates weren't particularly flexible so we were happy to take what was available.

My itinerary priced as expected at 140k points + $226 taxes and booking fee. My wife's was 135k points + $196 - I'm guessing they priced it as SWP to Middle East, 75k points in F on the outbound and 60k in J on the return. I queried the points and the agent rechecked with the rates desk, came back with the same price so was happy to ticket it.

Cheers,
Mike

im guessing it should technically have been 125k miles for your wife (140+110 / 2). still not a bad deal considering there are reports USDM is clamping down on 'rtw' itineraries (that aren't RTWs, but you know what I mean)

 

[Limewood]

PER-DOH-IAH(14h)-CLT-JFK(14d)-HEL-LHR(4d)-DOH(8h)-HKG(8h)-PER

Was wondering how you achieved two stopovers JFK 14 days & LHR 4 days? (thought only one allowed).

Its a hell of a lot of flying for 16 days on ground.

 

[sergeyvzn]

Was wondering how you achieved two stopovers JFK 14 days & LHR 4 days? (thought only one allowed).

Its a hell of a lot of flying for 16 days on ground.

One is a stopover the other one is the destination