Qantas Reward flight available via Melbourne, but not originating from Melbourne. Why is this happening?

Flights & Airfares
1

Eyeing off a Melb/L.A reward flight that is available originating from Auckland flying to Melb then Melb to L.A. But the same flight is not available just Melb to L.A.

Is there a way to make the Melb/LA leg available?
Would calling QFF get a result?
Am I able to book the flight from Auckland and cancel the Auk/Mel leg? If so would that then require a new ticket for that leg to be re-issued and risk it not being available because it wasn’t originally?

Help from anyone who has attempted this would be great.

So many questions…

Thanks

2

There are flight routing that are called married segments. I.e. this is what you are seeing. B-C is not bookable whilst, A-B-C is.

Unfortunately, there is no way around this that I know of.

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3

Piggybacking on this topic, so are you saying that in this case you might fly to Aukland in order to be eligible for the reward flight and pass back through your origin city onto your intended destination? Do people do this?

4

I believe they call these “positioning flights”, which is more commonly positioning yourself via relatively cheaper flights to places like Jakarta, Singapore or Manila (often with budget airlines) to get access to award seats or deal flights that are available only from these ports.

In your example of paying to fly from Melbourne to Auckland to be able to access the AKL-MEL-LAX award seat is rather uncommonly heard of. However, stranger things have happened in history. It’s really down to weighing up the hassle and costs of flying MEL-AKL to catch the AKL-MEL-LAX flight in a premium cabin. I’m sure some people would do it. Personally, I’m unsure. Haha.

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