PlaneSpeaking

To expand on this, the rather unhelpful person I spoke with first didn’t give her name when she picked up so I asked her for it as it’s always nice to be slightly less formal. She said she couldn’t give her name until I’d cleared data protection!

Once we’d done that and she was clearly having a bad day, she said she couldn’t book us onto Qatar unless there was Avios availability and it was a codeshare flight!

She then read the latest policy out to me which said we can get you there as the outbound is pre-March 31 but we can’t get you back as the policy on booking onto other carriers only runs to March 31 and the return is April 5!

Not wanting to make her day any worse, I then spoke with her lovely supervisor who was much friendlier and more helpful. She confirmed the previous agent should have given her name and also that they could book us onto any commercial flight operated by Qatar but they couldn’t book the return because of the latest policy on other carriers not currently including April.

I said ok, let’s book the outbound so we can get the seats and book the return when the policy changes, presumably in January to accommodate the April return flight. Nope, can’t do that as although the 2 Avios bookings were made separately, they’re linked by a 241 so the only option is to wait for the policy to change and book the outbound at the same time (and probably when they have no seats left on the outbound) or just cancel the trip.

Is this normal?

Any advice will be appreciated including what to quote to them about their policy, assuming they’re wrong of course. If they are correct and they’ve cancelled the summer schedule, anyone with flights booked after March 31, whether outbound or return, won’t be able to book onto another carrier?

Seems a bit bonkers but maybe it’s correct?