What a dilemna!

[ero]

I am very lucky that my brother is a WP and offered me to use his points for an overseas trip on Business.

I made the booking using his WP number using the Qantas telephone booking service....they really are a great bunch of people and very patient.

Well, the booking was done early last week but I was waiting for some requests to be confirmed. All the requests were confirmed and last Thursday I made a change to my first flight....instead of MEL-BNE-NRT (getting into NRT around 8ish at night) I changed to MEL-SYD-HKG-NRT (which would get me into NRT around 17:30ish)...the earlier the better for me.......well, the girl that made this change said she could only get me into Sydney using Jetstar from Avalon..not knowing any different i said fine and she also gave me until 10:00pm that Saturday night (2 days ago) to pay for the taxes.....I agreed, no problems.

I called on Sat night, around 5pm ish to pay the taxes and the guy that answered questioned why I was leaving from Avalon and I told him the story....I also did say I'd prefer to leave from Tullamarine if possible and he said he'd waitlist me....he'd leave the Avalon one there just in case. This was great.I even asked the person if i'd have any problems by not paying then and there and he said no because there I am waitlisted for a flight. He told me to call either Monday night or Tuesday if I hadn't heard from them to see if the flight was confirmed. The gentleman also advised that this was possible because requests can be made on QF flights - not other airlines.

On Sunday I saw a QF flight getting in MUCH earlier to NRT so I thought i'd request for this flight since it's a QF flight so made a change from MEL-SYD-HKG-NRT to MEL-SYD-NRT - no problems....in fact this request was automatic and approved within 6 hours the same day. I even did the courtesy of calling Qantas and asking them to now remove the SYD-HKG-NRT flights. Everything was still PERFECT at this time and just waiting for the MEL-SYD to be confirmed.

I arrived back home today at about 2:00pm and found that the whole booking was cancelled......OH NO!.....I called them immediately and sure enough, the system cancelled the booking because the taxes weren't paid. I advised the lady that there was still a request for MEL-SYD in the system and explained the story. To begin with she told me that her computer showed that someone spoke with me and advised the booking would have been cancelled if the taxes weren't paid. I agreed and told her I called on Sat to pay and the Avalon airport was questioned and I was waitlisted for the MEL-SYD flight....she could see that request and didn't know why the booking was cancelled. It was cancelled at around 11am this morning.

The lady I spoke to was very pleasant....I was extremely anxious and nervous but kept my cool....She was very helpful and was able to get most of my flights back. My itenarary WAS supposed to be as follows:
MEL-SYD-NRT-HKG-LHR-MAD//BCN-LHR-BOS//JFK-SYD-PER-MEL

She can't get back my NRT-HKG-LHR flight with Cathay.

My itinerary is now:
MEL-SYD-NRT//LHR-MAD//BCN-LHR-BOS//JFK-SYD-PER-MEL

I am soooooooooo upset......

She was going home and said she would look into it tomorrow morning and that I should call her back.....I can only wait until then to see what will happen.

A question for the readers of this thread....Using the Qantas Award Booking site, I noticed a BA flight NRT-LHR direct on First Class available.....I am using a OneWorld Business Class redemption (282,500 points + taxes)....is Qantas able to make the booking onto this First Class seat without penalty to me considering I don't believe it was of any fault of mine?

I honstly can't see how this is my fault. Unless I misunderstood, I couldn't pay for the taxes, even if I wanted to, until all flights were confirmed. The only thing I can assume is that the MEL-SYD flight was confirmed earlier today (which is literally done manually, unlike the SYD-NRT) and the system then saw, everything confirmed, hasn't paid taxes, remove the booking. This is not fair.....I didn't even have a chance to pay for the taxes! From what I was told the booking was cancelled at 11am this morning.

I don't know what will be said tomorrow but I am extremely upset and all I can do is hope....changes my whole plans entirely....Let's see what happens tomorrow. Would be great if people can advise their thoughts on my First Class question above or provide any suggestions.

 

[NM]

The only way Qantas is likely to book the NRT-LHR into and F award is if they charge you the F award points for the whole trip.

Are you needing stopovers in HKG and NRT or are these just transits on the way to LHR or MAD? That may give them some more flexibility to find an alternate routing. The Premium Desk agents are normally very good and resourceful when it comes to fixing things like this, but as you have already noted, they are a constrained when it comes to other airlines.

I would be looking at all the alternatives using a tool like ExpertFlyer and searching for award seat availability (U) for business class seats.

 

[dajop]

Have you thought of checking availability & routing from NRT-LHR via JFK or ORD or NRT-MAD via JFK? I think you would still come in under the 35,000 limit with either routing. Or other option paying $$$ for NRT-HKG and requesting availability on the QF service from HKG-LHR?

On the First Class question, go and buy a lotto ticket - the chances of winning lotto are probably just as great as the chances of them allowing you to use a first class sector without upgrading the whole ticket.

 

[ero]

Thankyou for the suggestions. NRT is a stopover for me, HKG just a transit to get to Europe.

I started looking for alternatives as described that same night (apart from the Qantas website being down for 4.5 hours).

I'm glad I did some research of available flights and possibilities before calling Qantas desk the next morning.

The lady had already worked on some possiblities and a quick question of whether the First Class was possible was answered with the number of extra points required.

She said I could either leave Tokyo on the Wednesday (2 days before I was originally leaveing), or, leave on the same day via JFK (as Dajob mentioned).

I had two suggestions, one was to leave Tokyo on the Sunday which is an overnight flight with Cathay, or, the other was to leave on the Thursday to HK, then spend the night in HK(A$200 odd), and next catch the 7:40am QF flight to London. Well, I chose the overnight on the Sunday. It's my only flights with Cathay - I've heard they are GREAT.

I add this note to say that I think it is worthwhile doing some of our own investigations as one may not get to know all the options from the person on the phone. The lady couldn't even see the flight availablity on the Sunday without me telling her the airline, flight number/time of departures for both NRT-HKG and HKG-LHR.

Thanks for the help.