Anyone experience this before; booking Qantas reward seats then airlines cancelling booking?

Frequent Flyer Programs
1

I booked my RTW itinerary online, received an e-ticket and my booking was confirmed. I called Qantas to change the flights given no fees at the moment and was able to add an additional flight into the whole itinerary and change 3 other flights. Had THE best flights, stops and all within the capped 320,000 points business class. Paid the taxes fee and thought all was grand.

A couple days after making the call and changes, I login to my FF online just to look in awe at my awesome itinerary but then I notice one of my flights is missing Narita - Male via Doha with Qatar airways. I thought maybe it was a system glitch, gave it the weekend and checked back the next week. All of a sudden now another flight was missing as well Male - Paris via Colombo with Sri Lankan airlines. I call back and all the rep could tell me was that she could rebook the missing flights and I pay the taxes again (had to check my statement as I didn’t realise the payment never actually went through). So sweet all booked, expect an email within 24-48 hrs.

Never got the e-ticket, but didn’t think much of it because I was checking every couple of days online and the flights I rebooked that were missing were showing for most of the last month. Today, checked again AND THEY’VE DISAPPEARED again. Check my statement, can see the payment didn’t go through from my last call so thought I’ll just call and do this all again - keep in mind current wait times are hours, been pretty patient and persistent.

Call up, the rep tells me the payment never went through so the airline cancelled those specific flights (not any of the others that I changed at the same time, they are still locked in?!) and now those flights I had booked are no longer available / no longer have reward seats. In despair, Im trying to ask the guy how is this happening. I’ve called, booked, paid but then poof. Second time, call, booked, paid. He said in 24-48hrs I should receive an e-ticket or something emailed, if not then I supposed I call again and just keep running the risk of loosing such a huge leg of my trip.

(whole trip: SYD-HND,NRT-DOH-MLE,MLE-CMB-CDG,MAD-MIA,MIA-JFK,JFK-HND-SYD)

Found it a bit weird as well the rep told me there were no reward seats on either of my original flights NRT-DOH-MLE,MLE-CMB-CDG I jumped online while on the phone, searched the flights and it showed there were reward seats for the second MLE-CMB-CDG, none for the first one which I could accept - this was on qantas mult-city booking tool. So thinking creatively, ask him to search for NRT-CMB and he found a direct flight with Srilankan Airlines which was business. I’ll just pay for the flight myself from CMB-MLE. Asked him to check again the MLE-CMB-CDG again and he found reward seats business class so ended up able to book them.

Has anyone experienced this before? I’m trying to work out how after paying the booking can get 100% locked in. I’m not even getting notified that these flights are being cancelled. It’s like I pay and the airline decides not to do anything with my money or cancels the transaction. Just a real bummer cos was really looking forward to experiencing Qatar business and had the perfect flight through DOH to save a nights accommodation and arrive Maldives in the morning instead of night.

Should I keep checking to see if reward seats become available again for my original Qatar flight or is it unlikely? Anyone have any experiences changing your flights multiple times and how close up to the trip you do? Also any experiences with flights changing on you? Anything similar or advice please share.

2

Have you received an e-ticket yet? If not, tell Qantas to ticket your booking asap otherwise flights will keep dropping off your booking without you knowing about it.

Keep checking for availability. People cancel bookings all the time. You never know, you could get lucky and the flight you want could pop up again.

3

Not yet, I keep asking for them to give me an e-ticket, they say once the payment goes through they will but the payments are just not going through for some reason! I’ll try call again today now that it has been 3 days since I last called and paid again.

4

thank you so so much, I called them today and they manually created the e-ticket! Just kicking myself I didn’t do this the last time I called. Will keep an eye out daily if seats open up again on the flight I originally had, now I know what to ask for to 100% lock them in

5

Yeah something similar happened to me, I managed to jag a business class rewards booking from Perth to LA with Emirates (only Emirates option I managed to see 2 weeks either side of our travel date). The payment was showing on my credit card statement and I had all the booking reference numbers, I’d even picked my seats! Then I logged in about a week later and the itinerary had disappeared. Thought it was just a glitch, I didnt realise for a few more days that the payment on my credit card statement had been reversed. Didnt have time to hang on hold so messaged them on Facebook. They came back to me about 3 weeks later and said it was because I didnt put in our passport numbers - total BS as when I booked again (sadly with another airline) I scoured the whole booking page and alas no fields for passport numbers, yet this booking has processed fine…

6

Yes @jess.walkom -

Booked on QF website last Oct with points Bne-Hkg-Lhr. As CX is running minimal flights atm, in March CX xxlcd our BNE-HKG sector. There was no actual way to get to HKG to pick up the LHR sector they hadn’t xxcld…

Hubs (Gold FF) rang QF call centre…first pushback was “you are on points sir”…
So what? (We are full fare on the way home (EK metal) and as it turned out this was the clincher)

Second pushback “you need to call CX who cancelled the flight”. Nope - “it is QF inventory on CX metal. My tax invoice is with QF and you have my money.” They accepted this. There must’ve been sooooooo many customers in the same boat.

Escalation to T/L. Call drop (on their end). Call back …3 hours later…, we could see commercial availability on several routes to LHR (not reward seats though). QF stuck to their guns and tried to charge us the commercial price of $12000 ea one way Bne-LHR “as there were no reward seats left in that fare class”.

Hubs was so patient and polite and persisted and then invoked the Qantas Schedule Change Policy (081) which stipulates rules around involuntary changes on QF stock. (There is also the non-081 policy). Link below.
[Qantas and Other Airline Schedule Change Policy]
(Qantas and Other Airline Schedule Change Policy)

This worked! We were both immediately re-booked on QF flights on reward seats through to LHR without penalty.
The e-ticket was promised to be re-sent for both our bookings and this never turned up. This seems to be a consistent issue.

To your point about flights disappearing from your FF itinerary/booking…yes we experienced this. We now screenshot our itineraries every few days just in case this happens again…(it has :slight_smile:

You sounded so patient and persistent with your dealings. It is so frustrating. Have changed to Virgin now.

7

Yes I had the same thing happen to my partner. I booked an award ticket on Q suites from SYD to GLA last year. My partner was due to fly in June earlier this year and we could only find the SYD-MEL leg on the Qantas app. The remainder of the booking had miraculously disappeared.

It took us 5 attempts and wait times of up to 3 hours per attempt to try and get some type of resolution. In the end, we gave up. Customer service staff just kept saying. Sorry, the ticket was cancelled by Qatar and no one reissued the ticket so you weren’t put on another flight. There is nothing we can do.

We asked the question, why were we not notified when it was cancelled and why haven’t we received a refund of taxes or points if that was indeed the case. No one was able to answer this question and we were once again told there was nothing Qantas could do.

It is now late July and we are still waiting for a points refund.

We had to buy a last minute expensive ticket to get my partner up to GLA to see his family.

Sadly, I have no advice for others apart from persistence but even then it didn’t really pay off for us!

Really sorry to hear this is happening to others too.

8

If it helps, my saving grace was when I booked over the phone my reward seats and they took payment, afterwards I said great now I need you to manually generate my e-ticket. Because the flights are other airlines, the e-ticket will never auto come through which is why we loose the flights and the transaction reverses or disappears from your statement.

When they say the e-ticket will be emailed within 48 hours - say NO! Please manually generate the e-ticket now for me. I did this a few times, each time they said no problem we will call our support team then call you back (so I didn’t have to wait on hold) and each time they called back they were checking I’d received the email.

Hack - once booking your flights, request the manual generation of e-ticket. Your flight is not 100% secured until you receive this even if you’ve made payment. Once you have your e-ticket, airlines are liable to find you another flight if they cancel.

2 Likes
9

Hey Jess,
Thanks for the hack but that did not work in our case.

We had an e-ticket generated but we were told there was nothing Qantas could do because Qatar changed the flight. Not their problem!

We quoted the e-ticket number several times with several agents trying to use it as an insurance policy and they all said the same thing.

10

Oh no that’s terrible to hear. From reading various forums online, my understanding was once your flight was booked and you had the e-ticket, if flights cancel or there are any changes the airline is responsible to place you.

Just to confirm an e-ticket is an email sent to you, with a PDF listing your flights, barcode top right of the PDF including the booking reference. It says “E-Ticket Itinerary & Receipt” under the Qantas header on the PDF. Not to be mistaken by flights simply shown on your qantas account online.

My emails from qantas with my e-ticket all have the subject “Confirmation and E-Ticket Flight Itinerary for XXXXXX booking reference”

There have been some changes to my flights on partner airlines, but I get an email update with a new e-ticket generated when that happens. So far I haven’t lost the flights since understanding this. Due to travel in 8 weeks!

11

Yep, happened to me about 4 weeks ago. Booking IST - DOH - SIN, (QATAR Business) same thing. Booked, confirmed by email, on QANTAS account bookings but no etik, then a week later booking disappeared. Had already booked SIN - MEL for 2 days later so a mad scramble to see if I could rebook (no). Mucked everything up. Not happy

12

Hi,
In currently experiencing this now. Booked 2x business RTW, starting with Melbourne to Frankfurt via Doha with Qatar.
Made a change to the last legs of our trip (currently no penalty) to come straight home from Manila rather than via KL due to new flight availability.
Apparently this triggers the whole itinerary to be re ticketed (perhaps not the correct terminology) and for some reason the flights with Qatar have dropped off our booking after previously being confirmed (e ticket issued). Have had varying degrees of helpfulness each time I’ve called Qantas.
They are trying to get the flights reissued by Qatar but as there is no reward availability I’m not holding my breath. Not happy. This only happened just over a week ago - not confident of a favourable resolution.

13

Did you manage to get Qatar airways to re-instate flights?

14

I gave up waiting after close to a month and asked Qantas to open up business reward availability to me on QF9 through to London, then tacked on a BA flight at the end.
They put me on hold and came back and said they would do this for me, given it was a Qantas error in the first place that resulted in our flights disappearing. So we’re now flying Qantas business through to London - a step down from Q Suites but better than economy.
Qantas have the ability to open up additional rewards seats on QF flights in circumstances like this, however they can’t open up additional availability on partner airlines.

2 Likes
15

Thank you for replying.
I have been trying for almost 2 weeks with endless Qantas call centre calls to have flights re-instated.
My son and his girlfriend will be stranded this week in Rome without a flight confirmed home. At this stage I will need to purchase full fares and try compensation from Qantas. The service is appalling.
Im happy to hear all worked out well for you.

16

Hi Sean

I wonder when you were not able to see the QR flights in Qantas. Were you able to see it in QR website itself?

I am in the same boat now, Qantas is trying to reibstate a fare today but Ill be flying 10 days so not sure if they are going to make it in time.

Cheers
John

17

Hi John,

Initially when the flights dropped off, they disappeared from everything - Qantas app, as well as when I logged into Manage Booking on Qantas or Qatar website.
When I first called Qantas to reinstate, the flights came back onto my booking but were showing as Not Confirmed.
I was filled with a bit if false hope as they appeared to be Confirmed when I went to Manage Booking through Qantas website, but when I went to Manage Booking through Qatar website (to select seats), I could see those flights were still Not Confirmed and they stayed like this for a month till I got Qantas to rebook me.