What to do if Qantas reward flight does not get ticketed for partner airlines?

Frequent Flyer Programs
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Hi there - I am looking for some guidance on how can I get my waitlisted booking confirmed.

Context - I booked a syd to Shanghai QF business reward seat on China eastern for next year a couple of days ago. The booking is still sitting in waitlisted status and I haven’t received the eticket number.

I have tried calling qantas and was that they don’t have business rewards seat for that particular flight unless China Eastern releases more seats for them. After searching this community and online, I sent an email to RewardTicketingEscalations@qantas.com.au. This team supposedly deals with reward seats with partner airlines for flight cancellations and schedule changes. I have not heard bank from them yet but I understand they prioritise those with earlier departure dates.

My question is whether I should wait for them to get back with to me or is there any other way to help resolve this.

Thanks

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That email is the designated point of help for these sorts of issues but it doesn’t hurt to try other sources too. I find twitter (now X, but I refuse to call it that) to be a decent place to get help. It’s not that fast but beats wasting hours on the phone.

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Thanks @djtech - appreciate your input and for all the questions you have answered on this forum - you are a legend! I also found this email for China Eastern online infosyd@chinaeastern.com.au. Might reach out to them as well given the reward seat is offered on their flight.

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Actually wouldn’t suggest contacting them as they wouldn’t be able to do anything for you - your ticket has to be ticketed by Qantas, it is Qantas who needs to contact them on your behalf to ticket it.

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Thanks again - had just finished drafting an email to them and then got notification of your post.

What’s strange about this whole situation is that I was able to book the seat but now Qantas is saying they need China Eastern to release an extra seat to issue the ticket. I suppose that is the risk with business reward seats booked on partner airlines. Wish there was a better way to manage that risk rather than hours on phone and email follow-ups.

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Did you get your tickets confirmed?

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Got mine ticketed within 24 hours of booking!

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Sorry for slow response but glad to hear that you got your waitlisted ticketed. I was not so lucky - I made several calls and followed every week for about 2 months.

Below is simply to help others:

  1. I ended up cancelling the qantas business reward booking on the partner airline after I managed to find a business reward on a qantas flight (syd to pvg). seats.aero subscription came in handy as it alerted me as soon as they became available.
  2. When your booking is waitlisted, points are still deducted from your account. So I had to call qantas to cancel the waitlisted booking (you can’t do it online for some reason) and make sure the points are refunded to me immediately and available for a new booking (this is not an issue when you have an ample balance). Luckily, I spoke to someone at Qantas who know what they were doing and managed to get me the points refund straightway.