Qantas Partner Awards: What If The Airline Cancels Your Flight?

When redeeming Qantas points to fly overseas, you’ll often end up on a partner airline as it can be difficult to find award availability on Qantas-operated flights to destinations such as Europe – especially in premium cabins.

Redeeming points to fly on a partner airline is a perfectly normal aspect of most frequent flyer programs. For frequent flyers, it’s a key benefit of Qantas’ membership in the Oneworld alliance and its partnerships with other airlines like Emirates, LATAM, Air France or KLM. But what happens if the operating partner airline cancels your flight?

When booking a Qantas Classic Flight Reward ticket on any airline, you should be automatically rebooked onto another flight if there is a cancellation. When using Qantas points to book a Qantas flight, that is indeed what normally happens. But when partner airlines are involved, things can get a bit more complicated.

Officially, when a partner airline cancels or makes a change to a flight, it’s that airline’s responsibility to reaccommodate the passenger onto another flight or make other arrangements. Only if no alternatives are possible (e.g. because there are no longer any airlines flying to the ticketed destination), a refund is provided.

This is what the relevant section of the Qantas Frequent Flyer terms & conditions (14.9.4) says about this:

14.9.4 If a Classic Flight Reward is cancelled by the airline and reasonable alternative travel cannot be arranged, Qantas Loyalty will waive the Cancellation Refund Fee on any Classic Flight Reward submitted for refund and will re-credit the applicable number of Qantas Points.

Unfortunately, in some instances, there seems to be a disconnect between official Qantas policy and what is actually happening.

Ideally, the partner airline would rebook the customer on the next available flight (or a comparable one-stop itinerary if a direct flight is no longer available) and everything would be fine. But, even when this does happen, there are a couple of reasons that this doesn’t always work out.

The alternative flights are not always suitable

We recently spoke to an AFF member called Mike who had booked a Qantas Classic Flight Reward from Helsinki to Sydney via Tokyo with Japan Airlines. Mike’s original Helsinki-Tokyo flight was cancelled and they were rebooked on another flight departing the next day. But this new flight would have arrived in Tokyo 11 hours after their connecting Tokyo-Sydney flight departed. Japan Airlines did not rebook their Tokyo-Sydney flight, making the ticket unusable.

In situations like this, customers should be able to call Qantas and the call centre team should be able to look at what their partner airlines are able to offer or explore alternative options. Ideally, this scenario would be referred by Qantas to the relevant “Oneworld liaison” and Japan Airlines would rebook the passenger on the following day’s Tokyo-Sydney flight (or a suitable alternative).

In reality, this customer called Qantas numerous times and hit a brick wall at every attempt to resolve the situation.

“I have repeatedly been told that there is no award seat availability, and when I explain that the terms and conditions of carriage require them to find me alternative seats in the same class, even if that means requesting a seat being opened up, they simply claim that they are no longer ‘allowed’ to do that anymore,” Mike told Australian Frequent Flyer.

“When I ask them how they are going to rectify the situation so I am not left stranded in Tokyo, they simply suggest that I cancel the entire booking.”

This person did eventually get rebooked onto a suitable alternative flight with Japan Airlines, in the originally booked class of travel, but only after we contacted Qantas.

There have been multiple other examples on AFF this year of Qantas customers in a similar situation.

In some cases, after no other resolution was found, Qantas ultimately ended up releasing replacement Classic Reward seats on their own flights. That’s a good outcome, but those who achieved this outcome had to spend many, many hours on the phone trying to fight for this and it seems that Qantas’ offshore call centre staff (who anyone without Platinum or Platinum One status will likely have to talk to) are no longer empowered to be able to request this.

In most cases, when customers call up, they are simply being offered a refund if there are no longer any Classic Reward seats available on an alternative flight. This is not helpful when someone has booked almost a year out, and is then left to find replacement flights with often just weeks until their planned departure date – by which time, commercial airfares are a lot more expensive than they would have been when they originally booked!

You can see from Qantas’ perspective why they don’t want to deal with this. It’s not their fault when a partner airline cancels a flight, and it can be expensive for Qantas to provide a replacement seat on one of their own flights.

The marginal cost of offering a seat may be low in itself, but the opportunity cost could be high if Qantas has to give up a seat that they could have otherwise sold to a full-fare paying passenger, in order to accommodate someone who booked using points. It’s not Qantas’ direct fault if a passenger is displaced by the actions of a partner airline.

But Qantas can’t have it both ways. The airline makes a lot of money from selling points which its CEO has described as the “envy of the world”. It also needs to ensure those points can be realistically used.

Since Qantas releases almost no Business Class award availability on its flights to Europe, Qantas Frequent Flyer members are inevitably having to book flights on partner airlines instead.

When there are disruptions caused by partner airlines, the operating airline is indeed supposed to be responsible for fixing it. As Qantas is the ticketing agent, though, the customer cannot go directly to the partner airline to fix the problem.

Again, this is why the Oneworld liaison exists. Rather than simply offering a refund or being forced to open up a reward seat on a Qantas flight, the Qantas call centre should be getting in touch with the partner airline to request a resolution.

Qantas may fail to re-issue your ticket with the new flight/s

Even if the operating airline cancels or changes your original flight and the proposed alternative flight is suitable, your ticket may still need to be re-issued. This is a common requirement when there is a schedule change on a booking.

Unfortunately, Qantas is also routinely failing to re-issue Classic Flight Reward tickets before the ticketing deadlines of some partner airlines have passed. When this happens, the flights will usually auto-cancel and drop off the booking. Some Qantas customers may not even be notified when this happens, so that’s a serious problem.

This is not a normal thing that happens at most other airlines and is something that Qantas ought to fix as a priority.

What can you do if you have an impacted Classic Flight Reward booking?

If a partner airline flight on your Classic Flight Reward booking is changed or cancelled, and the alternative is not suitable, you could try looking for another Classic Reward seat on an alternative flight and call Qantas to request this.

If there are no other Classic Reward seats available, you’ll still need to call Qantas but you might need to ask them to request a replacement flight from the operating partner airline. This may require the call centre operator to get in touch with the relevant Oneworld liaison. This liaison might not be available outside regular business hours, so try not to call on a weekend if you need that kind of assistance.

If you notice that there has been a schedule change on your ticket and you don’t yet have a new ticket number, you might also need to call Qantas and insist that the ticket is reissued ASAP.

After the call, check to make sure your ticket has actually been re-issued. You can do this by entering your booking reference (PNR) on Royal Jordanian’s website and checking that a ticket number starting with “081” is visible. If you can see a ticket number there which is different to your original one, your ticket has been re-issued.

To ensure you’re properly notified if there is a change to your Qantas Classic Flight Reward booking that requires attention, it might also be a good idea to use a third-party booking management tool such as TripIt to monitor your booking. That way, you should be notified if there are any changes and at least have an opportunity to take action before potentially losing your flights.

You’ll find a discussion thread about this topic on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: If my Business Class Classic Rewards Flight is cancelled do Qantas have to put me on another Business class flight?

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.