Hi, I have tried to secure an answer from Qantas but am not having much luck. It seems a lot harder to book a Oneworld RTW ticket than when I did last time prior to the pandemic.
I have a trip booked for March - April 2024. It is punctuated in the middle by an 18-day cruise. At present, when looking at the multi city site on the Qantas website, I can get myself to Mumbai where the cruise departs based on the limited reward points available to the 20 March 2024. But I will need flights after the cruise ends from 6 April to 25 April and those seats have not been released yet. Can I confirm that I can book the first three flights that would get me to the ship and then ring Qantas and add flights after the ship to get home. And if I do, will the two separate bookings become one Oneworld RTW flight and still cost 318,000 pts. I’ve seen it written on this site but I’m confirming the eventual cost in points too. Also, I thought you had to fly Qantas out of Australia because the only options so far are a Qantas domestic flight into another Australian city. Nothing international. And finally, why is Qatar never on offer. I note on the Oneworld site that it is not offered on the dropdown box as a preferred airline option. If anyone can help me I would really appreciate it. Regards, Sally
If you book them all in the same booking, then they will all eventually price to 318,000 once you ‘complete’ it with all the eligible round the world flights. Don’t book them in seperate bookings as they cannot ‘combine’ bookings to form one round the world booking.
You do not have to fly Qantas at all on a OneWorld RTW trip but generally, you will fly Qantas especially given that it provides most of the options to India from here (Cathay in the past has been pretty good but not so much in recent times with availability). Qatar is playing some games as they prefer their partnership with Virgin over Qantas so it is difficult to find availability on their flights more than around 3-4 months beforehand.
Many thanks for your assistance.
Kind regards,
Sally
It sounds like I have a very similar question to Sally. Essentially I will have to book a RTW trip in parts. Leg 1 would be Adelaide to somewhere in Europe (flexible on destination) in April 2024, so seats will be available any day now. Then we want to spend a few months in Europe holidaying, then continue with Leg 2. BUT I don’t know how I can secure Leg 1, when Leg 2 seats won’t release for months. If I wait for the Leg 2 releases, then there’s a good chance any Leg 1 seats will have disappeared.
Is it possible to do in parts, when subsequent legs haven’t released? Or should I just abandon the idea of RTW booking and lock in the Adl to Europe leg now?
You will have to pay 5k Qantas pts per person of change fees to add flights to your itinerary. Often time, this change fee is unavoidable for RTW itineraries.
Thnx Warren, I guess I’ll have to accept the 5k points cost. Does this then mean I can proceed with booking 1 leg and leaving the rest blank, with the expectation that it will cost 5k points each time I add a leg to the booking. Or do I have to complete a full booking with dummy legs for the segments to get me back home and then change these as soon as the subsequent legs release seats?
You can only book one flight to start. If you keep adding flights to the itinerary while complying with Qantas OneWorld RTW rules, the point costs would be capped at the RTW costs. I.e. 318k for business class