Hi there,
Much like Steve Carol’s question, I have a query regarding a One World RTW rewards booking. I’ve been having lots of issues with this booking, originally made in June last year. I’m one of the many people that had partner airline flights (CX) dropped off the booking after they had been confirmed. As a result I have ended up with the following:
BNE-SYD
SYD-HNL
HNL-LAX
LAX-MAD
MAD-ALC
ALC-MAD
MAD-FCO
VCE-LHR
LHR-CDG
CDG-LHR
LHR-SIN
SIN-BNE
Today, I was told that the LHR-CDG & CDG-LHR sectors were not allowed under the RTW rules. Are you able to confirm this as I do not have the greatest confidence in the Qantas off-shore call centre staff.
Hi,
My full itinerary is:
26 April 23: Rockhampton-Brisbane on QF2323
26 April 23: Brisbane - Sydney on QF533
26 April 23: Sydney-Honolulu on QF103
26 April 23: Honolulu-Los Angeles on AS866 (Alaska)
28 April 23: Los Angeles-Madrid on IB6170 (Iberia)
29 April 23: Madrid-Alicante on IB8862
12 May 23: Alicante-Madrid on IB8859
12 May 23:Madrid-Rome on IB3232
02 June 23: Venice-London on BA599 (British Airways)
02 June 23: London-Paris on BA314
6 June 23: Paris-London on BA315
12 June 23: London-Singapore on BA15
14 June 23: Singapore-Brisbane on QF52
15 June 23: Brisbane-Rockhampton on QF2366
Hope this helps (I didn’t mention Rockhampton in my previous post but it is the origin & destination for this booking). Let me know if you need any more info.
Thanks… Valentine
Hey Jabba,
You’re spot on… I realised when reviewing the itinerary that the flight from Venice to London and then on from London to Paris should be treated as a transit (as both are on 2 June) and not a stopover. So, to my mind, that should all be allowed. I’d appreciate your opinion on this.
I’ll be on to Qantas tomorrow, which will be the 25th time I have spoken with them since the original booking was changed by them without notice. Hopefully, I can get them to agree and ticket the segments.
Thanks…
The agent I spoke with yesterday seemed quite helpful and knowledgeable but on reflection I’m not sure if that was the case.
She advised me that not all available Qantas rewards seats are available for selection as part of a One World RTW booking - not sure if that is true
She said she was waiting on the Ticketing team to issue the ticket - after 1hr 45m waiting she promised to keep waiting for them and to definitely call me back by the end of the day - I heard no more from her (and she is about the 10th person to promise to call me back!)
So now I will email the rewards booking escalation team again (did that on 31 Jan - no response) and raise another complaint to the customer service people, before phoning again over the weekend.
How can ticketing a booking be so hard??
That’s a ridiculous comment about not all rewards tickets can be booked. At that point I would have asked to speak to a supervisor. Been told similar things myself from an overseas call centre, If the eticket does come through in 24 hrs, call again. Also double check on BA website that your flights are there and confirmed
Well, I emailed the Qantas reward bookings escalation team (and cc’d 3 Qantas executives) today. I listed the flight segment booked but not ticketed (LHR-SIN) and the 2 flights that I was told could not be included (LHR-CDG-LHR) and asked for them all to be confirmed and ticketed.
At least I got an acknowledgement email from the rewards escalation mailbox ha ha!
I will call Qantas again tomorrow if I hear nothing more.
This is all so depressing!
I’ve used the Oneworld ticket via Qantas annually for the last decade or so. The main requirements are
Not more than 5 stopovers. It looks like you have 5, but without the exact times of arrival and departures I cant be sure. Anything less than 24 hours is a transit, anything more is a stopover.
Not more than 2 transits through any one port. That looks OK.
All Oneworld airlines. With the addition of Alaskan recently that makes you OK.
Two or more non-Qantas airlines. Check.
5 Less than 36,000 miles total, including land sectors, like your Rome to Venice. Using gcmap.com your trip comes to 27,835 miles so well under the limit.
So, all in all, you shouldn’t have a problem with this itinerary. I think you’ve just run up against the usual Qantas call centre incompetence. All you can do is ring them every day and ask for it to be ticketed. Eventually they will, but it’s a race between them and when airlines start dumping flights off the booking due to lack of ticketing. I’m averaging about 5 -6 calls on any booking before it gets ticketed. Don’t wait for them to reply to emails, you’ll be waiting forever, you have to keep bothering/calling them.
Hi Malcom,
Thanks for your feedback.
Saturday I was on the phone with Qantas for 4 hours. During this time the agent, after consulting with her ‘support team’ advised that the reason the LHR-SIN could not be ticketed was because I would be exceeding the max 5 stopovers allowed. I argued that there were only 4 stopovers - LAX-ALC-ROM-LON. Her response was ‘HNL to LAX - that’s one stopover, LAX to MAD, that’s another! I eventually managed to convince her that she was quoting flight segments, not stopovers. As you said, the definition of a stopover is being on the ground for more that 24 hrs.
She went back to her ‘Support team’ then came back and apologised for the ‘mis-information’ that she and her support team had provided! Then saying that the error had been fixed and the SIN-LHR segment is now ‘Good to go’ and would be queued for ticketing, but that she would contact the ticketing team to ticket immediately. At that point, the call dropped out!
Called again yesterday and the agent confirmed that the booking is all good and is being queued for ticketing within 72 hrs.
I will wait until Wednesday and call again if it has not been ticketed.
I suspect that the problem they had with mis-calculating the number of stopovers has been having an impact when trying to book the LHR-CDG-LHR flights. I will take that one up when the first issue has been resolved.
We’re certainly going to need a holiday by the time this is over!
Thanks for feedback and support!