Any chance of compensation???

I had an open segment SYD - HNL but when I tried to book it this morning June 9 Qantas said the next available flight wasn't until July 11, over a month away so I had to reschedule a few flights so as not to spend another month here.

Ticket was bought through AA who has no public office in Australia so I had to rebook through Qantas at a cost of an extra $1034.00 which I don't feel is right as Qantas, the only One World carrier flying SYD-HNL (or so I was told) couldn't provide service in a reasonable time!

Even worse the Melbourne office of Qantas, where I had to go in person as I had a paper ticket, was not very friendly or competent, tried to tell me that AA didn't fly DFW-ANC failed to appologize when proven wrong.

Have added Qantas to Air Canada to my never fly again list!

If you had an open-dated cheap ticket, then all seats in that class may have sold out for near dates, hence you had to upgrade to a more expensive fare class to get availability.

This happens for most airlines as travel dates approach.

Why did you not phone AA in the USA ?
There was (or is) an AA office in Aust that did (or has) an Au phone

It was your choice to book an open dated ticket for SYD-HNL. If there is no availability in the booking class you wish to travel in, then you either have to choose another date or buy another ticket

AA does have a presence in Australia. They have a telephone booking service plus they do have ticketing facilities, however since you had paper tickets ( which likely would have been avoided by not using open dated sectors ) you would have to post them to the AA office for a reissue

It's up to you on whether to travel QF again , but this is the most ridiculous reason I have heard for not doing so

Dave

So you are on a RTW, most probably in Economy, correct? A LONEx maybe?

If this is correct, then you are aware that L is a very low booking class. How is it QF fault that this fare class is booked out? If you have a ticket which is in such a bad booking class you must make sure to get seats long in advance. On some routes you would have to wait far longer than a month to find the next available L seat. Sometimes you can have 3-4 months without any seat in this class anymore.

Also AA has now a decent call centre in Australia and the RTW desk is excellent. Absolutely no need to switch to QF. However, only QF was able to upgrade this fare which isn't even covered by the rules so they have done you a big favour.

And in regards to DFW-ANC. AA has just started this route again as it is seasonal so you can forgive a QF person to not know this. If you walk into a random AA office and start talking about some seasonal QF/MA/IB routes chances are high that they might not know this as well.

If you are really on a LONEx then QF has done something very nice for you as they could have insisted on you flying with the first flight which actually has L availability.

Well excuse me for being a second class citizen who flies L class & uses open tickets so they can change plans & expects when purchasing a ticket that it will be honored in a reasonable time frame!

Well now I know that One World & their Australian member Qantas are both NOT very reliable or upfront organizations to deal with, especially Qantas whose sales reps need to upgrade their knowledge & public relations skills.

As to the myth that AA has an office in Australia where they can change RTW tickets, I did call the Australian office, or at least the Australian number, the office could have been anywhere & was told it was NOT a public office where customers could come in & I would have to do the change through Qantas.

Never had a problem with AA anywhere, they were very accommodating at the Bangkok office when I changed the date on a previous leg, actually the flight that brought me to this land where Qantas seems to have a monopoly & treat their customers with utter contempt.

Oh well all's well that ends well & Qantas only ripped me off for $1034 to get out of this expensive hell hole & I have learned the lesson that a One World ticket isn't worth the paper it's written on & I surely shall never return & avoid Qantas like the plague from now on.

No-one suggested that.

Cheap tickets come with conditions. Limited availability is one of them. Get used to it or buy flexible tickets. If you do travel with open-date L class segments, keep an eye on availability, eg using KVS.

Actually the best advise on cheap tickets is to avoid Australia with Qantas's near monopoly & only choose destinations with multiple carriers which I shall advise anyone who asks!

The best advice is to exercise judgment when 'booking' open sectors on any carrier.

It's unfortunate that this has happended to you on QF and will influence your opinion towards QF, but this really could have happened on a whole number of carriers.

You should only avoid an airline (or any business) when they genuinely screw up. QF haven't screwed up. You had the option to make a reservation on QF when you bought your ticket (an open sector is not a reservation), or you could have at least seen (or been advised by your TA) that there is no availability between SYD-HNL and should look at a different route.

You chose to use open tickets rather than have them dated. If you had just put a date in the future on it you could easily have got it changed by AA without the need to post tickets in ( they do allow posting tickets in , they do not have a publicly accessible office )

You had a ticket for L class; in order to use it, there has to be availability in L class. That there was no availability is not somethign valid to have a go at QF at , but it was your risk in using open tickets

Qantas did not rip you off, they charged appropriately for the journey you wished to book

If you know enough to book open tickets, you know enough that class availability is limited. No airline will hold a L seat open just for you when might want it as you seem to expect.
Time to get over it and stop blaming everyone but yourself.

It's extremely unpleasant to find that an airline has restricted inventory to the extent that, for all practical purposes, it's unobtainable. The advise that I would offer to other RTW travellers is to ensure that they familiarize themselves and adopt tools that alert them to when such rare inventory becomes available for booking.

It's reassurring to note that numerous competitors have recently entered into the US - Australia market, severely reducing both QF's pricing power and its monopoly stranglehold in general. This increased competition, however, does not help one on a xONEx RTW ticket, as none of the current competitors are members of OW.

That all said, the part of your experience that I find most concerning / upsetting is where you refer to SYD as an "expensive hell hole". While it undoubtedly can be expensive, I've never before heard SYD referred to as a hell hole. I've only visited Sydney 4 times, but each time I've thought it among the most pleasant, beautiful cities in the world ---- someplace that my wife and I would be happy to move to in retirement. Hopefully your comment was made in regard to a specific event (i.e. dealing with an unsympathetic Qantas CS rep) and not to the overall SYD experience. If not, I hope that you do some day give SYD another visit (even if travelling there on a different airline) to revisit, and enjoy, one of the world's greatest treasures.

Busman, IMO when OW sells a RTW product bookable in L class only and then OW carriers (e.g. QF) have restricted availability in L, I think it is somewhat (or a lot) deceptive on the part of the airlines.

Just curious, did you HAVE to go to HNL? If not, you could have paid a $125 change penalty and re-routed your ticket to SYD-LAX for instance.

I think you just ran into bad luck when you called AA in Oz and reached someone who could not be bothered to help since you were trying to book a QF flight. Also, remember that the quality of airline staff (particularly ticketing staff) has been steadily declining throughout the world - most agents are fairly clueless and can only add 2+2 to get 4, but not 3+1!

Besides, many airline staff are given incentives on how much additional revenue they collect (e.g. if your baggage is 1lb over the limit, you will be dinged), so they are sometimes keen to extract more money from the passenger than absolutely necessary.

Finally, I will add that I had visited the MEL QF travel centre (on Collins St, if I am not mistaken) last year and also remember that the agent handling my booking was neither competent nor friendly, which is somewhat of an exception Downunder.

The OP was wanting a low booking class on a route that has only 3 flights per week and the flights are busy. Taking 2 weeks from 17 June, for example, 1 flight is full in economy , one has K class available and the other 4 only have B and Yclass available . Doesn't seem that it is restricting L class , just that the flights are busy.


Leaving it to the last minute to try and make a booking on a low inventory on a route with few flights seems a pretty risky approach to me and not the airline's fault

Unless it was the last sector, the OP did have other options available such as not going to Hawaii and going straight to LAX/SFO

Well having more options is always good. The reality however is different. QF has a monopoly within Australia. AA has a monopoly within the US, BA within the UK etc. as far as OW is concerned. And then there are international routes which are operated as a monopoly within OW such as SFO-LHR among many others. So if you only want to fly routes which are served by more than one OW carrier then this will restrict your movements quite a bit.
And there are some AA routes like your DFW-ANC who don't have any L seats available for days in a row even so it is a daily flight.


I agree with Dave Noble here. This particular route is only served three times a week on 767 and it is just very busy. Of course one can take HA, FJ, NZ or JQ on that route but the OP bought a ticket which doesn't allow to use them. I wouldn't call this deceptive. I agree however, that this is one of the big problems of the LONEx as its low booking class creates those issues. Not just with QF but with any carrier. The Star Alliance RTW is superior in this respect as it books into a much higher booking class.
BTW, you can get the same problem in Business or First as well. One segment the OP is flying DFW-ANC is very often sold out in A and you need to wait days to get a flight confirmed. I sometimes fly LHR-MCT-LHR and I know that Business Class (D) sells out on certain days (Fridays!) so I have to confirm those tickets 6 months in advance to get what I want.