Back here again, I feel like I’m hitting every rookie mistake lol
So trying to fly business class where possible between Jun/Jul 2023 to USA and Europe:
MEL-JFK
JFK-HEL
OSL-ATH
ATH-BRU
BRU-MEL
The trip we have is:
19/6 MEL-PER-HKG Business
20/6 HKG-JFK (stop) Premium
24/6 JFK-HEL (stop) Business
4/7 OSL-LON-ATH (stop) Business
16/7 ATH-MAD-BRU (stop) Business
23/7 CDG-CMB Business
25/7 CMB-SYD Economy
25/7 SYD-MEL Business
When called up they said there’s no business seats PER-HK (website is showing that there are) and when I try booking the first 6 flights through the multi-city tool I get an undefined error and sent back to the start.
Any ideas on what’s happening and how to troubleshoot? We’re looking to lock down the longer haul flights Aus-USA and Eur-Aus at least and the other flights we can figure out later. Also open to alternate roots, people in this community are wizards!
Qantas website doesn’t like surface sectors in Multi-city bookings so that’s probably why the errors are there.
I just checked and it seems Melbourne to Perth to Hong Kong is no longer showing up on the 19th. Options are available on the 22nd of June from Melbourne to Sydney to Hong Kong or 18th via Perth. So if you are happy to shift your itinerary by a couple of days later, this could be a good option.
RTW is best value for money and great when you “crack” the route! My wife and I celebrated 30the wedding anniversary with a (mostly) business class trip last year. In trying to do another for next year am getting a don’t have enough points result rather than hitting the 318000 cap… I too am therefore wanting to ask What am I doing wrong? I think I am complying with all the rules but may have a blind spot somewhere and would love the collective brain power of this forum to help crack it!
Route and Dates:
MEL - CMB (via Shanghai) 22/08 -BUS
CMB - CDG (Paris) 25/08 -BUS
LHR - JFK 24/09 - BUS
JFK -HKG(via HND) - 26/09 BUS
HKG - SYD(via Taipei) - 30/09 ECO/PRM ECO
SYD - MEL 1/10 BUS
Thanks in anticipation of your help world travellers!
My first guess is not all airlines in your itinerary are a OneWorld airline. E.g. what airline is taking you from Melbourne to Shanghai? Are you able to include the airlines chosen for the routes already provided?
I agree with w.hiew – it looks like you’ve got non-Oneworld airlines in the mix. For example, Hong Kong to Sydney via Taipei sounds like China Airlines, which is part of SkyTeam rather than Oneworld.
Thanks w.hiew and Brandon. I changed the route to remove China airways and created a new one where I am using just One World alliance airlines (in this case Malaysia, Sri Lankan, British Airways, Japan Airlines, Qantas). Sam problem where the 318k cap per person isnt kicking in! BTW, I have more than 700k of points (so enough for two business class). There must be another rule I am breaching which is blind-siding me! Argh!
Your screenshot confirms my suspicion about the Melbourne - Shanghai route not being serviced by a OneWorld airline.
Look up the oneworld website for members or just use search engines like Google Flights to filter for oneworld airlines to do a first pass research on airline/routes.
Something like this would get you to that 318k per person price!
Just something to think about is the taxes and fees also. Leaving out of London is pricey due to UK APD, and leaving Japan is also expensive because carrier surcharges are tied to the average fuel price of the previous months (which have been pretty high lately!)
whoops! Sorry to have asked and missed that. Another question: I am finding it particularly challenging to get any RTW routes to work in one booking. Is it possible to lock them in as I see them and once all done over time, the points cap for a RTW booking then applying?
You’ll usually have to make the most of the first booking via the website. Then you have to ring and make changes/add flights to the same reference number. Each change costs 5k Qantas pts per passenger.
Thanks for your help folks. While I finally made our booking with all segments business, I did have to make a last minute change (fly from Dallas instead of JFK) as the Qantas website was doing something funky at the very last stage of booking; it allowed me through to enter our personal details but then
. Anyway, the agenda we have gone with is here in case it helps anyone else with their searches. I should also say that I used seats.aero which was helpful to hone in on dates where I was more likely to find Business seats. Any suggestions on what to do in Colombo for a couple of days is welcomed!
Surprised you didn’t leave out of Heathrow from London! Good job on snagging the QF8 seat when QF was doing a big reward seat drop though!
The arrival time into Colombo is pretty brutal so the first day is probably recovery haha. Never visited, but I love the architecture there! That would be my first day plans.
