What do Qantas do if a delayed flight means you miss your second leg in business class? Upgrade/Points differential refund/Full refund/etc

[Hampton Mike]

Perhaps I can book a JQ 1 way to ADL before. If Qantas issue on the night, take the JQ backup. If not necessary, lose the $200.

I think I have read in the past that if you have a multi-sector trip and miss the first leg (ie take the earlier JQ in your scenario) the rest of the ticket is invalidated/cancelled. Maybe someone who knows the rules better can comment?

 

[sudoer]

Lufthansa and Swiss and FinnAir all fly out of Australia by way of Singapore/Tokyo.

No... they fly out of Singapore/Tokyo...

In which case EU261 may come into play since part of the itinerary is operated by an EU airline and they would be the most significant carrier in such an itinerary.

Could you please direct us to the relevant excerpts in EU261 for this take?

Post automatically merged: Sep 8, 2022

I think I have read in the past that if you have a multi-sector trip and miss the first leg (ie take the earlier JQ in your scenario) the rest of the ticket is invalidated/cancelled. Maybe someone who knows the rules better can comment?

This is correct.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Lufthansa and Swiss and FinnAir all fly out of Australia by way of Singapore/Tokyo. Certainly I could see itineraries that have something like SQ to SIN then LH/LX to FRA/ZRH. In which case EU261 may come into play since part of the itinerary is operated by an EU airline and they would be the most significant carrier in such an itinerary.

-RooFlyer88

EU 261 would apply to the portion of the flight operated by the European carrier, so it would kick in at the connecting point. I’ve never come across the concept of ‘most significant carrier’ in any of the court decisions on 261.

The court recently found United was liable for delayed connections in the US where it had brought passengers in under a code-share for Lufthansa. It’s possible the court might extend this for inbound code-shares… but that hasn’t been raised yet.

 

[Flyboi420]

Thank you all who suggested going to the airport early and trying to grab an earlier flight.

We were meant to get a 7:15 MEL - ADL then have a 2hr 15m connection before Q suite to Europe.

Q staff at the airport moved us from the 7:15 to 6:15. As soon as I mentioned the situation they were happy to help despite only being silver and booking with points.
Got to Adelaide on time with a 3 hour connection time.

The 7:15 flight we were meant to be on ended up leaving at 8:40, a > 1.5 hr delay. Almost definitely would’ve stuffed our Q suite leg.

Moral of the story I guess is go early and ask for a sooner flight if your booking is cutting it a bit close. Staff at airport much better then call centre as we all know by now…

 

[There'sOnlyOneJimmy]

Perhaps I can book a JQ 1 way to ADL before. If Qantas issue on the night, take the JQ backup. If not necessary, lose the $200.

I think if you did this, then by failing to fly the first sector of the itinerary all remaining sectors would automatically be cancelled…

 

[Stargazer]

Could I ask a question. I am planning to fly to Fiji sometime next year. I will be flying out of Melbourne to connect in Sydney with Fiji Air (Codeshare) to Nadi. This is a single booking. In reading this thread and others it appears that you cannot rely on Qantas domestic flights given delays and ongoing cancellations. Would I be better off booking a domestic flight Melbourne to Sydney the day before and then in a separate booking, book Sydney/Nadi/Sydney/Melbourne. All award flights in Business class. Would this work. This will be my first international flight. I just want to make sure that doing separate bookings won’t contravene possible rules.

 

[encryptededdy]

Could I ask a question. I am planning to fly to Fiji sometime next year. I will be flying out of Melbourne to connect in Sydney with Fiji Air (Codeshare) to Nadi. This is a single booking. In reading this thread and others it appears that you cannot rely on Qantas domestic flights given delays and ongoing cancellations. Would I be better off booking a domestic flight Melbourne to Sydney the day before and then in a separate booking, book Sydney/Nadi/Sydney/Melbourne. All award flights in Business class. Would this work. This will be my first international flight. I just want to make sure that doing separate bookings won’t contravene possible rules.

You can usually do it in the same booking using multi-city booking. Just book MEL-SYD and SYD-NAN. It's usually preferable to have things in a single booking if possible.

With that, assuming you're connecting to the 2pm Fiji flight, you could just book a very early Qantas MEL-SYD if you're worried about it instead of booking a whole day before.

minor correction: Your flight with Fiji Air will most likely not be a Qantas Codeshare if you're booking as a classic reward, since you generally can't book codeshares as reward flights. Instead it would just be a FJ flight number flight.

But to answer your question directly: No, there's no rules against seperate bookings. However in that instance your bags may not be interlined (you will have to retrieve bags in SYD Dom and drop at SYD Intl), and you may not be checked through (you will have to visit the check-in counter in SYD international). Finally, nobody has a obligation to rebook you if a delay on your first booking causes you to miss your flight on the second booking.

 

[kangarooflyer88]

You can usually do it in the same booking using multi-city booking. Just book MEL-SYD and SYD-NAN. It's usually preferable to have things in a single booking if possible.

With that, assuming you're connecting to the 2pm Fiji flight, you could just book a very early Qantas MEL-SYD if you're worried about it.

minor correction: Your flight with Fiji Air will most likely not be a Qantas Codeshare if you're booking as a classic reward, since you generally can't book codeshares as reward flights. Instead it would just be a FJ flight number flight.

You're 100% right there. There is a risk when booking separate tickets that when things go wrong you are left holding the bag! If I was them (and I'm not them by the way), I'd simply book MEL to NAN with the connection and not fret about misconnecting. If you misconnect, it'll be on the airline to sort you out and so far as I can tell QF has plenty of flights between Sydney and Nandi. Keep in mind too, in terms of a misconnect at an airport, the airline has to put you on any available seat, so this notion of classic award availability goes away.

All of that said, I must admit I've long haul international flights on separate tickets before but I've factored in 8 hour layovers at the connection point, and had a backup plan in contingency if something went wrong (i.e. an award booking lined up). For the casual traveller who doesn't have access to tools like ExpertFlyer and miles accumulated across several frequent flyer programs covering most alliances, I think it is most prudent to book it on a single itinerary either as a multi-city as encryptededdy mentioned or as a connecting flight.

-RooFlyer88

 

[Stargazer]

Thank you for your replies. But could I seek clarification. encryptededdy noted that nobody has an obligation to rebook you if a delay on your first booking causes you to miss your flight on the second booking. Kangarooflyer88 noted that if you misconnect it’ll be on the airline to sort you out. Kind of unsure here. Different opinions. What is the answer?

 

[encryptededdy]

Thank you for your replies. But could I seek clarification. encryptededdy noted that nobody has an obligation to rebook you if a delay on your first booking causes you to miss your flight on the second booking. Kangarooflyer88 noted that if you misconnect it’ll be on the airline to sort you out. Kind of unsure here. Different opinions. What is the answer?

@kangarooflyer88 was referring to the case where you have a single booking. They are obligated to sort you out if it's the same booking, but they have no obligation if it's a seperate booking.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Thank you for your replies. But could I seek clarification. encryptededdy noted that nobody has an obligation to rebook you if a delay on your first booking causes you to miss your flight on the second booking. Kangarooflyer88 noted that if you misconnect it’ll be on the airline to sort you out. Kind of unsure here. Different opinions. What is the answer?

It’s good to be prepared, but for a short flight to Fiji I wouldn’t be too worried.

Try and book a flight as early as possible MEL-SYD, giving you plenty of time to connect. For all you know it could be the SYD-NAN flight that is heavily delayed or cancelled, not the first sector! Have it all on one ticket so any problems qantas will get you to Fiji from Melbourne on that day. For example if SYD-NAN is cancelled, Qantas may put you on MEL-NAN non-stop.