Lately, Qantas have been playing around with their frequent flyer program and it hasn’t been good for passengers. Last month Qantas blocked most AA and BA award space and that lasted for about a month. Then for the last month, Qantas and American have been fighting like toddlers cutting earning rates on each other. Thanks, DOT….
I’m currently trying to help a friend book an award seat from the United States to Australia on Qantas over the Christmas break. Qantas currently have about 4 or 5 seats free in First in December and as soon as we saw space we went to book but ran into some trouble.
There are a few ways to find Qantas availability. Most of the time I will use Expertflyer and British Airways but what we were finding was quite interesting.
Qantas would show space and it was confirmed to be real by an agent.
I also checked Expertflyer and indeed it showed P availability.
But when you’d look on American, Alaska and British it wouldn’t show online. American’s award calendar is hit and miss so it’s not always accurate so I thought I’d check other programs.
Alaska also wouldn’t show.
And British Airways showed the space but when you’d click, an error message would appear. That would usually mean it would be phantom space but it was actually available.
So what was the end result?
My friend decided to ring American and low and behold he was able to book the ticket and he did. It does seem Qantas space isn’t appearing on their partner’s online award searches which is quite odd. Or are Alaska, and American blocking Qantas space, who knows?.
Has anyone else had this happen recently?
7 comments
I was able to book by calling AA Australia recently. Maybe try that.
Yep, that’s what we did, they are pretty great to deal with.
Did you have to pay a phone fee for that award booking?
As my friend was Executive Platinum with AA there was no fee, I think if you call and book over the phone they may waive the fee.
Interesting. AA has been hiding BA space unless you book through advanced search, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they were hiding QF as well
Hmm interesting, I’ll have to look into it. It seems like a common trend nowadays.
i almost wish Qantas would block award seats from american. they take literally all the space between AUS and USA, yet release none of their own
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