QF Rewards Flights - Weird Availability for QF69?

[austrider]

I've been planning to redeem a couple of J tix from BNE-NRT on 19/11 to kick start my first DONE4. While using the QF site to find availability I've encounter a weird anomaly.

I was hoping to get a direct, non-stop flight. I couldn't - so QF69 seemed to be my best bet (BNE-CNS-NRT). I searched for 2 adults, and QF69 did not come up (but did come up on other dates, e.g. 21/11).

However, if I search the flights separately, i.e. QF69 BNE-CNS, and then QF69 CNS-NRT, then it shows up as available for both legs. (?!@)

I called QF but the guy I spoke to did not know why either. He indicated that he could not book that flight (?!@) and after checking with someone else, asked me to just book these two legs separately via the QF site. However this would cost an additional 48,000 points for the two of us (usually 120,000 for BNE-NRT).

Anyone got any ideas why? Or more importantly, is it possible to save the 48,000 points?


Cheers,

David

[ksthommo]

Came up when I checked???

[austrider]

Originally Posted by ksthommo

Came up when I checked???

Sorry I didn't make it clearer - I was after both legs to be QF69. i.e. the line above 09:20 BNE 20:00 NRT QF69. The highlight has QF 798 as the first leg (has to get up early and also need to clear immigration in CNS instead of BNE).

If you search for BNE-CNS, and CNS-NRT, QF69 has availability for 2 J seats for both legs, but does not seem to be available when searching for BNE-NRT (?!@#@!$).

[Mwenenzi]

austrider & ksthommo: What is your ff status ?
austrider is looking for a "couple" (2?) of reward seats

[austrider]

Originally Posted by Mwenenzi

austrider & ksthommo: What is your ff status ?
austrider is looking for a "couple" (2?) of reward seats

Yes the site distinguish between 1 seat available versus 2 seats available. i.e. if there's only 1 seat available and you've asekd for 2 then the flight would not show as available.

I'm NB with QC, and I've tried searching via both public (not logged in) and logged in - both with same results.

I'd be interested to see if the seats are available for a WP or SG - could someone try the same search (19/11 BNE-NRT QF69 2pax in J)? Thanks!

[oz_mark]

This is not really an anomoly, just a side effect of the way Qantas has sliced and diced the seats on the plane.

QF have divided the seats across three markets

BNE-CNS
CNS-NRT
BNE-NRT

The seats you are seeing are from where QF is willing to have someone redeem on the CNS-NRT market and on the BNE-CNS market. However, they are not currently willing to make business seats available on the BNE-NRT market (or more likely the seats that were available have gone). There is nothing unusual about this situation, and on paper Yield Management will not circumvent this availaibility by combining the two. Whether or not you can convince someone to do that will determine whether or not you get to save your points!

[ksthommo]

Multicity Booking has availability

[austrider]

Originally Posted by ksthommo

Multicity Booking has availability

Of course! Thanks ksthommo!

Oz_Mark - thanks for the explaination - I always thought the award allocation is per leg - e.g BNE-CNS may have 4 J seats and CNS-NRT may have 8 J seats. From the sounds of there are separate allocation for BNE-NRT in this case. This is pretty good as it sounds like there are more award seats for the flights that has stop-over(s).